Typing Up Loose Ends

Weoch-Captain and his crew are as good as dead on p. 290 of Larry Niven, Ed., Man-Kzin Wars III. However, Poul Anderson's "Inconstant Star" continues until p. 310 because three loose ends need to be tied up:

(i) future history continuity;
(ii) personal relationships between our hero, his wife and the new female character;
(iii) who was the kzinti's intelligence source on Wunderland?

We will take the first one first.

(i) A prequel must not contradict later continuity. In Niven's Known Space future history, neither the kzinti nor the Earthmen acquired a tnuctipun weapon enabling them to win a decisive victory in the Man-Kzin Wars. Yet representatives of both species have discovered such a weapon in "Inconstant Star." Captain Saxtorph (human) has given Weoch-Captain (kzin) and his crew a lethal dose of radiation so it looks as if Saxtoroh's crew have sole control of the weapon. But they have not. Weoch's last defiant act is to propel the weapon with himself on it into hyperspace. The Rover crew "...saw their prize disappear." (p. 294)

That concluding phrase of Chapter XIX represents a literary tradition that is Wellsian or older. Except when alternative histories are invoked, it is a literary convention that fictional events occurred in the world as it is known to us. Thus, a Tolstoyan character can contemplate assassination of Napoleon but decides against it - and, if he did attempt it, would not succeed. The Cavorite sphere disappears into space and the Selenites kill Cavor before he can transmit the formula back to Earth. The Time Traveler does not return from his second expedition. On a more trivial level, in the 1950's, a weekly comic strip had cavemen discovering that the Moon is made of cheese, pulling it down to Earth and eating it. I said that the following installment must explain why there is a Moon today. Someone said, "Don't be stupid. It's only fiction." But, sure enough, the next installment explained how the Moon had been replaced.

That disappearing tnuctipun weapon follows in the proud footsteps of the disappearing Time Machine and Cavorite sphere.

"The Shadows, Like Life..."

ADDENDUM: To read something new, see here and HERE.

AN IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT
I am borrowing Ketlan's lap top because the second hand computer that I have been using has died and there will be a delay before it is replaced. Consequently, blog activity will become sporadic although hopefully will continue. Thank you for recent page views and comments.

I hope that recently I have inspired or revived in some blog readers an interest in future histories. I have been fascinated by this sf sub-genre for decades and it just gets better. Parts of the Man-Kzin Wars period of Larry Niven's Known Space future history are mini-histories within the longer history, as are the early Imperial and post-Imperial ages of Poul Anderson's Technic History.

Remember that Wells and Stapledon wrote future histories before Heinlein but did it differently and that Anderson, following Heinlein, made immense and unique contributions - but I have demonstrated this repeatedly.

I am continually reminded of the comprehensiveness of Sean M Brooks' contributions to this blog (see here) and hopefully these also will continue.

Contrasts And Continuities

(Good Friday. Good weather. Long walk along the River Lune. See image.)

I am impressed by the contrast yet continuity between HG Wells' The Shape Of Things To Come and Larry Niven's Man-Kzin Wars franchise universe, also by the extent of Poul Anderson's contribution to this literary sequence:

not just one future history but eight or nine and of different types;

a Man-Kzin Wars trilogy that is a sequel to Jerry Pournelle's and SM Stirling's Man-Kzin Wars trilogy;

one War World work.

Wells presents twentieth century conflicts and a twenty first century resolution, a World State, as do some American future historians - the Space Patrol,  the Un-Men, the ARM etc. The Man-Kzin Wars are an interstellar conflict with a longer term resolution: tamer kzinti, although don't tell them that. The kzinti are like the barbarians in Anderson's Technic History, savages given spaceships and nuclear weapons by another race. Trotsky called this "uneven but combined development": Native Americans given rifles by Europeans; large factories in Tsarist Russia - serfs proletarianized in a single generation; not gradual change but sudden upheaval and social revolution.

