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.

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.

Three Literary Contexts

Recent posts have compared Poul Anderson's time travel canon to Twain, Wells etc and his main future history series to Heinlein, Asimov etc. Previous posts have compared Anderson's future histories to those of Wells (see here) and Stapledon (see here) and his heroic fantasies to those of Tolkien (see here and here).

These six writers:

Twain
Wells
Stapledon
Tolkien
Heinlein
Asimov

- are known names and big sellers. Stapledon may be less well known outside science fiction but is certainly significant within it.

The six represent three distinct strands of fictional writing:

(i) older, more literary, pre-magazine, pre-genre "science fiction," retroactively classified as such (although I suppose that A Connecticut Yankee... is fantasy);

(ii) Golden Age American sf, the Campbell era;

(iii) modern fantasy fiction derived from Northern European mythology.

My point, as ever, is that Anderson is a worthy successor of (i) and a major practitioner of both (ii) and (iii). I will have a little more to say about Tolkien but first must go out to see a film.

A Conceptual Sequence

Seven works by six authors form not a linear series but certainly a conceptual sequence that could with profit be read in this order:

"Missing One's Coach: An Anachronism" (Anonymous)
A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain
The Time Machine by HG Wells
Lest Darkness Fall by L Sprague de Camp
Bring The Jubilee by Ward Moore
Past Times by Poul Anderson
The Time Patrol series by Poul Anderson

Several other works, including three further novels by Anderson, are also closely connected. However, the listed seven are significantly sequential, culminating in one collection, one omnibus collection and one long novel by Anderson. These three volumes draw together strands introduced in the earlier works.

"Missing One's Coach" introduces the idea of a modern man transported backwards through time into a historical period. It might have been a dream but the idea is there. Pastwards travel is essential for time travel. Without it, the Time Traveler would have been unable to return.

Twain develops this idea of a modern man transported to an earlier period but seems not to realize, first, that it would have been difficult to introduce technological innovations in the Dark Ages and, secondly, that it would have been impossible to introduce at one stroke modern technology in such a period. Twain's successors, de Camp and Anderson, spell out this difficulty and impossibility.

Wells:

introduces the idea of a temporal vehicle or "time machine," which reappears in a more versatile form in the Time Patrol series;

discusses the appearance of a time traveler on a historical battlefield, an idea developed by Moore and Anderson;

 
hints at temporal paradoxes, examined in one novel each by de Camp and Moore and in a lengthy series by Anderson;

colorfully describes future periods as Anderson colorfully describes past periods;

as a pessimistic Victorian, describes the devolution of humanity whereas the optimistic American Anderson refers to its evolution;

shows the Time Traveler exploring the further future as an Anderson character does in "Flight to Forever."

For his first Time Patrol assignment, Manson Everard travels from the year in which The Time Machine was published to post-Roman Britain in order to prevent a "time criminal" from pulling a Connecticut Yankee stunt back then. Anderson's "The Man who Came Early," which should be included in future editions of Past Times, is a reply to Lest Darkness Fall whereas "The Little Monster," which is in Past Times, presents the de Campian view: a modern man can survive in the past. Thus, the conceptual sequence progresses and culminates with Anderson.

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.

Conceptual Sequences II

I mentioned a time travel conceptual sequence: Wells/de Camp/Ward Moore/Anderson. This sequence began with two pre-hard sf, pre-technological time travel stages:

"Missing One's Coach: An Anachronism," Anonymous, 1838;
A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur's Court, Mark Twain, 1889.

(The Time Machine was 1895.)

"Missing One's Coach" definitely describes pastward time travel but is possibly a dream. The Connecticut Yankee tries to change if not the course of history, then at least the unrecorded course of events in an obscure period.

Being pre-Wellsian, they lack the language of "time travel." "Missing One's Coach" is "An Anachronism," involving "...a fault in the strata of time...," while the Yankee experiences "transposition of epochs."

Although I found A Yankee... implausible and almost unreadable, it is a major part of the sequence and Anderson cited it as an influence.