A Symbol Of Freedom

In American science fiction, the ultimate symbol of freedom is interstellar flight. Characters dissatisfied with life on Earth or in the Solar System or just wanting a new start leave:

Slower Than Light

Robert Heinlein
Methuselah's Children (FTL return)
Time For The Stars (FTL return)

Poul Anderson:
The Rustum History
Tales Of The Flying Mountains
Harvest Of Stars
The Boat Of A Million Years

SM Stirling
The Stone Dogs

Robert Siverberg
Tower Of Glass

Faster Than Light

Poul Anderson
The Psychotechnic History
The Technic History

James Blish
Cities In Flight
The Seedling Stars

Isaac Asimov
The End Of Eternity (a bad time travel novel)

Tower Of Glass ends:

"Krug is at peace. He departs forever from Earth. He begins his journey at last."
-Robert Silverberg, Tower Of Glass (St Albans, Herts, 1976), p. 206.

As far as I can remember without rereading the entire novel, Krug has lost everything on Earth and has no guarantee of finding a habitable planet on his arrival in another planetary system. However, like "Le Matelot," quoted in Anderson's Trader To The Stars, it is enough that he is on his way.

Addendum: Anderson's Kith History shows STL interstellar traders but not how they got out of the Solar System in the first place.

Other Time Patrols?

In Robert Silverberg's Time Patrol story in Multiverse, the Danellians found a "Time Patrol II" in a divergent timeline even while requiring the remnants of the original Time Patrol to restore the preferred timeline. But Silverberg merely refers to "Time Patrol II" without developing this idea.

Poul Anderson twice refers to the idea of an alternative Time Patrol.

"'...Christianity never arises. Therefore, the entire world that brought you and me into being is a phantom, a might-have-been, which, conceivably, an alternate Time Patrol keeps suppressed.'"
-The Shield Of Time (New York, 1991), p. 76.

"'There'd never have been a you or a me, a United States, a Danellian destiny, a Time Patrol...unless [the Exaltationists] organized one of their own to protect the misshapen history they brought into being.'"
-Time Patrol (New York, 2006), p. 718.

Several points here:

(i) It would not be the Exaltationists but one last Exaltationist because we know, Raor tells Everard, that they would fight among themselves after eliminating the Danellians and the Patrol.

(ii) The Exaltationists would create a "...misshapen history..." but other "time criminals" might create improvements on the standard model?

(iii) Are there any survivors of alternative Time Patrols in the Danellian timeline?

(iv) There could be survivors of the Danellians' Time Patrol in the Carthaginian, Tacitus Two, alpha or beta timelines. By traveling far enough pastward, then returning futureward, such lost Patrolmen would be able to re-enter their home timeline but they might not have access to temporal vehicles or some of them might be happy where they are. I imagine a tavern for displaced time travelers further along the Carthaginian timeline.

"Crisscrossed With Paradoxes"

Robert Silverberg, "Christmas in Gondwanaland" IN Greg Bear and Gardner Dozois, Multiverse: Exploring Poul Anderson's Worlds (Burton, MI, 2014), pp. 215-244.

Time Patrol agents reconnoiter the scene of a causality violation that they must prevent:

"'We've been over the data and over it and over it again, until we've got the whole damned place crisscrossed with paradoxes, and we'll have to clean all that garbage out of the system later on, though of course that will create some paradoxes too, but to hell with that right now.'" (p. 238)

Having restored the preferred timeline, why should they return and mess further with the crucial events? The preferred timeline that they restore is not an original timeline without extratemporal interventions but a later timeline full of criminal interventions and Patrol counterinterventions, "...crisscrossed with paradoxes..." How would they eliminate the paradoxes? Kill their younger selves and the younger terrorists? Kidnap them and put them somewhere else, thus duplicating all those people?

In The Shield Of Time, a disguised Patrol agent gives a Russian soldier a forged ancient document that, it is hoped, will lure the Exaltationists still at large into a trap. When the Exaltationists have been arrested, the Patrol eliminates the false evidence. Thus, no Patrol agent gives the soldier the document. How was this done? I theorize that the agent with the document set off to meet the soldier in Afghanistan, 1987, from the far past. When the capture of the Exaltationists had been completed, that agent waiting to set off from the far past was sent a message instructing him to travel futureward not to 1987 but to his home era in the further future. But does eliminating the evidence not also eliminate the luring of the Exaltationists into the trap?