Contemplate:

Wells' airmen;
Stapledon's seventeen successive sapient species, including winged Venerians and Neptunian Last Men, then his Cosmic Mind and Star Maker;
Heinlein's astrogators;
Bradbury's Martians;
Asimov's robots and psychohistorians;
Blish's medieval monks, modern magicians, Lithians, Okies, pantropists, Angels, Traitors and Service agents;
Anderson's Un-Men, Ythrians, Maurai, asterites, Rustumites, Kith and sophotects;
Niven's Belters, ARM's, kzinti and protectors;
Pournelle's mercenaries;
Niven's and Pournelle's Moties -

- and, in the words of one Blish character, go with God! (In fact, He is already on the list.)

Futures Reassess Pasts

HG Wells wrote history and future history: An Outline Of History and The Shape Of Things To Come are almost companion titles.

Olaf Stapledon's Last And First Men and Last Men In London are companion volumes. The first is a future history and the second is one Last Man's assessment of past history.

Poul Anderson's The Boat Of A Million Years combines historical sf with future history. As in James Blish's Cities In Flight, future history ceases to be generational when the characters become immortal but centuries continue to elapse nevertheless.

Anderson's Genesis summarizes past history before proceeding into a remote future. And that future restores primordial themes when a member of the new human race, perceiving artificial intelligences as gods and wizards, embarks on a Quest to help one AI against another. Meanwhile, the Terrestrial AI "emulates" (consciously simulates) historical periods and alternative histories.

Anderson's complete works include many historical fictions and fictional futures and several alternative histories.

According to Jerry Pournelle's and SM Stirling's "The Asteroid Queen," Marx, Charlemagne, Hitler and Brennan (the Belter who became a protector) were all members of the same ancient, secret, world-controlling Brotherhood. Not in our timeline! And maybe not in the Known Space timeline either? The Brotherhood suppresses knowledge and propagates:

"...slanted versions of past, present, and future." (Man-Kzin Wars V, p. 26) -

- so maybe it lies to itself about its own past?

Sensory Descriptions

Currently, this blog contemplates multiple future histories of three kinds: Wellsian, Heinleinian and later Andersonian. See here. Future historical issues range from the ultimate fate of the universe to the details of military strategy. In Anderson's Technic History, Aeneans ambush Terrans whereas, during a Man-Kzin War, human guerillas ambush kzinti.

On Aeneas, the ambushers see many-colored leaves while their leader shivers, hears a rustling tree and flowing water and smells the faint odor of the native equivalent of grass. On Wunderland, the guerillas feel cold, see native squidgrass growing under imported roses and orange kzinti raaairtwo among green mutated alfalfa and smell the roses.

Thus, when presenting the viewpoints of individual conscious beings, Anderson and Pournelle & Stirling sustain the literary technique of appealing to at least three of the senses. At the opposite end of the spectrum of future historical writing, Stapledon summarizes historical eras in a few sentences and Anderson recounts millions of years of Solar history on a single page. See here.

Kinds Of Fictitious Histories

We might make a fourfold distinction:

Heinleinian and early Andersonian future histories;
later Andersonian future histories;
Wellsian and Stapledonian future histories;
Stapledonian cosmic history.

This list is conceptual, not chronological. 

The basic distinction is that a Wellsian/Stapledonian future history is:

(i) not a series but a single work;

(ii) not a novel with characters and conversations but a fictitious historical text book.

Thus, we read about the Norman Conquest in a History of England and about Martian invasions of Earth not only in a novel by Wells but also in a future history by Stapledon.

Stapledon's future history covers not just a historical period but the entire future of humanity while his Star Maker summarizes the evolution of consciousness in the cosmos. What has this to do with Poul Anderson? Quite a lot:

Anderson modeled his first future history on Heinlein's;
Anderson's second future history grew into the Heinlein model without pre-planning;
Anderson's last two future histories are respectively a tetralogy and a novel - thus, neither is a series of shorter works;
Anderson's last future history synthesizes Heinleinian future history with Stapledonian cosmic history because some of its chapters are set in future periods whereas others describe cosmological processes. 

Seeing Far

Who wrote this?

A time traveler visits the far future;
men traverse interplanetary space;
Martians invade Earth;
there will be wars and revolutions;
an alternative history unfolds on a parallel Earth.

I have just summarized five major sf works by HG Wells - and also by Poul Anderson.

Moving on from Wells:

Stapledon gave us cosmic sf;

Capek gave us robots;

de Camp gave us a time traveler changing history;

Heinlein gave us a future history series, a generation ship, science fictional treatment of immortality, juvenile sf, elaborate circular causality and magic as technology;

Asimov gave us robotics and a predictive science of society;

Anderson developed all of these themes.

