Star Trek And The Future Histories

David Birr explains this bizarre cover image in a comment here.

Star Trek TV series, films and novels have become a future history and a cultural reference point. When I told a friend about a "reality storm" in Neil Gaiman's The Sandman, he remarked that that sounded like something out of Star Trek, then laughed when I told him that one of the characters had said that that sounded like something out of Star Trek.

A narrator in Robert Heinlein's The Number Of The Beast compares the bridge of Lazarus Long's spaceship to the bridge of the Enterprise - although I would prefer not to refer to The Number Of The Beast.

Isaac Asimov scientifically advised Star Trek. James Blish adapted episodes as short stories and wrote the first Star Trek novel. At a Memorial evening for James Blish in London, Charles Monteith of Faber and Faber described Blish's Cities in Flight future history as "a higher and greater Star Trek."

Larry Niven adapted a Known Space story as a Star Trek animated episode. Niven and Jerry Pournelle place a Chief Engineer from New Scotland on a Navy spaceship and say that this ethnicity is common among Engineers.

If Kirk were in Intelligence and Vulcan were in the Klingon Empire, then Star Trek would parallel Poul Anderson's Flandry series. Many sf stories about spaceship crews exploring extrasolar planets could be adapted as Star Trek episodes.

Addendum: Are Moties like intelligent tribbles?

A Lensman In The Old Phoenix

Here (scroll down) is where I have referred to EE Smith's Lensman series before. Here (see Comments) is where correspondent David Birr says that the:

"...large affable blond man in high boots and gray leather with an iridescent jewel on his wrist..." (Midsummer Tempest, p. 228) -

- must be from the Lensman series. So this is the only appearance of a Lensman in Poul Anderson's works and the Old Phoenix is probably the only appropriate setting. This single part of a sentence is better written than the entire seven-volume Lensman series.

Lensmen:

sound like and resemble superheroes;

are as uni-dimensional as all comic strip characters used to be;

specifically, are quite like the comic book superhero group, the Green Lantern Corps.

With superheroes, I have found that what matters is the script writer, not the character. Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman are able to do new things with old characters, even with Superman. Similarly, Poul Anderson would have been able to write a good Lensman novel even if the Lensmens' creator couldn't. I value that man in gray leather with an iridescent jewel on his wrist as Anderson's prose transmuting a cardboard space opera hero into a colorful and interesting character.

A Change

After hours of prose, I must have a change to a visual medium:

narrative is verbal;
sequential art is visual-verbal;
film is audiovisual.

Mike Carey's Lucifer shows us a fictional Hell as do Robert Heinlein's Magic Inc and Poul Anderson's Operation Chaos. Further:

Operation Chaos follows Magic Inc as the Psychotechnic History follows the Future History;

a demonic mass meeting in Neil Gaiman's The Sandman was based on an exactly similar scene in Magic Inc;

Lucifer is a sequel to The Sandman.

So everything connects somehow. We would like to see Poul Anderson's works adapted into both visual media - but done properly, of course.

Concurrent Reading

I will reread Poul Anderson's "Brake" to its conclusion to remind myself of how it contributes to his Psychotechnic History. However, right now, it has to compete with several other books to be read. But all are relevant:

Doctor Mirabilis by James Blish, about the founder of scientific method;

Miracleman by Neil Gaiman, about a Golden Age that becomes a Silver Age, then a Dark Age - a utopia that goes bad;

a book about yogis who seem already to have much of the psychophysical knowledge sought by Anderson's psychotechnicians;

a book, published in 2015, about current global politics and militarism.

Miracleman is set in an alternative timeline. The three other works describe our past and present - and could lead to something like Anderson's Psychotechnic Institute, Planetary Engineers, Solar Union etc in our future.

Themed Anthologies

I dislike themed anthologies as a literary form. I bought two such anthologies only because each included one installment in  different series by SM Stirling and I have not read every other item in either anthology. Themed stories by several authors seem samey if they stay on theme but senseless if they stray off theme.

My Christmas presents include a small, slim volume containing a 58 page story by Neil Gaiman, a sequel to his TV series and novel, Neverwhere. This story had originally appeared in an anthology, where I had not heard of it. I prefer to receive it in this form. Minor coincidence: a new character is called "Peregrine" and I have just reread Poul Anderson's The Peregrine.

Anderson's three Man-Kzin Wars stories should be collected in a single volume which would then form one volume both of Poul Anderson's Complete Works and of the Man-Kzin Wars period of Larry Niven's Known Space future history. The three stories are consecutive, therefore need not be interspersed with installments by other contributors. They also contain major speculative fiction by Anderson.