We are told that deleting a timeline deletes any time travelers who have traveled into it. So, if the timeline containing the fake evidence has been deleted, have the Exaltationists who saw and acted on the evidence also been deleted? But will such actions by the Patrol not also delete their own members?

"We're Setting Up A Causal Loop!"

Robert Silverberg, "Christmas in Gondwanaland" IN Greg Bear and Gardner Dozois, Editors, Multiverse: Exploring Poul Anderson's Worlds (Burton, MI, 2014), pp. 215-244.

Manson Everard, an experienced Unattached Agent of the Time Patrol, is far too naive in this story by Robert Silverberg. He rightly asks why, if the founding of the Time Patrol has been prevented, the twentieth century remains unchanged but he lets a fellow Patrolman palm him off with the story that a single timeline contains both a murdered Founding Convocation back in Gondwanaland and an unchanged twentieth century because they and two other colleagues are going to prevent the murder of the Founders. Hopefully they will but that will be in another timeline.

Later, he says that Gonzalez and he, by mingling with the Founders when they were not Founders, are "'...setting up a causal loop!'" (p. 235)

No, they are not. They are simply visiting the past and reconnoitering for a mission as they always do. Where is the loop? And, even if there were one, it would be necessary to prevent a violation.

"There were rules about causal loops, causal vortices, interventions within interventions..." (ibid.)

Anderson did use the term "causal vortices" and I wish that he had elucidated it further. At the end of "The Only Game in Town," Everard, fleeing the Mongols on horseback, reduces his speed when he hears a storm behind him. That is Everard returning with a storm-making machine. The Patrol disapproves of a Patrolmen escaping, then helping himself to escape (causal loop or circle) but, in this case, it is justified because it is necessary to save Sandoval's life and is not absolutely necessary for Everard's escape. But why should they disapprove of it?

Changing Timelines

Robert Silverberg, "Christmas in Gondwanaland" IN Greg Bear and Gardner Dozois, Editors, Multiverse: Exploring Poul Anderson's Worlds (Burton, MI, 2014), pp. 215-244.

In Prague, 1910, of the Time Patrol II timeline, Nakamura departs to Gondwanaland and returns with a prisoner.

Spallanzani does the same.

Gonzalez does the same.

Ben-Eytan does the same.

Everard departs last. When he apprehends the last terrorist, thus preventing the assassination of the Founders of the original Time Patrol, he restores the original timeline. Therefore, when he travels futureward with his prisoner, he arrives in the Prague, 1910, of the original timeline. He does not rejoin his four colleagues because they were in the Time Patrol II timeline and were deleted with it.

I do not mean that Silverberg intended this outcome. I mean that I think it follows logically from the premises of the Time Patrol series.

The New Time Criminals II

Robert Silverberg, "Christmas in Gondwanaland" IN Greg Bear and Gardner Dozois, Editors, Multiverse: Exploring Poul Anderson's Worlds (Burton, MI, 2014), pp. 215-244.

"'...the terrorists...are nihilists of some sort, unscrupulous adventurers, criminals, madmen - whatever.'" (p. 231)

Whatever. In other words, convenient villains for a work of fiction. Admittedly, the Patrol agents must concentrate on stopping, not understanding, the terrorists, but, since these "nihilists" are caught alive, hopefully a start will now be made on understanding, not just condemning, their motives. Rational men, not just madmen, often have reasons to go to war and also often fail to understand their enemies.

"'Perhaps something like the Exaltationists or the Neldorians, but they seem to be a different group not previously known to us." (ibid.)

Exaltationists and Neldorians differ considerably so lumping them together is unhelpful. At least three factors make this new group significant:

they were previously unknown;
they initially succeed so that a remnant of the Patrol must mount a counter-intervention as with the Neldorians in the Second Punic War;
they can time travel without time machines.

Ben-Eytan says of the first captured terrorist:

"'...take this character to Patrol Command. They'll find some appropriately unpleasant detention dimension to store him in." (p. 240)

It used to be an exile planet, not a detention dimension. And surely, at least until they complete their mission, these Patrol agents are in the alternative timeline with no access to anyone else in their Patrol?

Everard's arrest of the fifth terrorist becomes a page-long fight scene, prose space that might instead have been used to tell us more about the terrorists? The last scene is Everard's meeting with Wanda with the fear, on our part, that she might have been changed somehow when history was changed and changed back again but, of course, we have a happy ending.

