About Now

Brian Aldiss said that sf is always about the time at which it is written. The twentieth century experience of two World Wars and more wars made sf less utopian and more dystopian. Poul Anderson moved from writing about intelligent species from many planets crossing space faster than light to writing about post-organic intelligences emanating from a single planet and crossing space slower than light. Alternative history fiction is a commentary on contemporary experience, not (or not just) an escape from it. SM Stirling's American time travellers narrowly escape from World War III. They escape. We do not. Where are reality and its fictional reflections heading to now? We are still in the Chaos which may be the only part of Anderson's Technic History to come true.

-Punk And Retro-

Poul Anderson's sf is Golden Age/Old Wave as opposed to New Wave.

Here at Behind-The-Times blog, we are only just getting to grips with New Wave phenomena like cyberpunk, steampunk and dieselpunk although we have previously mentioned retro-sf. (Scroll down.)

Tim Powers' The Anubis Gates is seminal steampunk.

SM Stirling's Lords Of Creation is retro.

Anderson did not write any steampunk or retro although he could easily have turned his hand to either of these sub-genres if an editor or publisher had asked him to. 

Every time that a new sf idea or sub-genre is mentioned, it is necessary to scan Anderson's vast output to check whether anything that he wrote does come under this category. And probably none of us is familiar with everything that he wrote.

Steampunk or retro characters would easily fit into the multiversal clientele of the Old Phoenix, whose name seems appropriate.

Sf is always looking forward, to the future, and back to the classics like Wells, people in the past looking forward - to the future. Now we just have to meet ourselves. 

Wind Whispered

Regular readers know how often this blog analyzes the role of the wind in Poul Anderson's texts where it punctuates the dialogue and effectively comments on the action. This wind theme has become so persistent that it has made me oversensitive to similar turns of phrase in works by other authors. 

In Tim Powers' The Anubis Gates, when William Ashbless' magically generated clone says that it has come to kill him, Ashbless draws his sword and asks why. That is all that needs to happen for narrative purposes. However, between the drawing of the sword and the asking of the question:

"The wind whispered in the tall grasses."

-Epilogue, p. 463.

That sentence could have been written by Anderson - and a whisper is appropriate in the circumstances.

On the following, and concluding, page of the novel, when Ashbless has killed his attacker:

"The chilly spring breeze blew all thoughts of the past out of his mind, and with a sense of adventure he hadn't known in decades he walked on down the path to the moored boat..." (p. 464)

Ashbless, formerly time traveller Brendan Doyle, had known that Ashbless's body - so it was thought - would be found dead from a sword wound. Since he is now living beyond his expected span and with a sense of adventure, that "spring breeze" is highly appropriate.

Don't just follow the narrative. Appreciate the text!

(The Anubis Gates has a sequel, Nobody's Home, which seems to concentrate on fantasy since it is about ghosts.)

Apep And Hell

Brendan Doyle, now William Ashbless, looks down the throat of the serpent Apep:

"...when it opened its vast jaws he thought he could see negative stars shining in a remote distance, as if Apep's mouth was the gateway to a universe of absolute cold and the absence of light."

-The Anubis Gates, 15, p. 452.

See Poul Anderson's Hell in:

The Low Continuum

Operation Chaos Conclusion

Metamythics

Powers: negative stars; absolute cold; absence of light.

Anderson: full entropy.

Here and now: full night; Good Night!

SF And Fantasy

(Today we travelled not around Morecambe Bay by train but up the Lune Valley to Ruskin's View by bus.) 

SF

Empirically discerned natural laws operate invariably.

By applying natural laws, intelligent beings construct technology with which to control natural forces, e.g., using steam to move engines, radio waves to send messages, electricity to light and heat buildings, nuclear reactions to generate energy etc.

Gravity control, instantaneous communication, faster than light space travel etc must result from future technology, not from any contravention of natural laws.

Any other intelligences are extraterrestrial.

Fantasy

Some conscious beings (gods, angels, demons, magicians) control natural forces by acts of will, sometimes expressed by spells or incantations, but without needing technology. Thus, objects are moved, messages are sent, light and energy are generated etc "magically" and not technologically. Natural laws are not utilized but suspended by acts of will.

Other intelligences are supernatural.

Some Authors

Poul Anderson wrote both kinds of fiction well.

CS Lewis freaks us out when, in the opening chapter of Perelandra, he suggests that, on Mars, Ransom had met beings that were both extraterrestrial and supernatural.

Authors can create sf/fantasy mixes, e.g., Tim Power's zones where machines do not work but magic does.

Comment

We live in the world described by sf, not by fantasy.

Diversity And Entropy

Continuing to reread Tim Powers' The Anubis Gates, we find that this novel is mostly neither sf in general nor time travel in particular but fantasy. Gods exist. Magic works. To become the nineteenth century poet, William Ashbless, whose photograph he has seen, Brendan Doyle must not only time travel but also switch bodies by means of a magic potion. Of course, Powers' fantasy, like his time travel, parallels works by Poul Anderson although a completely different set of works by Anderson. The latter writer's distinguishing features include his vast output, his consistent combination of quality with quantity and his comprehensiveness. Whereas many other authors specialize in hard sf, alternative histories, fantasy, historical fiction or detective fiction, Anderson wrote all of these although some more than others.