The blog has entered territory where we are comparing future histories, including several by Anderson, and assessing collaborative future histories. Thus:

Niven created a future history series that includes a period of wars between men and kzinti;
Pournalle and Stirling wrote stories set in this period;
Anderson wrote sequels to Pournelle's and Stirling's Man-Kzin Wars stories.

We have come a long way from Wells' Martians invading Earth but are clearly in the same literary tradition. We find Anderson seeing far because he stands on the shoulders of:

Wells
Stapledon
Capek
de Camp
Heinlein
Asimov
Niven
Pournelle
Stirling -

- and we have not yet mentioned Mary Shelley, creator of science fiction and of the Frankenstein theme developed further by Capek, Asimov and Anderson.

Parallel Histories

Future histories were not written to be read in parallel but can be. Larry Niven's kzinti are, under different aspects, comparable to:

Wells' Martians;

Anderson's Merseians, Ythrians and Imperial Terrans;

Stirling's Draka.

Slavery in different forms is common to these six cultures. Kzinti and Ythrians are intelligent carnivorous hunters, motivated by blood odors in their warships. Kzinti enslave human beings and eat some whereas the Martians would have enslaved human beings and drained the blood from some. Kzinti and Draka plan to spend generations taming enslaved populations. Merseians and kzinti are aggressive interstellar imperialists.

We can imagine a narrative in which these timelines are discussed in the Old Phoenix and another in which characters in a quantum ship jump between timelines trying to influence the outcomes of space battles described in the various future histories.

Subordination

We see human beings subordinated to:

Martians in The War Of The Worlds;

extrasolar aliens in Martian-like machines in John Christopher's Tripods Trilogy;

Borthudians in the van Rijn period of Poul Anderson's Technic History;

green Merseians in the Flandry period of the Technic History;

feline kzinti in Larry Niven's Know Space History;

green Treens in Dan Dare;

Daleks in Doctor Who;

fellow human beings who make themselves biologically superior in SM Stirling's Draka History.

(That is another of those lists that grew in the writing.)

I was reminded of Draka and serfs when reading about a kzin and his human secretary. Like a Draka, the kzin promises to attend the secretary's offspring's naming-day celebration.

Subordination can be one way to survival. In a novel by Fred and Geoffrey Hoyle, workers asked what they thought about the prospect of an alien invasion, said that, under the aliens, they would still have to work. In one of Aesop's fable, a donkey carrying a heavy burden is advised to run away from an invading army but, when told that they are unlikely to make him carry anything heavier because he is already at his limit, says that he will stay where he is.

Having said all that, slavery is definitely worse than paid work and should be resisted at all costs!

Time Travel, Dilation And Stasis

We have learned three ways to:

"...survive the re-contraction of the primal monobloc and its explosion into a new cosmic cycle..."
-Jerry Pournelle and SM Stirling, "The Children's Hour" IN Larry Niven, Ed., Man-Kzin Wars II (London, 1991), pp. 133-306 AT p. 149 -

- by (i) time travel, (ii) time dilation and (iii) temporal stasis.

(i) In Poul Anderson's "Flight to Forever," one man in a "time projector," i.e., a kind of time machine, circumnavigates space-time. We owe the idea of a temporal vehicle or "time machine" to HG Wells and it is because of Wells that we retain such archaic terminology. I remember that, in the 1960s, a friend's grandfather used the phrase, "flying machine."

(ii) In Anderson's Tau Zero, the crew of an exponentially accelerating Bussard ramjet survives cosmic contraction and explosion. We owe the idea of an interstellar ramjet to Robert Bussard.

(iii) In "The Children's Hour," it is merely stated that a Slaver stasis field "...would probably survive..." (op. cit., p. 149) Stasis fields are an sf prop but we owe two very unpleasant species, the Slavers and the kzinti, to Larry Niven. Thank you, Mr Niven!

However, the current cosmological model is not cyclical. Anderson's Harvest Of Stars Tetralogy and Genesis ask whether consciousness can survive the heat death of a universe that does not re-contract and re-explode.