Crushing a poison capsule seems a strange way to deactivate it?

The New Time Criminals

Robert Silverberg, "Christmas in Gondwanaland" IN Greg Bear and Gardner Dozois, Editors, Multiverse: Exploring Poul Anderson's Worlds (Burton, MI, 2014), pp. 215-244.

"Let one member of the gang evade capture and the whole process could be undone if the one who remained at large struck back by creating a causal loop that would leave Ben-Eytan and his team hung up in some limbo of unreality." (p. 239)

Limbo of unreality? What does that mean? Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series uses no such terminology. The Patrol, trying to preserve a linear timeline, must prevent both paradoxes, not only causality violation (certainly that) but also circular causality - except when  closing a causal circle is the only way to prevent a causality violation.

(i) Stane steals a time machine and tries to change history. Time Patrolmen arrive, kill Stane and retrieve the stolen machine but leave behind the shielded box containing its radioactive fuel because that box, buried with Stane, will alert the Patrol to his extratemporal activities in post-Roman Britain.

(ii) Carl Farness, mistaken for Odin while visiting the Goths, must either enact their account of Odin's betrayal of his followers or return to a changed twentieth century.

In both these cases, the paradox of circular causality is preferable to the paradox of causality violation but how could the former leave anyone in a limbo of unreality? Anyone involved in such a circle lives through it just once and continues to live in linear time afterwards. Carl is not forever betraying his followers in some unreal realm. When discussing odd events in an sf novel, one fan seemed to think that the phrase "causal loop" was sufficient explanation. This could mean either circular causality as in (i) and (ii) above or a closed circular timeline, which might constitute a "limbo" by contrast with the open-ended universe but how would it be possible to enter such a timeline? And no such limited timeline is suggested anywhere in the Time Patrol series.

A Pocket Continuum?

Robert Silverberg, "Christmas in Gondwanaland" IN Greg Bear and Gardner Dozois, Editors, Multiverse: Exploring Poul Anderson's Worlds (Burton, MI, 2014), pp. 215-244.

"'So the five of us have been pinched off into a pocket continuum of our own,' [Everard] said. 'The whole original Patrol has.'" (p. 230)

This is the sort of statement that appears in sf and that readers think they understand but I do not understand it, at least not in this context. The original Time Patrol is not in its own "pocket continuum" but is/was in the space-time continuum of a deleted timeline whereas Everard and his four colleagues are, unaccountably, in the current timeline.

Everard continues:

"'...our world-line descends from the Alpha Point Convocation; the Patrol that's running things now descends from a different one.'" (ibid.)

Each person has or is a "world-line" extending or enduring from his/her birth to his/her death. Five people do not share a common "world-line" descending from the founding of an organization to which they belong. But at least Everard's statements acknowledge that the five agents are not the versions of themselves that were born in the second timeline as Lora Spallanzani implies on p. 229.

When Everard and Gonzalez see their younger selves, Everard wonders:

"Why didn't we see ourselves before?" (p. 237)

and answers:

"Because we weren't there before..." (ibid.)

But they were. This is time travel. My understanding of the Time Patrol scenario is that, except in certain circumstances, the current timeline always acts like the single timeline of the kind of story (e.g., three novels by Anderson, three works by Heinlein, The Technicolor Time Machine, The Anubis Gates, The Time Traveler's Wife etc) that allows for the circular causality paradox though not the causality violation paradox. In such a scenario, if a time traveler's older self sees his younger self, then the younger can also see the older. They are in the same timeline, the one and only timeline, not in different timelines.

The "certain circumstances" are when the course of events is diverted either by the action of a pastward time traveler or by a random fluctuation in space-time-energy. Then, in that case, there is an alternative timeline in which, again, circular causality is possible and there seems to be only a single timeline, except to someone who, having traveled pastward along the original timeline, returns futureward through the moment of change into the alternative timeline.

"Christmas in Gondwanaland" is rich in discussion points about time travel and I will continue to reread it to find more.

Alternative Everards II

Robert Silverberg, "Christmas in Gondwanaland" IN Greg Bear and Gardner Dozois, Editors, Multiverse: Exploring Poul Anderson's Worlds (Burton, MI, 2014), pp. 215-244.