It is unthinkable that time travel would intrude in a heroic fantasy like The Broken Sword or that magic would work in the Time Patrol series although characters from the different kinds of universes can meet in the Old Phoenix Inn between universes. How much might the real universe (or multiverse) encompass? A lot, although mothing like what has been imagined. Scientists have had to discover the laws of motion, the electromagnetic spectrum, biological evolution, sub-atomic particles, the strong and weak nuclear forces, quantum mechanics, mass-energy equivalence, relativity including the light speed limit, other galaxies, cosmic expansion, curvature of space, black holes, dark matter and dark energy in a universe where consciousness is not (like gravity etc) a fundamental force of nature but instead is a by-product of natural selection within temporary, local, negative entropy. This real universe is the setting of Poul Anderson's hard sf, including his Technic History where civilizations are entropic. In Norse mythology, which Anderson celebrated, the conflicting but interacting forces of heat and cold are basic whereas consciousness, including deity, is emergent. The entropic and Norse universes come together when an explorer of a globular cluster at the far edge of another spiral arm remembers the myth of fire and ice. See:

Cloud Universe And Ginnungagap.

Predecessors And Coinages

As an sf writer, Poul Anderson is a successor of Mary Shelley, HG Wells and Robert Heinlein. Surely these three authors are his principle predecessors?

Relevant Works

Frankenstein

The Time Machine

The First Men In The Moon

The War Of The Worlds

The Shape Of Things To Come

The War In The Air

The World Set Free

The Future History

Magic, Inc.

Wells coined the terms, "Time Machine," "Time Traveller" and "time travelling" (later shortened to "time travel.") Mark Twain, writing before Wells, had used the phrase, "transposition of epochs." (Twain and L. Sprague de Camp are another two Anderson predecessors although specifically on time travel.)

When a fictional character living in 1810 is told that someone has "jumped" from 1810 to 1684, he should not immediately respond, as we would, with the phrase, "time travel." That is anachronistic. It happens in Tim Powers' The Anubis Gates.

I must finish rereading The Anubis Gates. Tomorrow, to celebrate a birthday, two of us will travel by train around Morecambe Bay. There should also soon be a family visit to a cinema to see The Odyssey. More myth.

"The Boat of Millions of Years"

The above phrase on the opening page of Tim Powers' The Anubis Gates links this book with the title of Poul Anderson's The Boat Of A Million Years as we have previously said here. Anderson's novel features slower-than-light interstellar travel by a small group of immortals whereas Powers refers directly to Egyptian mythology:

"'...the twelve hours of the night...

"'It's the course through the Tuaut, the underworld, that the dead sungod Ra follows every night on his dark voyage from sunset to sunrise. Darkness becomes solid there, and hours are a measurement of distance, like sailing on an uncoiled clock face.'"

-The Anubis Gates, 10, p. 337.

Hours as distance: travel through time. Doyle replies that he has already travelled along such a river. 

Time as a river is a major image in Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series. See The River Of Time. Ra makes a big appearance in Neil Gaiman's The Sandman.

Unique?

Is Poul Anderson unique in addressing both causality paradoxes; certainly in the comprehensiveness of his treatment of both? (Thinks: it is safer to frame this kind of proposition as a question than as a factual assertion.)

In the preceding post, with Anderson as our axis, so to say, we also referred to time travel works by:

SM Stirling (the series has to continue)

Audrey Niffenegger (we hope for a sequel)

HG Wells (whatever happened to the Time Traveller?)

Robert Heinlein

Tim Powers

- and we know that there are others. What an outstanding list of authors! This literary sequence will continue as long as there are authors and readers with intellects and imaginations.

Some Time Travel Comparisons

(i) Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series and SM Stirling's Make The Darkness Light series are opposite answers to the question whether to change history. (Assuming that you can, of course.)

(ii) Anyone who is just starting to time travel cannot know whether their timeline is mutable or immutable. Anderson's Jack Havig tries to prevent his father's death before he learns not to try. All the evidence indicates that Audrey Niffenegger's Henry DeTamble also inhabits an immutable timeline. However, wanting to be sure that he will always return to the future in which he is married to Claire, DeTamble takes extra care not to do anything that might change the course of events. Stirling's American time travellers have to find out what kind of timeline they are in. Recruits to Anderson's Time Patrol are told as part of their training.

(iii) Both HG Wells' The Time Machine and Anderson's There Will Be Time, the latter featuring Havig, describe events rushing past a time traveller.

Thus, we compare Anderson with Stirling, Niffenegger and Wells. Anderson's comprehensive treatment of both time travel paradoxes, causality violation and circular causality, makes his works a pivotal point of comparison with other time travel authors.

Now consider a time travel conundrum in Tim Powers' The Anubis Gates. I could have discussed this on the Logic of Time Travel blog but far fewer people would have read it there. In fact, I have tried to redirect readers from that blog to this one: see About Time Travel. We will find that issues raised by Powers have already been addressed in (i) or (ii) above. 

Trapped inside a burning tent, Doctor Romany can escape only by jumping through time:

"...he tried to decide what time to jump to. Sometime in the future? No, not when it meant leaving tonight's debacle as established history. Better to jump into the past, fix things up so that the situation tonight's aborted effort was supposed to remedy never would have arisen in the first place."

-Tim Powers, The Anubis Gates (London, 1986), 9, p. 274.

Romany, thinking in terms of (i), does not yet known that he is living in an immutable timeline as in (ii). Nevertheless, it is sensible, from his point of view, to travel into the past when he can use his knowledge from the future to try to counteract the effects of the situation that he had wanted to remedy. You can do a lot in the past as the hero of Robert Heinlein's The Door Into Summer learns.

