Time Travel Fiction II

The previous post differentiated two kinds of time travel stories. Poul Anderson alone excels at both. I will omit titles on the ground that the page viewer already knows them or can find out or can ask.

Causality Violation
Mark Twain: a classic novel of attempted historical causality violation.
HG Wells: the classic time travel story with only a hint of "...anachronism and utter confusion..."
L Sprague de Camp: a definitive novel of deliberate historical causality violation.
Ward Moore: a definitive novel of accidental historical causality violation.
Jack Finney: nostalgic time travel in several short stories and in two long, illustrated novels presenting an unfortunately confused account of causality violation.

Circular Causality
HG Wells: understated circular causality.
Robert Heinlein: three definitive statements of circular causality in futuristic settings.
Harry Harrison: humorous historical circular causality.
Tim Powers: hard fantasy circular causality.
Richard Matheson: a romantic novel with circular causality.
Audrey Niffeneger: the same sub-genre as Matheson.

Poul Anderson
Three novels of historical circular causality.
A long series about a time travel organization preventing historical causality violations sometimes by closing causal circles.

Three Other Time Travel Novels

There are at least three time travel novels by other authors that should be read alongside Poul Anderson's six time travel volumes.

The Technicolor Time Machine by Harry Harrison: familiar Andersonian territory - Vinland, circular causality and humor;

The Anubis Gates by Tim Powers: circular causality and fantasy;

Bid Time Return/Somewhere In Time by Richard Matheson: like The Time Traveler's Wife, a romantic novel of time travel.

I said earlier that "the cleverest kind of time travel story" was one in which past events seem not to proceed as they should but then the author gets them back on track. Anderson does this in The Dancer From Atlantis but it is a technique perfected by Powers and Matheson.

In The Anubis Gates:

The Times reports a talk by Lord Byron on a particular date;

a coach party of time travelers, suitably attired in period costumes, arrives to hear the talk;

they have arrived a week too early!;

however, since Lord Byron is to hand and since so many people have traveled so far to hear him (!), he agrees to deliver the talk a week earlier than planned;

a journalist attends and takes notes;

this is the talk that is reported in The Times.

Later:

it is recorded that our hero's dead body was found on a particular date;

fighting his (magically generated) clone on the appointed date, he sustains a wound that was not recorded and suddenly realizes that it is the clone's body that is to be found;

passing the presumed date of his death, he happily regains the freedom of the unknown...

In Bid Time Return:

the central character, having read a hotel register decades later, knows exactly when he signed in at a hotel and which room he stayed in;

approaching the hotel lobby, he pauses in order not to arrive too soon, then hurries in order not to arrive too late, although it is impossible that he arrive any earlier or later than he did arrive;

the hotel clerk starts to give him the wrong room key and he must restrain himself from saying, "That's the wrong room!;"

a second clerk says, "That room has been booked," and the first clerk gives him the right key after all.

Ingenious. If I were on the Desert Island with only one work of fiction, it would be Time Patrol but, if I were to be allowed a few more volumes, then they would include a small time travel library.

Venus

According to the Internet, Farewell, Fantastic Venus and All About Venus are two anthologies, both edited by Brian Aldiss and Harry Harrison, both published in 1968, with a lot of common contents. I had not heard of All About Venus, which is perhaps simply the American edition of Farewell..., although with not exactly the same contents?

After space probes into the atmosphere and onto the surface of Venus had disclosed that the Venerian environment is lethally acidic and hot enough to melt lead, Farewell, Fantastic Venus celebrated what had then become the redundantly speculative Venus of oceans, swamps, jungles, breathable atmosphere and intelligent inhabitants.

The anthology appropriately contains, among many fictional and non-fictional items:

extracts from novels by Olaf Stapledon, ER Burroughs and CS Lewis;
"The Big Rain" and "Sister Planet" by Poul Anderson.

Brian Aldiss told me at the 1970 British Science Fiction Convention that:

when Robert Heinlein was asked for permission for his Venus story, "Logic of Empire," to be included in Farewell..., he refused on the ground that it was part of his Future History;

when Poul Anderson was asked for permission for his "Sister Planet" to be included, he agreed but offered instead the earlier, unpublished version which was very religious.

Comments:

the Stapledon novel, Last And First Men, is Stapledon's future history and as such is a literary successor to HG Wells' The Shape Of Things To Come;

Wells wrote nothing about Venus except a very short passage near the end of The War Of The Worlds where Terrestrial astronomers saw that the Martians had launched capsules towards Venus so that very short passage could have been included in Farewell...;

"The Big Rain" is part of Anderson's Psychotechnic future history, which was modeled on Heinlein's Future History;

the two Anderson stories present contrasting desert and ocean Venuses (as the two Genesis creation myths present contrasting water-covered and desert Earths);

contra Heinlein, the anthology should have included "Logic of Empire" before "The Big Rain";

the anthology should also have included extracts from the Dan Dare comic strip in which equatorial volcanoes on Venus separate the southern warlike green Treens from the northern peaceful blue Therons;

having said all that, I have yet to read "Sister Planet" for the very first time but will now do so.

Four For The Future

Harry Harrison edited Four For The Future, an anthology of two stories each by Brian Aldiss, Poul Anderson, James Blish and Harry Harrison. Each author's two stories were respectively on the themes of "Sacrifice" and "Redemption," the point being that an animal might sacrifice itself to protect its young whereas redemption is a specifically human concept. (In Christianity, redemption is effected by a sacrifice.)

The sacrifice stories were written for a single issue of Impulse whereas the redemption stories were each published elsewhere before being anthologized. Anderson's sacrifice story, "High Treason," is in one of his collections and I posted about it recently. See here.

His redemption story has the to me unfamiliar title of "The Dipteroid Phenomenon." Thus, when a neighbor lent me Four For The Future, I expected to be able to post about a new story. However, "The Dipteroid Phenomenon" turns out to be "The Sharing of Flesh," indeed was originally published under that title to which it reverted when collected as part of Anderson's Technic Civilization History, so of course I have already posted about it under the heading of "The Long Night."

Tracking down unread works can be an interesting exercise - an apparently unread work can turn out to be a familiar work published under an unfamiliar title.

I did read Four For The Future when it was published mainly for the Blish stories but I also remember that the Aldiss stories were notable, particularly since the redemption story is a sequel to the sacrifice story.