From our vantage point entirely outside a fictional universe, we can observe any continuity changes within that universe. Thus, we can make the otherwise absurd statement that Clark Kent, who originally came to Earth in the early 1920's, now arrived instead in the 1990's but it would make no sense whatsoever to tell a Clark Kent who remembers having grown up in the 1920's that he now grew up in the 1990's. These are alternative Clark Kents.

Similarly, when Time Patrol agent Lora Spallanzani, informing fellow agent Manson Everard about an alternative timeline, says, "'...we five still get born,'" (p. 229), she refers to alternative versions of Everard, of herself and of three other colleagues. The Spallanzani who is speaking and the Everard whom she is addressing were not born in the alternative timeline so why do they exist in it? According to the rules of time travel expounded in Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series, someone originating in an earlier timeline can survive into a later timeline only by traveling pastward along the earlier timeline, then returning futureward through the moment of change into the later timeline. But Everard certainly has not done this and the others probably have not.

The five are:

Manson Everard, mid-20th century;
Elio Gonzalez, late 21st century;
Lora Spallanzani, 24th century;
Daniel Ben-Eytan, 28th century;
Hideko Nakamura, post-human, 80th century.

Knowing precisely when each of the five lethal gas-containing capsules was activated by one of the terrorists (see previous posts), each Patrol agent arrives four minutes earlier, decommissions the capsule and waits to apprehend the arriving terrorist, even though in at least three of the cases this involves a fight that could have gone either way. Unlike the Patrol agents, the terrorists have some way of arriving and departing almost immediately without using a time machine.

The Time Patrol Founders, whose lives the agents are saving, must surely notice all this activity, which is out in the open in broad daylight in the central courtyard of their camp, but must also have been forewarned not to interfere. Time Patrol II (see previous posts) does not intervene but why should it even know that for a few weeks in Gondwanaland there was a Founding Convocation for an alternative Patrol?

Alternative Everards

Robert Silverberg, "Christmas in Gondwanaland" IN Greg Bear and Gardner Dozois, Editors, Multiverse: Exploring Poul Anderson's Worlds (Burton, MI, 2014), pp. 215-244.

In the alternative timeline guarded by Time Patrol II:

"'...we five still get born.'" (p. 229)

So the alternative timeline contains a Manson Everard who may or may not be recruited by Time Patrol II. But the Everard in the story is the original Everard who remembers having worked for Time Patrol I. That Everard can survive into the alternative timeline only if he has traveled further pastward than the moment of change at Alpha Point, then traveled forward again. But we are told that Everard has never traveled pastward as far as Gondwanaland. Therefore, he cannot exist here - and the same probably applies to his four colleagues.

I have only just reasoned that out. Time travel logic is subtle. I will return to this point but am in haste right now.

Multiverse: Gondwanaland IV

Robert Silverberg, "Christmas in Gondwanaland" IN Greg Bear and Gardner Dozois, Editors, Multiverse: Exploring Poul Anderson's Worlds (Burton, MI, 2014), pp. 215-244.

The Time Patrol Founding Convocation camp at Alpha Point in Gondwanaland comprises a large administration dome, an inner courtyard and a semicircle of tents temporarily housing the Patrol's fifty or sixty greatest leaders. A group of terrorists from around 9999 AD, making millisecond leaps, sticks five capsules containing a toxic substance around the camp, then, on a second series of leaps, touches off the capsules, the fifth potentiating the rest, thus releasing a lethal gas.

Five Patrol members plan to counter the attack:

Daniel Ben-Eytan;
Manson Everard;
Elio Gonzalez;
Hideko Nakamura;
Lora Spallanzani.

First, Ben-Eytan and Nakamura, visiting Alpha Point several times just before the attack, detect the barely discernible microleaps. Secondly, all five make surveillance trips during the two or three days preceding the attack in order to pinpoint the planting of the capsules. Approaching by air on a two-seat time hopper, Everard and Gonzalez land, enter the camp and walk unobtrusively around looking for "'...a blur.'" (p. 237) For each surveillance, they must leave the camp, time jump on the hopper according to a schedule and re-enter the camp. How can they avoid being noticed by the Founders? Unless the Danellians have notified the Founders that these guys wandering around the camp are a legitimate Patrol activity? Surely it would occur to some of the Founders that security is necessary to prevent any hostile extratemporal interventions in the Convocation?