Also in The Anubis Gates, in 1810, Brendan Doyle finds a hand-written volume recording events on 4 February, 1684. On the endpaper, in his own handwriting although faded with age, he reads:

"IHAY, ENDANBRAY, ANCAY OUYAY IGITDAY?" (8, p. 258)

Needless to say, later in the novel, Doyle visits 1684 and writes this mocking note to his younger self.

If I knew at what point to start writing a circular causality narrative, I would do it.

"It's Not As Simple As That!"

Nothing is ever simple, is it? The previous post, Identities, left out complexities in all three of the novels cited. In particular, another way to duplicate the consciousness of a person is simply to duplicate the person. If a living duplicate of an organism duplicates the organism's neural states, then it also duplicates that organism's mental states: not A thinking that he is B but two people thinking that they are A. See Poul Anderson's "Symmetry" and the magically generated duplicates called "ka's" in The Anubis Gates where a duplicate Lord Byron has entertainment value - and might be based on reports of a double of Byron according to the quotation at the head of Chapter 8.

Of course, a time traveller can at least temporarily duplicate himself by coexisting with his younger or older self (see A Case In Point) or maybe by initiating a divergent timeline containing an alternative version of himself.

That is enough about that, I think.

Identities

Neuronic events generate mental events. This has become a cliche but in fact is a very recent scientific discovery. Electrically firing neurons generate sensations which would not otherwise exist. Complicated electrochemical interactions between electrically firing neurons generate thoughts and personalities which would not otherwise exist.

(i) If person A's brain duplicated the interactions in person B's brain, then A would think that he was B, complete with B's memories, motivations etc. 

(ii) If an artificial neural network duplicated B's neuronic interactions, then that network would reproduce B's consciousness and sense of identity.

(iii) If some other technology exactly duplicated the effects of neuronic interactions, then that technology would generate self-conscious individuals maybe thinking that they were living on Earth in a particular historical period. 

(i) happens in Tim Power's The Anubis Gates. 

(ii) happens in Poul Anderson's Harvest Of Stars.

(iii) happens in Anderson's Genesis.

In The Anubis Gates, a character seeks immortality by repeatedly projecting his personality into someone else's body while at the same time displacing that person's personality into his own abandoned and soon-to-die body. 

The idea that personalities can be generated and duplicated in these ways links these three novels.

Time Travel Scenarios

Returned from the Viking Festival, where a guy at a stall blew through a tube to make small pewter Thor's hammers, we resume rereading Tim Powers' The Anubis Gates which remains fascinating although it really belongs on the Logic of Time Travel blog which, however, has effectively transferred its functions here, to the Poul Anderson Appreciation blog. See About Time Travel.

Meanwhile, SM Stirling's The Lords Of Creation, Volume III, The Lords Of Creation, should be en route via eBay. "Poul" and other sf writers have their says at the beginning of Volume I or II as far as I can remember without being able to check the text momentarily.

Contemporary fiction has a single premise: that the contemporary world exists as it does because history occurred as recorded. Sf varies its premises. Poul Anderson's Time Patrol would be unnecessary in The Anubis Gates. How would the Patrol respond to the events of SM Stirling's To Turn The Tide? As a matter of fact, in the Patrol timeline, there is not, as far as we know, any world-wide nuclear war in 2032. Therefore, the Patrol would prevent such a war from occurring and would also, of course, try to prevent any time travellers from changing history in the second century CE.

Good guys in one scenario are bad guys in another.

Doyle And Ashbless

See:

Three Other Time Travel Novels 

A Case In Point

Brendan Doyle, time traveller, knows that, on a particular day in 1810, the poet, William Ashbless, arrived in London where he entered the Jamaica Coffee House at 10:30 and then wrote his poem, "The Twelve Hours of the Night," while seated in the coffee house. Wanting to meet and befriend Ashbless, Doyle arrives in the coffee house on time. However, Ashbless does not show up so Doyle writes the poem from memory, then remains in the nineteenth century as Ashbless...

There is more to the story than that but I have summarized the paradox and am now going to bed. Life is busy here: Robin Hood (a version of) this evening; more authentic Vikings tomorrow. It is nearly midnight.

Street Life

Poul Anderson shows us street life in Centauri on Avalon in the Domain of Ythri during the period of the early Terran Empire. Among many other details, a gaunt man shouts of some obscure salvation. Later in the Technic History, Anderson describes the towers of Archopolis, capital city of the Terran Empire, and Dominic Flandry's upper level apartment but not any of that city's street life. But we need to read more of every aspect of a real or fictional city's life. An interstellar, multi-species civilization will be multivarious but we can get a hint of that on Earth now.

Today, a group of Muslim men had come all the way from Birmingham to hand out free Korans on a street in Lancaster! They happened to stand right next to a group of left-wing newspaper sellers with whom they exchanged friendly greetings and literature.

Meanwhile, we reread Tim Powers' The Anubis Gates which presents nineteenth century London street life, involving both aristocrats and beggars although principally the latter.

All human life is here as it should be in all fiction and literature.

Take to the streets!

Two Surrenders

A scene from Poul Anderson's Technic History and a scene from SM Stirling's Make The Darkness Light series come together in one readers' mind although their settings could not be more dissimilar: a future history and an alternative history. A Merseian steps from a wrecked building and waves a white flag. A hand waves olive branches from behind rubble. Two symbols of surrender. Hastening into town on a Saturday, I leave it to blog readers to locate these references. This evening, a Robin Hood play in Williamson Park. Tomorrow, a Viking Festival in Heysham Village. We walk through legend and history.