Poul Anderson And Alan Moore

I am reading a biography of Alan Moore with an Introduction by Michael Moorcock: from the sublime to the sublimer. What do Poul Anderson and Alan Moore have in common?

(i) Although primarily a graphic novelist and comic strip script writer, Alan has also written prose fiction: some short stories, a novel, Voice Of The Fire, and a second novel, Jerusalem, to be published in Spring 2016.

(ii) Alan has written historical fiction (Voice Of The Fire) fantasy (Promethea) and sf (Halo Jones; Skizz). Voice Of The Fire features Romans ("Men of Roma") in Britain.

(iii) He received a Hugo award for Watchmen.

Differences
(i) PA and AM are at opposite ends of the political spectrum.
(ii) Whereas Anderson seemed sympathetic to the monotheist faiths, Alan practices magical rituals and worships the Roman snake god, Glycon. (He doesn't want his fans to copy his religion and I don't!)
(iii) Whereas I saw Anderson at a couple of sf cons, I have met Alan briefly a few times. (In fact, following clues in his published works, I found my way to his front door.)
(iv) Alan taught comic script writing to Neil Gaiman and I have found several parallels between Anderson and Gaiman, less between Anderson and Alan. Nevertheless, these three men are major modern imaginative writers.

The End Of August

(Addendum, 30 Aug: I am drafting some posts for September. Meanwhile, see addendum to Subjectivity.)

This is the last post for August. I look forward to blogging again in September. I may have to restrain myself from posting during the next four days but will also be busy in other ways.

Next month we expect an article by Sean M Brooks comparing Poul Anderson and SM Stirling. I will also continue to read Stirling's Draka series, a worthy development of the idea of alternative histories as previously presented by Wells and Anderson among others.

Of course I had compared Anderson and Gaiman more than once before but the parallels struck me again when simultaneously rereading The Sandman and The Shield Of Time. I post what I think even if I have thought it before so there is some repetition. However, there are also always new details to find and highlight in Anderson's texts as I think is demonstrated by recent posts on The Shield of Time, which I will also continue to reread.

Parallel Fictions

Neil Gaiman's The Sandman fantasy graphic novels reveal that William Shakespeare wrote A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Tempest for Dream of the Endless, one of seven anthropomorphic personifications of aspects of consciousness. Poul Anderson's alternative history fantasy novel, A Midsummer Tempest, is a sequel to both.

In The Sandman, characters from different universes shelter in the Inn of the Worlds' End during a reality storm caused by the death of Dream. In A Midsummer Tempest, characters from different alternative histories meet in the Old Phoenix Inn between universes. Odin is a character in The Sandman as in three fantasy novels by Anderson.

The Sandman is like Anderson's Time Patrol series in that many of its installments are set in past periods and may feature historical figures. Gaiman has Augustus and Harun al Rashid among others while Anderson has Cyrus and Hiram among others. Gaiman also hints at time travel which does occur elsewhere in the fictional universe to which he contributes.

This explains why reading Anderson reminds me of Gaiman and vice versa.

Wanda Tamberly And Nicholas Van Rijn

(Thank you for 284 page views so far today despite no posts until this one today.)

Wanda Tamberly reads Analog so she must have read about Nicholas van Rijn, for example in "Hiding Place," although not about the Time Patrol. That series was published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Fictional characters are usually, though not always, fictions to each other.

In a "multiverse" (multiple universes) scenario, a character who is fictional in one universe may be real in another. However, Time Patrolmen inhabit not one universe in a greater multiverse but a single universe with a mutable timeline. Thus, van Rijn has access to the inter-universal Old Phoenix Inn whereas Patrol agents do not. The Sherlock Holmes who is seen in the Old Phoenix cannot be the same as the one who is real to the Time Patrol. Can there be different versions of Sherlock Holmes? Sure there are. We see them on screen all the time.

Neil Gaiman's equivalents of the Old Phoenix are "...the free houses that owe no allegiance to any one time or dominion," including the Inn of the Worlds' End and The Toad-Stone (The Wake, see below, p. 29, panel 2). One of the cleverest fiction-reality interfaces that I have read is this dialogue in panel 1, p. 62, of Gaiman's The Sandman: The Wake (New York, 1997):

Clark Kent: The one I hate is where I'm just an actor on a strange television version of my life. Have you ever had that dream?
The Batman: Doesn't everyone?
The Martian Manhunter: I don't.

However, the Manhunter has since appeared in the Smallville TV series. Alternative realities proliferate. All that an author needs is a blank sheet of paper or a computer screen as Poul Anderson continued to demonstrate until the end of a long career.