On their fourth jump, Everard notices a blur and Gonzalez records the spot with a scanner. Leaving and making another jump, they return ten minutes earlier, seeing their slightly younger selves, and Gonzalez, properly prepared, records the spatiotemporal coordinates of the blur. The blurs are so brief that surely many visits would be necessary to detect even one and the courtyard would become crowded with multiple visits by the five Patrol members?

They must avoid detection by any "'...Patrol II surveillance team...'" (p. 238) but none such appear and it would be an odd situation, two Time Patrols fighting each other, one Patrol protecting the assassination of the Founders of the other, when both work for the same Danellians. But no Patrol II members show. Patrol II is a deus ex machina, used to answer an awkward question but not otherwise involved in the narrative.

Reconnaissance completed and the times of planting and detonation known, the next task is to neutralize the capsules and capture the terrorists but, since time has passed here, that will be discussed in another post.

Multiverse: Gondwanaland III

Robert Silverberg, "Christmas in Gondwanaland" IN Greg Bear and Gardner Dozois, Multiverse: Exploring Poul Anderson's Worlds (Burton, MI, 2014), pp. 215-244.

Robert Silverberg's Time Patrol story:

contains a major prima facie contradiction (see recent posts);
addresses the contradiction through a question asked by the viewpoint character, Everard;
at first presents a contradictory response - "We exist and we don't exist" (p. 218);
then presents another response, inconsistent with the first and implausible in itself.

First response:

"'...[the Danellians] want things put back to rights at Alpha Point, and they have chosen the five of us to fix the damage, and the fact that you and I are sitting here talking right now is proof that we will succeed in doing so.'" (p. 221)

A timeline in which the founding of the Patrol was prevented back at Alpha Point and a timeline in which the damage has been fixed so that Everard and Ben-Eytan can meet in 1920s Paris are two different timelines. They can meet in the second timeline only after, not before, they have deleted the first.

Second response:

"'...[the Danellians] gather an entirely different set of Founders...and that group works out the governing principles of what we here are calling Time Patrol II. That Patrol proceeds to carry out all the fixes that the original Patrol did, or enough of them...so that the world...closely resembles the one that we used to live in.'" (pp. 229-230)

So Everard and Ben-Eytan are sitting in Paris because there is a Time Patrol II at work, not because they will necessarily succeed in their mission.

Mr Silverberg, if you are anywhere near this blog, I am enjoying engaging with your story but must go out for an important meeting right now!

Multiverse: Gondwanaland II

Robert Silverberg, "Christmas in Gondwanaland" IN Greg Bear and Gardner Dozois, Editors, Multiverse: Exploring Poul Anderson's Worlds (Burton, MI, 2014), pp. 215-244.

Because of my interest in time travel, I turned first to the three Time Patrol stories in Multiverse. I was reluctant to continue reading "Christmas...," after its opening pages, because it seemed that its events could not happen. If it is impossible for a time traveler to proceed directly from the Gondwanaland of a "timeline 2" to the Prague, 1910, of a "timeline 1," then why continue to read about such impossible events?

I read the other short stories before returning to "Christmas...," then found that the explanation given ("We exist and we don't exist" (p. 218) etc) did not make sense. However, I continued to read because it is always interesting to try to unravel time travel stories. After appreciating Silverberg's description of Prague, I was surprised to find a different explanation. I do not yet know whether this second explanation is fully coherent but it is at least not immediately and obviously self-contradictory.

Although, in Patrol terminology, "deleted" timelines are said to be simply nonexistent, they nevertheless have a temporal relationship to each other and to whatever is regarded as the current timeline. Thus, there was an original timeline in which there was time travel and there were Danellians although there was not yet a Time Patrol. The Danellians knew that a temporal change, whether deliberate, accidental or random, could prevent their existence. To preserve that existence, they made one change, the establishment of a Patrol to prevent any further temporal changes, thus to guard a timeline leading to the Danellians.

The original timeline is said not to exist but can also be described as having existed before the Patrol timeline. In other words, it is in the past of a second temporal dimension. It cannot be accessed by time travelers going back and forth along the current timeline but nor did it at any stage cease to exist from the point of view of anyone living within it. Its denizens or inhabitants all lived from their births until their deaths and did not cease to exist at any intermediate moment.

Ben-Eytan tells Everard that the Danellians who were to attend the Founding Convocation, somehow knowing that the attack was coming, either exited before the attack or arranged not to be there in the first place. Either way, there are Danellians still at large. In any case, Ben-Eytan claims that human evolution and history will lead to Danellians whatever happens. It follows that the Danellians had some other reason to organize the Patrol! The Danellians want Ben-Eytan, Everard and three other agents to rectify events in Gondwanaland.