A Case In Point

There is a particular kind of time travel paradox that is characteristic of narratives set in immutable timelines. Robert Heinlein presents this paradox very well in "By His Bootstraps" and The Door Into Summer and Poul Anderson in The Corridors Of Time, There Will Be Time and The Dancer From Atlantis as we have discussed here before but there are other examples.

In Tim Powers' The Anubis Gates, thief lords, banqueting in a subterranean grotto beneath nineteenth century London, are surrounded by shabby men and boys and, beyond them, derelicts who will fight for the left-overs afterwards. The Gypsy King, Doctor Romany, is furious when a very old and disfigured man laughs madly and mocks something that he, Romany, has just said.

"'Can't you put this wretch out of his misery, Horrabin?' [Romany] asked quietly.

"'You can't because you didn't!' cackled the ancient man."

-Tim Powers, The Anubis Gates (London, 1986), 4, p. 105.

Horrabin merely has the man removed but, as he is being carried away, this ancient human wreck winks at Romany and stage-whispers:

"'Look for me later under different circumstances...'" (ibid.)

- then again laughs crazily.

The alert fan of time travel sf might guess (correctly) that, later in this narrative, Romany will time travel to a very remote past date, will live for a very long time, will become so disfigured as to be unrecognizable and will, of course, mock his much younger self at the thieves' banquet.

We can appreciate it but we can't all write it.

Judgements About Empires And Options About Time Travel

Robert Heinlein's Future History avoids empires and culminates with a first mature culture. 

SM Stirling's Draka are an evil empire in an alternative twentieth century. (They are "evil" in my judgement and in that of some other readers. The author will remind us of the view that all such judgements are subjective.)

The Antonine Roman Empire in Stirling's Make The Darkness Light series is a benign empire in an alternative second century. Thus, the Antonines present a formidable antithesis to the Draka.

Poul Anderson's Terran Empire is just another empire in a fictional future. It is perceived as benign or oppressive depending on the viewpoint of any particular character. Certainly, "The Game of Glory" shows the intelligence officer, Dominic Flandry, routinely participating in the conquest and oppression of the sovereign planet, Brae.

The arrival of two books interrupted our (editorially speaking) rereading of Tim Powers' The Anubis Gates. Again, the two time travel options: the past can be changed in Make The Darkness Light but not in The Anubis Gates. Poul Anderson is distinguished by the facts that he (i) addressed both options and (ii) addressed both well.

Thoughts And Connotations

Please bear with us here. Fiction reflects life. We will start with life (or something like it), then return to fiction. 

Imagine: a sensitive recording, computing and communicational device which detects and records electromagnetic radiations, sounds, other vibrations, chemical compositions, nuclear reactions, gravitational waves etc, computes and calculates about these inputs and communicates with other such devices. Imagine further that this device randomly replays previous recordings, computations and communications and continually interrupts its own operations with further random and disjointed repetitions. If we add the single extra mysterious ingredient of consciousness, then this device becomes a superior human brain albeit with a very enhanced sensory apparatus.

What has gone wrong with the device to cause these constant replays? Well, we have been not artificially devised but naturally selected and therefore are primarily motivated not just to record and assess data but also to preserve, promote and gratify self. This motivation generates many additional mental processes, including regrets, recriminations, apprehensions, anticipations etc. 

This has consequences for both life and fiction.

First, some of us meditate, i.e., practice awareness of our own incessant and involuntary thought processes, not from narcissism but in an attempt to gain some handle on what is going on.

Secondly, a chapter or a narrative passage in a novel can locate a character in a particular time and place but can then mainly comprise that character's thoughts and reflections. This can inform readers either about the character or about his knowledge of the background situation without necessarily advancing the action of the novel. Thus, on pp. 317-324 of SM Stirling's The Winds Of Fate, CHAPTER NINETEEN, the Chinese agent, Black Jade, hears her superior, Colonel Liu, conversing with Kushan aristocrats and, at the end of p. 324, we know that she is:

"...trying to decide to do..." (p. 324)

- something!

We guess, correctly as it turns out, that the something is defection to the Americans and here we must divest this word, "Americans," of its connotations. In this context, "Americans" means not White House, State Department, Pentagon, CIA, aircraft carriers, military bases or boots on the ground. It means only five individuals of very high expertise and very good intentions.

Both the Roman Emperor, Marcus Aurelius, and his chief advisor, the American, Artorius:

"...agree that being Emperor is a burden, not something for which a sensible, self-controlled man would strive! Unless duty compelled, of course."

-CHAPTER TWENTY, p. 325.

The Emperor can trust Artorius because he knows that the latter is not scheming to replace him. A perfect setup. Things can get done:

"...Artorius...is genuinely uninterested in rank for its own sake. An unusual man. He values it only for what can be done with it, as he does with money. He labors ceaselessly for Rome, as I strive to do." (p. 329)

Really, it is for the world with Rome as the instrument.

Slaughters

The Winds Of Fate, CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.

SM Stirling is a master of descriptions of military slaughters - which is why we re-use the attached cover illustration and indeed have found a clearer image of it.

Romans hit Parthians with extratemporal weapons supplied by time travellers. Sometimes, I summarize such accounts. This time, I just advise blog readers to read or reread this chapter - which I would also have done in any case, of course.