Mankind In Spacetime And The Universe

HG Wells describes:

the experiences of space traveling and time traveling;

the far future of mankind and Earth;

Selenites in their environment;

Martians invading our environment;

political and military conflicts;

in one future, the transcendence of social problems and the emancipation of humanity but, in an alternative future, devolution into Morlocks and Eloi.

Poul Anderson describes:

many experiences in space;

the experience of time traveling;

the far future of AI on Earth and in the galaxy;

political and military conflicts on Earth and between interstellar empires;

imaginative alien life forms, e.g., in the Terran Empire.

Too much emphasis just on political and military conflicts is not really sf - maybe? Characters in Jerry Pournelle's CoDominium future history have such conflicts on Earth - and export them to space. Nuclear exchanges on a single planet are suicidal so let's have them between planets instead? Some people will draw the lesson that they need to build a society free of such conflicts and will use the Alderson drive to travel far enough away that they can make a fresh start without Imperial interference, like the McCormac rebels in Anderson's Technic History.

Now And Tomorrow

Science fiction can be contemporary or futuristic. Indeed, it can even be historical. See several works by Poul Anderson. However, the present and the future are the main concerns of sf. The future can mean any time from the day after tomorrow (Brain Wave) to beyond the end of the universe (Tau Zero).

The day after tomorrow may be the same as today except for a single technological innovation, as in "Life-Line" by Robert Heinlein. Brain Wave begins with a global increase in intelligence which generates every conceivable technological innovation, then the transcendence of humanity.

CS Lewis' Ransom Trilogy comprises two contemporary interplanetary novels and one "day after tomorrow" novel. Thus, Lewis presents the unusual but wholly appropriate sequence of Mars, Venus and Earth.

Reading American sf comics in the 1950s, I divided sf into before or after the invention of spaceships. The earliest future histories begin before space travel. Heinlein's Future History begins with "Life-Line." An escape velocity rocket fuel is not developed until the end of the fourth story.

In Anderson's Psychotechnic History, the opening story is set on a devastated Earth but the second begins on a colonized Mars. Anderson's Technic History and Larry Niven's Known Space future history begin with the exploration of the Solar System whereas Jerry Pournelle's CoDominium future history begins with regular interstellar travel. So there is some progress.

Wells' Time Traveler tells his dinner guests that he traveled through tomorrow, as if it were another country, then further into futurity. Thus, twenty four hours later, he and they have lived through the day that he traveled through while he traveled through it. Extraordinary.

Important People

Structurally, a future history has an earlier period and a later period and the earlier period has a pivotal character or characters who are builders of the future:

in HG Wells' The Shape Of Things To Come, Gustave de Windt, author of Social Nucleation (1942);

in Robert Heinlein's Future History, DD Harriman, "The Man Who Sold The Moon";

in Isaac Asimov's future history, Susan Calvin, robopsychologist;

in James Blish's Cities in Flight, Senator Bliss Wagoner, secretly behind the spindizzy and the antiagathics;

in Blish's The Seedling Stars, Jacob Rullman, inventor of pantropy, the science of human adaptation to extraterrestrial environments;

in Blish's Haertel Scholium, Adolph Haertel and also Thor Wald, inventor of the Dirac transmitter;

in Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History, Valti and Fourre;

in Anderson's Technic History, Nicholas van Rijn, leader of the independents in the Polesotechnic League, and David Falkayn, discoverer of Mirkheim and Founder of Avalon;

in Jerry Pournelle's CoDominium future history, John Christian Falkenberg, mercenary.

Wells' Philip Raven dreams an "Outline of the Future" whereas Asimov's Hari "Raven" Seldon predicts the future. Raven's dreamed text includes a chapter on Karl Marx and Henry George.

Blog Rationale

(Can anyone explain this cover?)

I never know how many blog readers are regular or new so I do not know how often to explain the blog. The focus is Poul Anderson. However, this can involve discussing Anderson's relationships to his predecessors, contemporaries or successors. Sometimes several posts shift to one of those other authors although, so far, the focus has always returned to Anderson. Those predecessors etc are pretty impressive -

Predecessors
science fiction: Mary Shelley
artificial life: Mary Shelley
time travel: Twain, Wells, de Camp, Heinlein
future history: Wells, Stapledon, Heinlein
cosmic fiction: Stapledon
alien invasion: Wells, Heinlein
space travel: Wells, Verne, Heinlein
hard fantasy: Heinlein

Successors
future history: Niven, Pournelle
alternative history: SM Stirling

Having explained this, I will continue to mention Niven and Pournelle's The Mote In God's Eye. Can anyone explain this Star Trek/Mote cover? I did not find an answer by googling.