But, and this is the alternative explanation that I have been working my way back to, the Danellians have organized a Time Patrol II, with a Founding Convocation in an (unknown) other time and place, to ensure that, despite the catastrophe in Gondwanaland, the timeline remains indistinguishable from the one that had been guarded by the first Time Patrol! By trying to prevent the massacre in Gondwanaland, Everard etc will be working against Time Patrol II but they accept that their sworn duty is to restore their version of the timeline, including their version of the Patrol. But why do the Danellians want them to do this? Continuing to read will make everything either clearer or unclearer.

Multiverse: Gondwanaland

Robert Silverberg, "Christmas in Gondwanaland" IN Greg Bear and Gardner Dozois, Multiverse: Exploring Poul Anderson's Worlds (Burton, MI, 2014), pp. 215-244.

I have read some very good science fiction by Robert Silverberg (see image) but I always have problems with his time travel, sometimes big problems (see here). In Silverberg's Time Patrol story, Manse Everard and Daniel Ben-Eytan of the Time Patrol fly above a Gondwanaland on which every human being attending the Founding Convocation of the Patrol has been assassinated early during the Convocation. It follows that:

Everard and Ben-Eytan are in a timeline without a Patrol;
futureward along this timeline, a million years of history, unprotected by the Patrol, are altered out of recognition by time criminals;
therefore, by traveling futureward along this timeline, they cannot possibly arrive in a Prague, 1910, that they will recognize.

Yet they do precisely that. In Prague, they meet a team of colleagues with whom they will try to prevent the mass assassination. According to Anderson's stories, such a team would have to meet at a time before the event that they aim to prevent. If and only if they succeed will they be able to travel futureward into the familiar timeline protected by the Patrol.

Silverberg writes that, as Everard looked down on the scene of the assassination:

"...he knew that if the horrific event that had taken place in this convocation-hall at the dawn of time was allowed actually to happen, everything that he thought of as the history of the world was going to be altered." (p. 224)

But if he is in a timeline where "...the horrific event...had taken place...," then he is in a timeline where the horrific event had actually happened (he is not looking at a simulation) so he is in a timeline with an altered history. He can, if he travels back to a time before the horrific event, try to prevent that event but he cannot, from a time when he is looking at the accomplished event, travel futureward into his familiar timeline. And, if he could do that, then why would there be any need to prevent the horrific event?

I know that more than this is said in the story but I am deliberately focusing on one point at a time because everything gets too confused otherwise. Ben-Eytan says things like, "We exist and we don't exist." (p. 218) What does that mean? Each of us exists in a timeline in which we are born, live and die. Each of us does not exist in a timeline in which we are not born, the one exception (in the Time Patrol series) being that a time traveler might travel pastward, then return futureward into an altered timeline in which his birth has been prevented so that now he does exist in a timeline in which he was not born. But "We exist and we don't exist" is meaningless.

When Everard and Ben-Eytan were in Paris before traveling to Gondwanaland, Everard thought that Ben-Eytan's account:

"...didn't sound right. It was too glib. It sounded like the sort of thing that an instructor would tell a bothersome trainee at the Academy to shut him up when it was necessary to get on with the day's lesson. If the Patrol had been removed at its point of origin in the Cambrian, how could anything, anything at all, still be remotely the same here in twentieth century Paris? That bothered him very much." (p. 219)

Here, Silverberg states the problem with his own account. Saying that it bothers even Everard might be intended to reassure the readers that they are not alone in being bothered - if they are. A lot of readers don't seem to be bothered and even think that this sort of time travel narrative, e.g., in Doctor Who, makes perfect sense!

My impression of the Time Patrol Academy is that it is a place where instructors try to instruct trainees, not to shut them up. If this sort of question were dismissed glibly, then how would the Patrol function and what would the day's lesson be about?

Multiverse And The Time Patrol

Greg Bear and Gardner Dozois, Editors, Multiverse: Exploring Poul Anderson's Worlds (Burton, MI, 2014).

Three stories in Multiverse refer to the Time Patrol:

"A Slip in Time" by SM Stirling;
""Christmas in Gondwanaland" by Robert Silverberg;
"The Far End" by Larry Niven.