Marcus Aurelius and the time travellers really are aiming at a genuine Pax Romana, not just a brutally imposed pacification, and this does seem to be the only way to do it. I am interested not just in descriptions of exploded equine and human bodies but also in where all this is going. This is a major divergent timeline and potentially a long sf series.

Same basic premise as Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series - that the past can be changed - but a completely different development of it.

Tempora mutantur nos et mutamur in illis.

60

In his introductions to The Game Of Empire and The Night Face, Poul Anderson directly addresses his readers, that is to say you and me as we open these books. Thus, these are non-fictional introductions whereas a passage written as if by Hloch of Stormgate Choth as he addresses his fellow Avalonians is fictional. In this sense, the total number of works of fiction comprising Anderson's Technic History is greater than you think:

forty-three instalments, ranging from short stories to long novels;

twelve introductions and one afterword in The Earth Book Of Stormgate;

one original introduction in Trader To The Stars and three more in The Trouble Twisters.

Total: 60.

We might also count the fictional introduction to "The Star Plunderer" although that definitely accompanied the story when originally published as opposed to being added when the story was collected.

These additional passages are short but they impart information and enhance the series so they count.

What was a good series in any case becomes even better with these additions.

Wings

The Winds Of Fate, CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.

"The cavalry was on the flanks, which was why cavalry regiments were called alae, 'wings,' in Latin." (p. 258)

Hence also, Alatanism in Poul Anderson's Technic History and "wingers" in football. Appropriately, England has just lost the Football World Cup Semi-Final to Argentina. We have been surrounded by St George's flags for weeks, some sporting, others political.

How do we like the cover illustration of an armed Diomedean in flight?

It is taking a while for SM Stirling's American time travellers to enter into conflict with their Chinese antagonists. First, there is a war with the Parthians which is what brought the alae into the text. 

Another end to the day with other activities and maybe some blogging expected tomoz.

Fair winds forever. High is heaven and holy.

Misreading And Pronouns

The Winds Of Fate, CHAPTER FIFTEEN. 

The viewpoint character of this chapter is consistently Mark Findelmann, one of the five American time travellers. When a paragraph ends:

"He peered gratefully in that direction." (p. 229)

- the pronoun that is the subject of this sentence refers unequivocally to Mark. However, next, because of an interruption to my reading and also because of my misreading of pronouns, I went completely wrong. The text continues:

"Marcus Aurelius was - of course - on horseback, with a number of mounted men around him. His Imperial Horse Guards, of course: and a number of bigwigs...including Tribune Artorius.

"He suppressed an impulse to wave; gravitas forbade.

"Also around him were several centuries of Praetorians..." (ibid.)

Returning to the text after a brief interruption, I mistook the sentence beginning "Marcus Aurelius was..." to be the start of a new narrative passage that should really have been preceded by a double space between paragraphs and therefore that Marcus Aurelius was the new viewpoint character, thus that it was he, the Emperor, who suppressed an impulse to wave, presumably at the watching crowd...

Of course, what the paragraph means is that, when Mark peered in a certain direction, he saw that Marcus Aurelius was on horseback. It was Mark who had an impulse to wave at Artorius or even at the Emperor. 

However, the third person singular pronoun has to do a lot of work. Thus:

"[Mark] suppressed an impulse to wave...

"Also around [Marcus Aurelius] were several centuries..."

Having gone wrong, I went further wrong but I have got it straight now. Probably no other reader has made this set of errors.

The Two Future Histories

Recent summaries bring out the differences between Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic and Technic Histories.

In the former, certain groups try - unsuccessfully - to direct the course of society. The main factors that they are unable to cope with are the effects of technological unemployment and political movements motivated by antiscientific worldviews. By contrast, in Anderson's second future history, Technic civilization and its first political form, the Solar Commonwealth, merely emerge from the Chaos. No one is trying to control the course of events. However, this new post-Western civilization then becomes subject to recurrent historical cycles later studied by Chunderban Desai.

Desai, studying history and detecting patterns, contrasts sharply with Valti, applying equations to make specific predictions.

Anderson's works are richer for including both of these future history series although we can, of course, rightly say that the second is better than the first. 

Social SF

Blog attention spiraled back to Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History when (here) it became possible to consider that future history alongside two other series by Anderson and one by SM Stirling. Although modeled directly on Robert Heinlein's Future History, the Psychotechnic History is part of a particular sub-genre together with - among certain other authors' works, of course - HG Wells' The Shape Of Things To Come and The World Set Free. (However, those two Wellsian volumes are independent novels, not short story collections.) 

The common sub-genre comprises those works, sometimes "utopian," addressing the question: how to change society with the help of science? CS Lewis parodies this question in his Ransom Trilogy, Volume III, That Hideous Strength, where his scientific social reformers are literally demonically controlled.

I see this as the central dynamic of twentieth century sf: Wells and Stapledon opposed by Lewis but followed by Heinlein, Anderson, Blish etc with Anderson and Blish addressing theological questions. Lewis wrote The Problem Of Pain and Anderson wrote "The Problem of Pain." Lewis describes the sinless planet, Perelandra (Venus) and Blish describes the sinless planet, Lithia (extra-solar). And so on.

In the Psychotechnic History, the question is: how does the world reconstruct after a limited nuclear exchange?

UN world government, becoming the Solar Union.

A secret service led by the fanatically anti-nationalist Fourre.

Un-men and the cloned Rostomily Brotherhood.

Suppression of conspiracies by nationalists and other turn-back-the-clock merchants.

Centralized agriculture.

Massive single-structure urban residential complexes.

