See Jim Al Khalili on time travel
here (I hope).
A very enjoyable afternoon with Andrea overlooking Morecambe Bay, as ever. We watched Jim Al Khalili's very clear discussion of issues around time travel. (For Al Khalili on this blog, see here.) (Scroll down.) There are many parallels between this discussion and Poul Anderson's works. Can causality be circular and/or would a Time Patrol be necessary?
Meanwhile, on another current issue, see also the immediately preceding post, Anglesey And Helmuth. If such posts encourage some blog readers to read or reread the works discussed, then they will have achieved one purpose. I had said that I would concurrently reread four Jupiter narratives and have subsequently read to the half way point of ERB's "Skeleton Men of Jupiter." There were warlike green men and more civilized red men on Mars and there are warlike "skeleton men" and more civilized purple men on Jupiter!
The rapid axial spin of Jupiter generates centrifugal force that counteracts its stronger gravity. There is a breathable oxygen atmosphere beneath the poisonous gases in the upper atmosphere which alone are visible to Terrestrial telescopes. The surface is both heated and lit by many volcanoes! ("Gods of all stars!," to quote James Blish's Okies.)
On this blog, we frequently appreciate Poul Anderson's descriptions of weather and scenery. Here is an extract from ERB's Foreword to "Skeleton Men...":
"Occasionally I also have to inject a little weather and scenery in my deathless classics, two further examples of literary racketeering that I especially deplore in the writings of others. Yet there is something to be said in extenuation of weather and scenery, which, together with adjectives, do much to lighten the burdens of authors and run up their word count."
-Edgar Rice Burroughs, John Carter Of Mars (London, 1968), p. 71.
OK. ERB's tone is frivolous so our response should not be serious. It is interesting that he picked on this one of the many points that we admire in Anderson.
If Venus and Mars had turned out to be as described in SM Stirling's Lords Of Creation Trilogy, then would ERB have become more literarily respectable, as he does in the Trilogy? I doubt it and I question whether this can be a serious suggestion by Stirling?
ERB's politics: there are good rulers and bad rulers and that's it. The bad rulers are arrogant and cruel. Contrast Poul Anderson's sympathetic treatment of some of his characters that he would have disagreed with politically:
a Communist in The Devil's Game and another in Murder Bound;
the dying moments of the leader of the Hermetian revolution in Mirkheim.
In ERB's The Land That Time Forgot, a villainous character says, "I am an IWW. I hate all American's..." (memory)
(The IWW still exists. One of its official showed up to represent some employees in Lancaster!)
We welcome the glimpses of John Carter's and Dejah Thoris's later lives in the later volumes.
I do not think that we have anything further to say about ERB although I will dutifully persevere until the end of "Skeleton Men..."
6 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Edgar Rice Burroughs, as quoted by you were not frivolous, my understanding of them is that he was being ironic or sardonic. Many writers, after all, were paid by the word count of their stories--the more words, the more money they got. Also, I've read enough of ERB to consider him a far better writer than many "serious" but boring authors.
I remember that "sympathetic" Communist from THE DEVIL'S GAME, and I agree he was a decent person. But his beliefs were terrible, hopeless. futile, catastrophic. All we have ever seen from any and every Marxist regime has been poverty and tyranny (the Castroite regime in Cuba comes to mind). That "sympathetic" character would either have become a tyrant like Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega (who recently made himself president for life) or been shot by more ruthless comrades if he balked at their cruelties.
Benoni Strang? Bah, I have only contempt for him! Enough, no more of these ideological fanatics and tyrants! My sympathies are for Grand Duchess Sandra and Nicholas van Rijn.
Ad astra! Sean
Correction: "Edgar Rice Burroughs' comments, as quoted by you..."
Sean
Sean,
I mentioned Anderson's sympathetic treatment of characters that he disagreed with, meaning that he was a skillful and insightful author. We have been through all those arguments many times before and are certainly not going to go through them again!
Paul.
It's important to 'physically ground' the reader. It makes everything else more convincing.
Kaor, Paul and Mr. Stirling!
Paul: Of course, Anderson was a writer of rare skill and insight.
But: Enough, no more of these Calles (a Mexican dictator), Castros, Ortegas, Chavezs, etc., leftists who were monsters once in power!
Mr. Stirling! Absolutely! You, Anderson, Tolkien, Pournelle (and his collaborations with Niven), were/are very good at that.
Ad astra! Sean
Enough of rightists and leftists who are monsters once in power.
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