In Mote, Imperial Space Navy regulations about alien contact define sentient beings as employing tools and communication in purposeful behavior but then state that an alien hive rat meets this definition yet is not sentient. Surely the regs just need to clarify "communication" as language, not mere signals? Hive insects signal to each other but do not converse about or discuss anything.

Future Histories Overview

Some future histories I am unfamiliar with and would welcome input:

Cordwainer Smith;
H Beam Piper;
Marion Zimmer Bradley.

The ones that I do know divide into four groups:

British
Wells
Stapledon
Aldiss
RC Churchill (not well known)

Campbell-edited
Heinlein
Asimov
Blish
Anderson

An American sequence (overlapping with "Campbell")
Heinlein
Anderson (2)
Niven
Pournelle

Anderson's later future histories
six or seven

The magnitude of Poul Anderson's contributions is evident from these lists.

Cosmic Comparisons

SM Stirling's Conquistador explicitly acknowledges its sources here, including two titles by Poul Anderson. Let us therefore consider the following sequence:

Anderson, Three Hearts And Three Lions
Anderson, A Midsummer Tempest
Stirling, Conquistador

- three novels of cross-time travel.

However, the two Anderson titles are fantasies, involving supernatural beings and magic, whereas Conquistador by contrast is science fiction, assuming only:

an infinite series of parallel universes with identical physical laws;

a technological means of travel between them.

Adrienne Rolfe's experience differs from ours in just one respect: in the existence of the Gate and of what lies beyond it. However, what is beyond the Gate is an Earth where history went differently, not where myths are true. Thus, Three Hearts... and ...Tempest are as fantastic to Adrienne as they are to us.

Her literary predecessors also include the group of extra-temporal exiles in HG Wells' Men Like Gods but these characters are hardly major players in the history of sf. One major predecessor of many science fictional space and time explorers is the original Time Traveler, who could well have encountered a sabre-tooth as the New Virginians do at the end of Conquistador. In the Epilogue to The Time Machine, the outer narrator speculates that the Time Traveler has gone to:

the Stone Age;
the Cretaceous Sea;
the Jurassic Age;
the Triassic Age -

- so we can legitimately imagine him among prehistoric animals even though Wells never wrote a sequel.

All The Alternative Histories

Is there a catalogue of alternative histories anywhere? We know who the main writers are and what the main themes are. Roy Tully in SM Stirling's Conquistador (New York, 2004) summarizes two:

"'...I know the concept. South wins the Civil War, Hitler wins World War Two, that sort of thing. Been some pretty good movies that used it.'" (p. 177)

There are other obvious themes:

Alexander the Great lived longer (Poul Anderson, Greg Bear, SM Stirling);
different outcomes in 1066 (?);
no Reformation (Kingsley Amis, Philip Pullman);
a successful Spanish Armada (Keith Roberts);
Oliver Cromwell lived longer (a DC Comics Elseworld) -

-and less obvious:

aliens invaded Earth during World War II (Harry Turtledove);
Mars and Venus were terraformed long ago (SM Stirling);
someone discovered how to degauss the effects of cold iron (Poul Anderson).

Bring The Jubilee by Ward Moore begins as a Confederate States alternative history but ends as a causality violation time travel novel, thus showing the degree of overlap between these two sf themes. Did Bring The Jubilee influence Anderson's "Time Patrol"? Anderson could not remember. However, conceptually, Bring The Jubilee does belong in a sequence of precursors to the Time Patrol:

Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee...;
HG Wells, The Time Machine;
L Sprague de Camp, Lest Darkness Fall;
Moore, Bring The Jubilee;
Anderson, "The Little Monster" and "The Man who Came Early."