Colonies under the sea and on other planets.

The work of the Psychotechnic Institute both in a predictive science of society (impossible but this sf) and in human psychophysiology.

Everything fails! But there are psychotechnicians in a peaceful Galactic civilization millennia later. 

Outcomes II

See Outcomes and its combox. 

Poul Anderson's "The Chapter Ends" is set in a remote future when there is a Galactic civilization that has been preceded by a long history involving a "First," and by implication at least one other interstellar, "Empire." See Missing Empires. This is entirely at odds with the Stellar Union and its (un-imperialistic) Coordination Service that had featured in earlier instalments of Anderson's Psychotechnic History. On the other hand, that Union had flown apart to be followed by the Third Dark Ages which could certainly have brought forth empires.

From Earth, the Galactic civilization is beyond Sagittarius. Interstellar civilization had been moving in that direction earlier in the series. (See Sagittarius.) The term, "integrator/Integrator" connects the two periods. (See Chronological Questions II.) Also, the Galactic civilization is ruled/managed/coordinated/whatever by psychotechnicians which seems like a culmination of this particular future history series.

Finally, the Psychotechnic History was collected with "The Chapter Ends" at the end of its concluding volume with Anderson's knowledge.

Dreams Or Nightmares

It is the time of the evening for one last post that does not require any more reading. However, inspiration has dried up. 

I had hoped that making this image of the opening page of "The Troublemakers" extra large would make it legible but it has not.

I was impressed when I had compared Poul Anderson's first two future histories and his Time Patrol series with SM Stirling's new time travel series in terms of their accounts of outcomes after different kinds of catastrophes: four works of imaginative fiction all relevant to our experience of the early twenty-first century.

Something to dream or have nightmares about. Good night.

Outcomes

In Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History, the Psychotechnic Institute fails to end social and psychological conflicts even though, in the Solar Union period, some planetary populations are described as "integrate," but the Solar Union flies apart and, according to "The Chapter Ends," there are millennia of interstellar empires before there is eventually a Galactic civilization in which psychotechnicians mentally control cosmic forces. 

In Anderson's Technic History, the Chaos is followed by Technic civilization and the hyperdrive and eventually there is a peaceful interstellar civilization in another spiral arm of the galaxy.

In Anderson's Time Patrol series, the Patrol guards future millennia of continued conflicts and wars before an Era of Oneness and the evolution of human beings into Danellians.

In SM Stirling's Make The Darkness Light series, a nuclear war in 2032 is followed, in a second temporal dimension, by industrial revolutions in the Roman and Han Empires.

Are we living in a Chaos? Yes. Is a nuclear war possible? Yes, as long as nuclear weapons exist. Is a positive outcome possible? I think that it has to be possible because we do not know what will happen. At least we have to work towards something better - and probably without the help either of a hyperdrive or of time travel.

Future Historical Details

Periodically I return to summarizing parts of Poul Anderson's Technic History, then become dissatisfied with summaries that leave out too much.

I can't help referring back to the opening volumes of The Technic Civilization Saga without again appreciating the slow steady build-up of Poul Anderson's Technic History. The first six instalments introduce:

the Jerusalem Catholic Church

Ythrians

the Ythrian New Faith

Nicholas van Rijn

Adzel

David Falkayn

In the seventh, Falkayn works for van Rijn's company but has not yet met him. Only in the thirteenth instalment does van Rijn found his first trade pioneer crew consisting of Falkayn, Adzel and Chee Lan and only in the sixteenth, Satan's World, do van Rijn and the "trader team" share the spotlight. And, by that time, the crisis of the Polesotechnic League approaches.

-copied from Catching Up With References.

First, let us note that Adzel is a Wodenite. Then we add:

the trader team will save Merseia from the effects of supernova radiation;

Falkayn will lead the joint human-Ythrian colonization of Avalon;

Philippe Rochefort, an officer in the Terran Imperial attack on Avalon and a Jerusalem Catholic, will have an affair with a direct descendant of Falkayn;

later, Dominic Flandry will defend the Terran Empire against Merseians, an Ythrian will spy for Ythri and Terra against Merseia and Flandry's daughter, Diana Crowfeather, will work as a tour guide for a Wodenite Jerusalem Catholic priest.

But that still leaves out a lot of details.

Addendum, 16 July 2026: References to Merseia have been inserted in response to combox discussion.

A Realistic Assessment

The Winds Of Fate, CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

Fortunately, Artorius is able to assess the Chinese temporal expedition realistically from the outset.

(i) He knows what the Chinese regime was/would have been like in 2032. (In 2026, China is expanding economically, not militarily, but what will happen in the next six years?)

(ii) Now the early nuclear strike on Vienna makes sense. The Chinese had stolen Fuchs' temporal displacement process and were trying to forestall a Western temporal expedition.

(iii) It is reported that a member of the Chinese expedition killed a man by shooting him in the head.

The Romans have no alternative but to go to a war footing. It is the kind of thing that we expect although we still hope to see the Chinese secret police chief defeated and progress resumed.

The Blind Man

A guy came to fit blinds. He was impressed by a bookcase of sf, thought that Dune was great and hadn't heard of Poul Anderson. Ye gods! Read The Day Of Their Return, man. I usually refer to, e.g., Dune or Foundation only to point out how much better Poul Anderson wrote that kind of sf about interstellar empires etc and also wrote much more than that.