I partially discussed these stories in my first three posts about this new anthology. Of the three:

Stirling's is closest to being an authentic continuation, although I noted some differences from Anderson's approach;
Niven's is in Niven's style and, I think, is set in a different universe where there just happen to be beings called Danellians and an organization called the Time Patrol;
I have some problems with the time travel logic of all three stories and, so far, this has prevented me from continuing to read Silverberg's.

Any time travel story raises the questions:

Is the story internally consistent?
Does its plot follow from or contradict its premises?

If the story addresses the circular causality paradox, then it can be fully consistent. I have cited examples on the Logic of Time Travel blog. (See here.) If instead the story addresses the causality violation paradox, then life is more difficult. The first problem is that the most fundamental premises of the Time Patrol series are, first, that causality can be violated and, secondly, that an organization is necessary to prevent this from happening. Throughout history, behind the scenes, professionals equipped with far future technologies and weapons labor tirelessly to ensure that Socrates is executed in 399 BC, that William of Normandy conquers England in 1066 AD, that World War I begins in 1914 etc.

The second problem is that Anderson's rationale for this scenario is subtle and distinctive. New writers have two problems: how to maintain their own internal consistency and also how to remain consistent with what Anderson wrote. When thinking about the Patrol, we have to get used to thinking about alternative timelines and about how these timelines relate to each other. The question of whether and in what sense these timelines exist or are real is important but can sometimes be sidelined while we focus on their relationships. Thus,  "Delenda Est" presents three successive timelines:

a timeline without a particular Neldorian intervention;
a timeline with that intervention;
a timeline with the Neldorian intervention but also a Patrol counter-intervention.

I call these timelines "successive" because there is between them a temporal relationship of before and after, of first, second and third, and even of cause and effect.

Silverberg introduces the idea that the Patrol was founded at a conference way back on the original single continent, Gondwanaland. Alright so far but what happens next? Imagine two timelines:

(i) the familiar timeline guarded by the Patrol;
(ii) an alternative timeline in which every human being at that conference was assassinated while in Gondwanaland so that no Patrol was ever founded.

How can Time Patrolman Everard travel from the twentieth century of (i) to the Gondwanaland of (ii)? According to Anderson, he must travel back along (i) until a time before the assassinations, then forwards into (ii). According to Silverberg, he can jump directly from twentieth century (i) to Gondwanaland (ii). That is certainly inconsistent with Anderson and I cannot see that it is internally coherent either. 

Multiverse: First Impressions

Greg Bear and Gardner Dozois, Editors, Multiverse: Exploring Poul Anderson's Worlds (Burton MI, 2014).

To my considerable surprise, this new anthology contains no less than three Time Patrol stories:

"A Slip in Time" by SM Stirling;
"Christmas in Gondwanaland" by Robert Silverberg;
"The Far End" by Larry Niven.

So far today, I have read through "A Slip..." once, have read part of "Christmas..." and have yet to tackle "...End."

A while back, I set out my understanding of time travel here and here.

I am beginning to realize that not all of us have the same idea about what goes on in the Time Patrol universe! That is hardly surprising. I will discuss these three stories, then other items in Multiverse, over a number of posts, beginning with initial impressions.

SM Stirling writes in an afterword that Poul Anderson's Vault Of The Ages:

"...introduced me to the solidity of his world-building, something you could taste and smell and feel, and the way his characters inhabited their own reality, and also the mixture of hope and tragic stoicism that marked his universe." (p. 91)

There are four points here:

"...solidity..." I have tried to convey this by over-using the adjective "substantial."
"...taste and smell and feel..." Anderson often appealed to several senses in descriptive passages.
"...their own reality..." We feel that Anderson's fictitious futures are real places inhabited by people who experience their environments as concretely as we experience ours.
"...hope and tragic stoicism..." I have maybe highlighted this less but it is a recurrent theme -

- the Terran Empire will fall but there are hopeful signs that civilization will continue in some places or can be restored;
Time Patrolmen must endure history and know that, despite longevity treatment, each of them will die but nevertheless humanity will be transcended.

The Time Patrol's variable reality is subtle. At any moment of his existence, Manson Everard experiences one timeline and refers to others. Even though the others are said not to exist, they are related to each other successively and causally, e.g. in "Delenda Est":

timeline 1 in which Rome won the Second Punic War;
timeline 2 in which Neldorians intervened so that Carthage won that war;
timeline 3 in which the Patrol counter-intervened so that Rome won the war.