An involuntary time traveler prospers and makes changes that do not last;
the Time Traveler invents the Time Machine and his dinner guests discuss anachronisms on battlefields like Hastings;
a second involuntary time traveler prospers and makes lasting changes;
a time traveling historian unintentionally diverts the course of a decisive battle;
a third involuntary time traveler survives but a fourth comes to grief;
the Time Patrol is founded to prevent accidental or deliberate historical changes.

In Anderson's "The House of Sorrows" and also in the deleted timeline of his "Delenda Est," Christianity does not get started whereas, in his Westfall timeline, Christendom exists but is destroyed. In all three timelines, Europe remains divided into small warring states practicing polytheism. The difference is that the Westfallers eventually develop science.

Another Literary Reference

SM Stirling, Ed., Drakas! (New York, 2000).

(See image. "INGSOC" is Newspeak for "English Socialism.")

And here is another literary reference, on the second page of "The Last Word" by Harry Turtledove in Drakas!:

"What had that Englishman called the Snakes? A boot in the face of mankind forever - something like that, anyhow." (p. 250)

And that is how O'Brien of the Thought Police describes the future to Winston Smith in George Orwell's 1984:

He is entirely honest about the brutal cynicism of the Party; the Party does not seek power to do anything good, but simply to revel in that power: "Always, Winston, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stomping on a human face — forever."
-copied from here.

Very appropriate for the Draka: Orwell would have said it of them in their timeline.

In HG Wells' The Time Machine, bourgeoisie and proletarians devolve into different species. In Orwell's 1984, a Party makes a revolution, then freezes society into a new dictatorship forever. Turtledove's MacDonald refers to Orwell as "...that Englishman..." and Poul Anderson's Caleb Wallis refers to Wells as "'...a young Englishman in the '90's...'"
-Poul Anderson, There Will Be Time (New York, 1973), p. 73.

Alternative History Fiction: Its Origins And A Culmination

My eyes have been opened by reading the Wiki article on Alternative Histories. Alternative history fiction itself has a long history - its earliest origins were historical, even Roman - although HG Wells may have been the first writer to describe travel between alternative histories.

The article rightly states that it is impossible to discuss separately from each other alternative history fiction and time travel fiction in which history is changed. Thus, the article appropriately refers both to Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series (time travelers changing history) and to his Old Phoenix stories (travelers between alternative histories).

However, here is at least one culmination of this sub-genre:

SM Stirling's Draka series recounts an alternative history from 1779 to 2445 and also describes travel between histories;

the series comprises four novels by Stirling and one anthology of twelve stories by other authors, edited by Stirling;

Poul Anderson is quoted on the back cover of the anthology as commenting "...an exciting, evocative [and] horrifying read."

The twelve contributors to the anthology, Drakas! are:

William Sanders, writer of fantasy and sf, including alternative histories;
John Miller, author of graphic novels and of stories set in George RR Martin's Wild Cards alternative history series;
Roland Green who has continued H Beam Piper's Great King's War alternative history;
David Drake, author of the Hammer's Slammers future war series;
Jane Lindskold, a former professor of English;
Lee Allred, author of alternative history fiction;
William Barton, author of When We Were Real;
Harry Turtledove, often called the master of alternative history;
Anne Marie Talbott, published here for the first time;
Markus Baur, a high tech sector worker resident in Vienna;
John Barnes, who introduces his crosstime-travel hero, Mark Strang, to the Draka; 
Severna Park, sf novelist.

Stirling explains the reasoning behind the series:

What were the good and bad consequences of European colonialism?
What if its worst consequence, slavery, had grown until it was unstoppable?

Thus, as I suspected, Draka world domination is part of the premise and has to be accepted as such.

Frankenstein And The Future

The sf question, propounded by Mary Shelley in Frankenstein, is what might scientists do - today, tomorrow, the day after tomorrow and on into the future?

Frankenstein creates human life -

- as does a post-human AI in Poul Anderson's last future history, Genesis.

In Olaf Stapledon's future history, mankind biologically engineers subsequent human species for increased brain power, then to inhabit other planets.

In HG Wells' The Time Machine, mankind conquers nature, thus creating a paradisal environment in which industrial workers degenerate into the Morlocks and the leisured classes into the Eloi.

I gather that SM Stirling's Draka will change the species by enhancing themselves and reducing the faculties of their serfs - although I have yet to read that further future volume.

Thus, here is a definite continuity of theme from Shelley to Stirling.