Two Kinds Of Critique

I should clarify that, when I critique a work of time travel fiction, I may be making one of two diametrically opposite points about it:

that the work is incoherent and should not have been published;

that the work is aesthetically and intellectually absorbing and that part of the pleasure is precisely to engage with its conceptual content.

The latter is certainly true of HG Wells' The Time Machine. The introductory section in which the dinner guests merely discuss the concept of "time traveling" is like a good Platonic dialogue. The Time Traveler contradicts himself several times but we learn a great deal by continuing the discussion.

I hope that it is clear that Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series, including the addition by SM Stirling, is also in the second category. This is Wellsian science fiction. However, needing a break from prose fiction and abstract thought, I will now instead reread Black Orchid by Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean.

Oscar Wilde

Writers sometimes have fun imagining what a real person would say in a fictional situation. Poul Anderson gives us several historical figures but maybe not any recent or contemporary celebrities? Brian Aldiss fictionally quoted Aldous Huxley in an early novel. William Clinton spoke at Superman's funeral because he was President of the United States in 1993. Earlier, Supes had conversed with Ronald Reagan.

In From Hell, written by Alan Moore and drawn by Eddie Campbell, a character at a party looks exactly like Oscar Wilde and indeed is introduced as such. When asked, "Oscar Wilde, the playwright?," Wilde responds, "Heavens, no! Can't stand the man! I'm Oscar Wilde, the Florist!"

What would Wilde say about SM Stirling's Domination of the Draka? Stirling tells us and we instantly recognize authenticity:

"'How did Oscar Wilde put it, after he settled in the Domination? The rest of the Anglo-Saxon world is convinced that the Draka are brutal, licentious, and depraved; the Draka are convinced that outlanders are prigs, hypocritical prudes, and weaklings, and both parties are right...'"
-SM Stirling, Marching Through Georgia (New York, 1991), p. 71.

As Puck said when watching Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream in Neil Gaiman's The Sandman: A Midsummer Night's Dream:

"It never happened; yet it is still true. What magic art is this?"
-Neil Gaiman, The Sandman: Dream Country (New York, 1995), p. 75.

Intertextuality

(In a fantasy world not too distant from Poul Anderson's, Death of the Endless answers the telephone.)

"...Neil Gaiman's stories in The Sandman descend concentrically though a narrative maze to a room at the center, where you expect to find a confessional and instead step into a veldt that stretches as far as the eye can see."
-Steve Erickson, Introduction IN Neil Gaiman, The Sandman: Dream Country (New York, 1995), pp. 7-9 AT p. 8.

This is equally true of Poul Anderson's texts. Both the Technic History and the Time Patrol invite multiple rereadings, resembling a concentric descent that you think will end at a central point with nowhere further to go whereas, instead, a single word or phrase prompts new reflections or perspectives like "...a veldt that stretches as far as the eye can see." Phoenician inventions and visitors to Tyre were recent discoveries.

Another example, in "Ivory, And Apes, And Peacocks," is:

"Far and far away, a sail passed by. It could have been driving the ship of Odysseus." (Time Patrol, p. 326)

Thus, the events that were the source of Homer's second epic might be occurring concurrently with Manse Everard's mission to Tyre in 950 BC. Thus, this Time Patrol installment alludes to a Classical text, as also to the Biblical Solomon on p. 240. There are several other literary references:

"Star Of The Sea" refers to Tacitus' Annals, Histories and Germania;

"The Sorrow Of Odin The Goth" reconstructs the events behind a story in the Eddas, the Volsungasaga and the Nibelungenlied;

"Time Patrol" is based on one of Dr Watson's untold cases;

The Shield Of Time alludes to His Last Bow.

Within the Time Patrol series itself:

"Ivory, And Apes, And Peacocks" ends with Everard winding up his stay at King Hiram's palace and The Shield of Time begins with him newly arrived back in New York;

in "Ivory...," Everard's squadron lands on "...an uninhabited Aegean islet..." (p. 326) and The Shield... recounts a conversation between Everard and his principle prisoner on that islet;

in "The Year Of The Ransom," we are told that Everard takes a couple of hours to outline the truth to Wanda and The Shield... recounts part of that conversation.

We must read carefully if we are to notice connections with other works of literature and also with earler installments of this increasingly complex series.

Worlds And Words

SM Stirling, "Shikari in Galveston" IN Worlds That Weren't (New York, 2003), pp. 63-148.

Science fiction writers show words changing their meanings in the future. In Poul Anderson's There Will Be Time, Jack Havig, time traveling to his future, meets a young woman who, when asked what she does with her time, replies that she jokes a lot. An amateur comedienne? However, when she and he share a picnic with no one else present, she announces that she had figured they could joke after eating but why not before and after?