Neldorians traveled pastwards along timeline 1 and initiated timeline 2. Everard and Van Sarawak traveled pastwards along timeline 1, futurewards into timeline 2, then pastwards along timeline 2 and initiated timeline 3.

At each stage, a time traveler exists in only one timeline unless and until he initiates another timeline. Then, he exists in that second timeline unless and until he initiates a third. While in a "timeline 2," he cannot travel pastwards and arrive in a "timeline 1," yet this happens in "Christmas..." Everard and his companion travel pastwards from the twentieth century of a timeline in which the Patrol exists to the geological past of a timeline in which the Patrol was prevented from existing.

In "A Slip...," Manse and Wanda travel directly from the 2332 AD of a "timeline 1" to the 1926 AD of a "timeline 2." I think that, to arrive in a timeline 2, they would have had to travel pastwards along timeline 1 to some time before the moment of change, then futurewards again, as in "Delenda Est."

One last first impression for this post. In "Christmas...," Everard recalls:

"His rescue of Tom Nomura's girlfriend back in the early Pliocene, just as the Mediterranean was getting born." (p. 218)

But Tom, not Manse, saved Tom's girlfriend - unless Manse recalls a different timeline?

Strangers

One of Poul Anderson's collections is Strangers From Earth. One of Robert Silverberg's anthologies is Earthmen And Strangers. Silverberg argues that sf stories about human beings meeting aliens are really about the human need to cope with meeting strangers.

The nine stories in Earthmen And Strangers include "Life Cycle" by Poul Anderson and "Out of the Sun" by Arthur C Clarke. Both of these stories are set in the twilight zone of a Mercury still believed to turn only one side towards the Sun but also to librate, thus causing a local sunrise and sunset. Anderson's characters encounter Mercurian life whereas Clarke's encounter Solar life. Anderson's Terrestrial characters are accompanied by a feathered, owl-faced Martian who sounds familiar from other Anderson works.

Anderson devises an ingenious life cycle in which hive-minded Mercurian females inhabit the Twilight Zone but must risk the dangerous heat of Dayside in order to be fertilized, as they believe, by their gods. Since females past the age of fertility return to Dayside to die, it does not take long for the Earthmen to deduce that the females apparently going to their deaths are in fact going to be transformed by the heat into the males of their species.

There is an eerie moment when the Earthmen, disguised as females, having entered the Dayside temple, see the gods approach:

"...tall lizardlike forms, in burnished coppery scales, wreathed in silvery vapor - they glowed, walking dragons, but they did not burn. They advanced...Their beaks gaped..."
- Poul Anderson, "Life Cycle" in Robert Silverberg, Ed., Earthmen And Strangers (New York, 1966), pp. 91-116 AT p. 111.

Having visited Greystoke and Hadrian's wall yesterday, today we visited the Lake District town of Keswick where I bought Earthmen And Strangers as a second hand paperback in a charity shop.

Telepathy

I did not want to reread Poul Anderson's emotionally unpleasant telepathy short story, "Journeys End" (Going For Infinity, New York, 2002), but Sean Brooks reminded of this passage in it:

"The priest's mind had been like a well, a deep well under sun-speckled trees, its surface brightened with a few gold-colored autumn leaves... ...happy...serene...with so much strength under the gentleness." (p. 130)

That contrasts with other minds in the story. In fact, imagine the opposite of what I have just quoted and you will get what I mean about emotional unpleasantness.

I am not big on telepathy although James Blish, for many years my favorite sf author, presents perhaps half a dozen rationales for it. Anderson also rationalizes telepathy, for example when writing about the telepathic spy, Aycharaych.

This is an opportunity to make a brief comparison with one other sf author. Although Robert Silverberg is prolific, I have not read many of his works. I am big on time travel (and have a Logic of Time Travel blog) but I think that Silverberg's maybe half dozen novels on this theme either do not contribute anything new or, in the case of Up The Line, get it badly wrong. However, his telepathy novel, Dying Inside, is superb. I heard Mr Silverberg read an extract at a British Con and afterwards read a copy borrowed from a Public Library. If telepathy exists, this is what it is like. And there is one old guy who is like Anderson's priest. The hero reading his mind thinks that it is pure Zen.

Definitely an sf novel to give to people who don't read sf.