From a blog perspective, we appreciate SM Stirling as a current worthy successor of Anderson. Compare and contrast Time Patrol and Make The Darkness Light. Hence some recent and upcoming posts. 

Some people say, "I like sf," and then turn out to mean TV and films. I was in an sf shop that sold only media-related items, models, Star Wars novelizations etc. No Wells or Anderson.

Oh, well. Subcultures should flourish, of course.

A Well-Controlled POV

The Winds Of Fate, CHAPTER THIRTEEN, pp. 173-202.

This long chapter opens:

"Galenos looked around the dinner table..." (p. 173)

At least for the time being, Galen is the pov character. The dinner conversation and Galen's thoughts impart information to the reader rather than advance the plot.

Near the top of p. 185:

"...Galenos thought."

He is still, consistently, the pov character. With dinner concluded and with those who do not "need to know" having withdrawn, Galen begins to convey a message from the Emperor to the three Americans who are present and to their single other confidante on the most important matter (time travel), Josephus. There is a double space between paragraphs...

After the space and with the message delivered, the leading American, Artorius/Arthur, not only slams his fist down but also sees that Galen is observing their reactions. Thus, the pov has shifted from Galen to Artorius. (I notice all this because I am a pov cop.)

The narrative must shift from imparting general information to delineating how the Americans respond to the devastating news that they are not the only time travellers in 170 CE and that is more than I can cope with this evening. Sorry to build up to a climax, then trickle to bed.

Cultural References

The Winds Of Fate.

A senator thinks that his client has a:

"Lean and hungry look..."

-CHAPTER SIX, p. 100 -

- anticipating Shakespeare.

A farmer who finds it hard to adjust to the urgency of saving and investing in new equipment says:

"'...all the Gods damn it, you have to run fast these days just to stay in the same place!'"

-CHAPTER ELEVEN, p. 158 -

- anticipating the Red Queen's Race in Alice Through The Looking Glass.

Realistically, Artorius has to face an angry crowd of people displaced by the nova res ("new things") but is able to offer them alternatives: land grants with financial help or new employment with good wages. At this early stage, the economy is still expanding in such a way that the displaced can be not replaced but relocated. (I just thought of that way of putting it now.) This is in CHAPTER TEN on pp. 138-139.

Jeremy thinks:

"'Lay on, MacDuff..."

-CHAPTER SEVEN, p. 107 -

- more Shakespeare, but, in this case, Jeremy remembers it.

Artorius corrects Jeremy's "'The game is afoot, Batman!'" with "'The game is afoot, Watson...'" in CHAPTER ELEVEN on p. 166.

The Batman is a great detective and there are stories in which they meet.

After tracking down those references, your friendly neighbourhood blogger needs a food and drink break.

Time And Times

What makes a narrative a time travel story? 

First, characters can travel from one time to another and that does happen once both in SM Stirling's To Turn the Tide and in its sequel, The Winds Of Fate: Americans from 2032 to 165 in the first book; then Chinese from 2032 to 165 in the second. 

Secondly, characters from one time can spend a lot of time in another time. That is mainly what happens in both books.

Except of course that both sets of characters, the Americans and the Chinese, are, from the moment of their arrival, in a divergent timeline, therefore not in the past of their original timeline, therefore, in my opinion, not really in a different time. However, the object of the exercise is to find out what kinds of changes they can make and that is fascinating. Stirling is thorough about technological, economic and social changes. The Americans are helped both by good preparation and by good luck. (Favoured by Fortuna.)

When the two groups learn of each other's presence, they should be able to pool their resources and change the world even more quickly than they have been doing already. Except that the Chinese plan was that China would expand across the world, preventing the nuclear war from which they had fled by making the world a single state. And the Chinese leader, Colonel Liu, regards the Americans as an obstacle! In other words, he will reintroduce the kind of conflict that had led to nuclear war in the original timeline.

Can he be so short-sighted? Yes, with his upbringing and culture, he can. This is not an inevitable, but it is an all too plausible, outcome. What will happen next? We are in the hands of the author and of the gods.

Genetics

The Winds Of Fate, CHAPTER TEN.

"He'd once read that as late as 1914 sons of English members of the House of Lords were a full five inches taller at eighteen than people from the bottom of the social pyramid...though they'd attributed it to genetics back in Edwardian England, rather than nutrition." (p. 144)

Not being scientifically well informed, I had to check on whether they would have called it "genetics" back then but they would have. The term was coined in 1905.

The molecular basis of heredity was discovered in 1953. See also The Fiction/Science Fiction Interface. I remembered something relevant from Poul Anderson's There Will Be Time and was able to find it on the blog instead of having to go to the bookshelf upstairs.

That is as much as I can manage this evening. Tomorrow maybe: gym, Zen and booking a train journey to meet a Buddhist friend from Birmingham at a mid-way point next week.

An Alternative Future

The Winds Of Fate, CHAPTER FIVE.

Maybe this chapter concludes ironically?

General Fronto, who had been a bit disturbed and momentarily uneasy at the prospect of many slaves becoming wage workers, reflects that the Emperor Marcus Aurelius is:

"...popular. With most of the upper classes...

"And with the masses, too, for what little that latter was worth." (p. 95)

This makes Fronto optimistic:

"Fronto smiled at the future, his own and the Empire's.

"Roma aeterna victrix! he thought. Imperium sine fine! Next...Parthia. After that...who knows?" (ibid.)

Who knows indeed? Sf readers think of interplanetary expansion and colonization. But another prospect is implicit. If masses of industrial workers wield their economic power in a struggle for social and political power, then the masses are worth more than a "little" and Fronto might frown at the future of Empire...