(Addendum, 15 Mar: Also highly relevant is Anderson's "A Tragedy of Errors." See comments.)

In Neil Gaiman's sequel to Alan Moore's Miracleman, "London" means an event as "Hiroshima" does for us and "Kidding" has become a swear word because of what the Kid did in London. (Alan Moore had asked, "What would someone with Superman's strength and speed but not his scruples do?" He then answered this question with extremely detailed instructions to a comic strip artist.)

In SM Stirling's "Shikari in Galveston," a Bengali trader surprises us by telling Eric King that the local savages "'...are a clean people...'" (p. 80) Clean? King has just complained of sweat, squalor, smoke, sewage and stink. However, the trader's use of the word "clean" does not refer to hygiene. He spells it out:

"'From the time of the Fall.'" (ibid.)

King understands:

"King nodded...that was one of the fundamental distinctions in the modern world, between those whose ancestors had eaten men in the terrible years after the hammer from the skies struck, and those who hadn't. The only more fundamental one was between those who still did, and the rest of humanity." (ibid.)

And I am certain that the use of the word "clean" would be extended in precisely this way in those circumstances.

Tomorrow there will be a family outing for Mothers' Day (we have two mothers in the household) so maybe not much time for posting. Before turning in this evening, I have had to stop reading Stieg Larsson in order to post and must now stop posting in order to watch Smallville. Retirement, as expected, is an endless choice between enjoyable activities.

"Thy merchants chase the morning down the sea..."

I have been riveted by SM Stirling's The Peshawar Lancers (New York, 2003). American correspondent, Sean M Brooks, suggested that a Poul Anderson fan should read some Stirling. Having now read this one novel, I am bound to agree with him. So what next? For me, more Stirling and more rereading of Anderson but also more reading and rereading of other works not connected to this blog: The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is dying for me to get back to her!

The Peshawar Lancers has a conventional happy ending with three marriages and the heroes returning home:

"The lord of Rexin laughed softly, shook his head, and looked up through the fresh green leaves of the chinar trees and the exploding white and pink flowers of the orchards, up toward the manor and its gardens." (p. 458)

The text concludes with a characteristically evocative quotation from James Elroy Flecker, in this case from his "Ishak's Song." (This is a double link to Neil Gaiman because Gaiman also quotes Flecker and because Ishak is the Court Poet of Haroun al Raschid, who is the central character of Gaiman's Ramadan.)

I do not begrudge Stirling's characters their happy ending and do not wish any more adventures on them but I do want to know more about their history: the international situation and the threat of a second Fall.

One Long Series

I have been reading prose fiction, graphic fiction and Latin verse. Sometimes it seems as if all of literature is a single long series in which it is always possible to refer to past installments. Poul Anderson variously refers to Ilion, Ys, Hrolf Kraki, Beowulf, MacBeth, Holger Danske, Shakespeare, Sherlock Holmes, Superman and James Bond.

My recent reading has included the following connections:

Anderson's "Goat Song" is a futuristic sf retelling of the Orpheus myth;
Neil Gaiman retells this myth in his graphic fantasy, The Sandman;
Mike Carey's The Furies is a sequel to Gaiman's The Sandman;
The Furies features a Goat Song Theater Company;
Carey explains that "goat song" is the original meaning of "tragedy";
he also shows Baucis and Philemon still conscious and able to bleed as trees;
our Latin class read Ovid on Baucis et Philemon and Virgil on Orpheus.

To Be Previous

(Poul Anderson fans, please bear with me. This post is about Neil Gaiman, Paul Shackley and Dominic Flandry in that order - although why I belong in a list that starts with a successful writer and ends with a fictitious character remains to be demonstrated.)

Neil Gaiman...
...when first applying to work as a journalist, untruthfully claimed already to have worked for several well known magazines. He reasoned, first, that his prospective employer was unlikely to check and, secondly, that he would prove himself, or not, during his first few months of work. In fact, he then did work for all the named magazines within twelve months so was he lying or merely anticipating?

Me
When I was preparing to work as Master in Charge of Religious Education at Bentham Grammar School, my predecessor, a Church of England vicar, said that he had ordered a set of Good News Bibles for First Year classes, adding "...with which, of course, you're familiar?" What could I possibly reply but "Yes"? I was committing myself to become familiar with the Good News Bible as soon as possible. Twelve months later, having been made redundant from the school, I started to train as an RE Teacher. (Sometimes, England is Looking Glass Land.) A fellow student had heard that, although the Good News was not a good translation, it was good to use if you just wanted the story. After a year of working with that text, I knowledgeably responded, "Yes, the Good News is very readable." I had fulfilled the commitment that I had made to that vicar.

