Saturday, 31 October 2026

Different Directions In Hypertime

When our consciousness has expanded to encompass Poul Anderson's Technic History in its entirety, it can continue to expand in perhaps three directions. We need a multi-dimensional mega-verse to incorporate everything. 

(i) Anderson's Old Phoenix multiverse fills four novels and two short stories and connects with the Technic History to the extent that Nicholas van Rijn from the Polesotechnic League period of that future history visits the Old Phoenix, the inter-universal inn, in one of those two short stories. The Old Phoenix also interacts with Robert Heinlein's Future History, with William Shakespeare's major plays, with other works of fiction and literature and with much of the history of our timeline.

(ii) The Technic History, albeit important, is only one Andersonian future history. These alternative fictional histories address contradictory theoretical possibilities. Thus:

there is faster-than-light interstellar travel - two different versions of "hyperspace" - only in the Psychotechnic and Technic Histories;

there is a near-future nuclear war only in the Psychotechnic and Maurai Histories;

intelligent life is commonplace in the Technic History whereas any organic life is rare in Genesis;

in Genesis, only post-organic intelligences are able to traverse interstellar distances;

and so on.

(iii) The Maurai History provides one of the future periods visited by time travellers in Anderson's There Will Be Time, thus linking this future history to one of the author's several, mutually incompatible, time travel scenarios.

Thus, a direct link between the Technic History and the Time Patrol, no, but a direct link between the Maurai Federation and mutant time travellers, yes.

And I advise everyone to read or reread all that.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

There's also the Hoka stories, co-authored with Gordon Dickson, where FTL space travel and many intelligent races exist.

In STARFARERS we also see many intelligent races but only STL interstellar travel.

Ad astra! Sean