I can read this implication in the text but cannot be sure that it is the author's intention!

Industrial Revolutions In Three Periods In Two Timelines

In SM Stirling's The Winds Of Fate, time travellers have informed the Roman Empire of sources of precious metals and also of advanced industrial techniques.

In Poul Anderson's "Lodestar," the new Supermetals company sells industrially valuable supermetals to already established companies in the Polesotechnic League.

In Anderson's "Starfog," the discoverers of the Cloud Universe cluster will sell abundant iron, gold, mercury, tungsten, bismuth, uranium and transuranics to civilizations in several spiral arms of the galaxy.

This progression has taken us from a large part of the Earth to a small part of the galaxy to a vaster volume of the galaxy. But it is the time travel scenario that we are reading currently. Alternative histories are a welcome addition to future histories.

Workers

The Winds Of Fate, CHAPTER FIVE.

It is decades since I read Spartacus. I remember that a Roman was shown around a perfume factory where the work-force were free wage earners. These strange, silent, industrious and diligent men disturbed a slave-owner as well they might.

Slaves labouring at the time traveller Artorius' new blast furnaces are offered:

"Cash and the prospect of manumission..." (p. 88)

- on an unprecedented scale. A Roman general thinks:

"A bit disturbing. Though I couldn't say why, exactly." (ibid.)

We know why. A mass working class is about to enter history centuries ahead of schedule. The general dismisses "...his momentary unease..." (ibid.) because he is delighted at the prospect of increased productivity. 

Workers no longer making iron by the old methods can grow more food or make other things. Artorius even envisages:

"'...many works bidding against each other for contracts.'" (p. 90)

A social revolution is under way with unpredictable consequences - although time travellers have some notion of some of the consequences.

Catching Up With References

See Standard Practice and its combox.

Here are the Cro-Magnons:

"A Cro-Magnon guide went by across the snow-covered yard, a tall handsome fellow dressed rather like an Eskimo (why had romance never credited paleolithic man with enough sense to wear jacket, pants, and footgear in a glacial period?), his face painted, one of the steel knives he had earned at his belt."

-Poul Anderson, "Delenda Est" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, December 2010), pp. 173-228 AT 1, pp.173-174.

The combox discussion refers to the Neolithic.

See also Merchants And Languages and its combox.

Van Rijn converses with a non-human head on a screen in an:

"...eerie set of whistles and quavers."

-Poul Anderson, Satan's World IN Anderson, David Falkayn: Star Trader (Riverdale, NY, January 2009), pp. 235-424 AT VI, p. 275.

When his chief secretary asks him how many languages he speaks, he replies, as already noted in the combox:

"'Twenty-thirty bad. Ten-fifteen good. Anglic best of all.'" (ibid.)

(This is a joke. Van Rijn's dialogue is full of mispronunciations, malapropisms etc.)

I can't help referring back to the opening volumes of The Technic Civilization Saga without again appreciating the slow steady build-up of Poul Anderson's Technic History. The first six instalments introduce:

the Jerusalem Catholic Church

Ythrians

the Ythrian New Faith

Nicholas van Rijn

Adzel

David Falkayn

In the seventh, Falkayn works for van Rijn's company but has not yet met him. Only in the thirteenth instalment does van Rijn found his first trade pioneer crew consisting of Falkayn, Adzel and Chee Lan and only in the sixteenth, Satan's World, do van Rijn and the "trader team" share the spotlight. And, by that time, the crisis of the Polesotechnic League approaches.

The best of the future history series.

Standard Practice

The Winds Of Fate, PROLOGUE.

An author can make something sound so authentic that we have to pause to reflect that he has invented it. Thus, when the Emperor Marcus Aurelius begins to address Roman soldiers, their standard response is to bellow:

"'ROMA! ROMA! ROMA!'" (p. 16)

How do we know this? It was taken so much for granted that no one wrote it down or, if anyone did write it down, then that written record has not survived. So, again, how do we know? We don't. But American time traveller, Arthur Vandenberg/Artorius, finds out when he is with Marcus Aurelius as the latter begins to address the troops. For a moment, we accept that this is genuine. Then we realize that SM Stirling cannot have known it either so he has had to make it up - but very plausibly.

In "Delenda Est," Poul Anderson surmises that Cro-Magnons in the Pleistocene would have had the sense to wear protective clothing, including trousers, in snowy terrain.  

Sf authors have to think of the logical consequences of their premises, not just share and reinforce their readers' (usual) lack of imagination!

Merchants And Languages

The Winds Of Fate, CHAPTER THREE.

"Josephus spoke Greek and Latin and Aramaic and three other languages well, and several more passably. He knew his uncle outdid him there. For a merchant it was a valuable skill, even if you could get by in Latin and Greek in most of the Empire, in the cities and larger towns at least and as far as bargaining was concerned." (pp. 48-49)

Although I am not a merchant, I continually regret my incompetence in any language but English. 

How many languages does Poul Anderson's interstellar merchant, Nicholas van Rijn, speak, whether well or badly? I think that we are told this in Satan's World. However, Sheila's and my adult granddaughter, Yossi, is currently staying in the room where the books are shelved so I do not have easy access but blog readers should be able to answer a question about van Rijn.

I am sheltering from the heat wave, listening to a report on the Iran War and concurrently reading two other works that provide blog material.

As John Carter said, "We still live." (I think he said "I" but "We" is better.)