Dominic Flandry...
...says, "'I've been too busy working with Commander Abrams.' In point of fact he had done the detail chores of data correlation on a considerably lower level."
-Poul Anderson, Young Flandry (New York, 2010), p. 44.

Because the nineteen year old Ensign Flandry has brought new data, well organized, and a live prisoner, he has been temporarily assigned to Commander Abrams' Intelligence section and he describes this temporary assignment as "'...working with Commander Abrams...'" when talking to the beautiful Persis d'Io. But he very soon is busy working with Commander Abrams, first as his aide on a trip to Merseia, then on a crucial and dangerous Intelligence mission. Flandry, confident, competent and creative, both makes claims and delivers the goods.

The End Of August II

Regular readers might have noticed that I had intended to end August with 150 posts but have instead continued until 155 but "This must cease," as Conan Doyle wrote of Sherlock Holmes. Much recovered from a cold, I have driven my daughter and granddaughter to an afternoon tea party, have eaten three scrambled eggs and baked beans on toast and have found more to post about while continuing to recuperate. I will meditate this afternoon and eat out this evening.

I find that posting about other writers is a good way to get back into posting about Poul Anderson. I should soon receive Eternity by Greg Bear and will, although not immediately, check out SM Stirling, having already read his Time Patrol story.

The attached image, taken from Neil Gaiman's The Sandman, shows the Roman Emperor, Caesar Augustus, hiding from the Olympians by disguising himself as a beggar in a story called "August." The Sandman also contains episodes named after the French Revolutionary month, Thermidor, and the Muslim month, Ramadan. The Sandman, like Anderson's works, spans history.

Norse Myths In Modern Fiction

Heroic Fantasy
War Of The Gods
Hrolf Kraki's Saga
The Broken Sword
The Demon Of Scattery (with Mildred Downey Broxon)

Historical Fantasy
Mother Of Kings

Historical Fiction
The Golden Slave

Historical Science Fiction: The Time Patrol Series
"The Sorrow of Odin the Goth"
"Star of the Sea"

These two Time Patrol stories are short novels. Thus, these are eight novels by Poul Anderson. Men are deified in the "fictions;" gods intervene in the "fantasies."

In Neil Gaiman's The Sandman, when Lucifer retires and gives Morpheus the Key to a locked and empty Hell, Odin, Thor and Loki hope to acquire this desirable spiritual real estate as a refuge from the Ragnarok but must contend with deities from other mythologies who also want Hell. Afterwards, Loki remains at large and covertly helps Morpheus until he is again confined underground by Odin and Thor. Later again, in Mike Carey's Lucifer, the retired Lord of Hell kills the serpent that drips venom on Loki who then lends Lucifer the ship made of dead men's nails for a voyage into previously unknown realms of the hereafter. See the attached image.

I confine my remarks to these three authors, who creatively adapt an already fascinating mythology.

Another Parallel Between Poul Anderson And Neil Gaiman

Neil Gaiman has also written time travel:

two Doctor Who scripts;
The Books Of Magic, Book 4;
one scene in Neverwhere (TV series and novel by Gaiman, graphically adapted by Carey) (two villains in the historical past accept a job in the present).

Apart from that brief scene in Neverwhere, all this time travel occurs in other writers' and editors' fictional universes, the BBC Whoverse and the DC Universe. Although The Books Of Magic is fantasy, not hard sf, I found enough time travel logic in it to post about (see here).

Both Anderson and Gaiman have written powerful fantasies informed by, and infused with, mythology and literature. (I prefer Gaiman's graphic fiction to his prose fiction whereas Anderson's, of course, is entirely prose - although not prosaic.) The main difference between them is that Anderson was also a master of other genres, historical fiction, detective fiction and hard sf.

Versatility

The previous post compared Doctor Who with HG Wells' The Time Machine and with Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series.

The post before that compared Anderson's fantasies with those of James Blish, Neil Gaiman and Mike Carey.

Earlier posts have compared Anderson's future histories with those of Wells, Stapledon, Heinlein, Asimov, Blish, Niven and Pournelle.

Thus, Anderson's name is prominent on lists of authors of time travel fiction, fantasy and future histories. Heinlein also wrote these three kinds of fiction but his major time travel works comprise three ingenious statements of one paradox and lack Anderson's historical settings.

Tim Powers combined time travel with fantasy. His The Anubis Gates has Egyptian gods and magic but also several intricate circular causality paradoxes. Thus, this single work compares both with Anderson's three historical circular causality novels and with several of his fantasy novels. However, Anderson surpasses the other authors mentioned in both output and range.