The Little Monster IV

Poul Anderson, "The Little Monster" IN Anderson, Past Times (New York, 1984).

A million and a half years ago, at night, Jerry Parker saw strange constellations, heard a roar, yelps, a scream and wings and thought:

"If nothing of him came home, except his clean-picked bones..." (p. 142)

We think, "If he died that long ago, then even his bones would not survive until his 'home' year (which we learn on the following page is 1995)," because we do not yet know that the rules of time travel in this story entail that his body, dead or alive, will be yanked back to its exact spatio-temporal departure point after thirty hours in the far past.

There is a stark contrast between Jerry's memories of home:

"...gentle countrysides, gleaming cities, aircars murmuring through the heavens..." (p. 143)

- and "...dry savannah under a cruelly bright sun, 1,500,000 B.C...." (p. 149)

- especially since Anderson also presents the point of view of the pre-human inhabitants of that savannah as I tried to convey in the previous post.

"Aircars" are a ubiquitous feature of Anderson's fictitious futures although they do not usually fly as close to the present as 1995. This 1995 is now what I call a "past future" like some more famous ones: 1984 and 2001 - Dan Dare's first adventure was dated 1999. But Anderson's History of Technic Civilization is safely set further in the future than the expected life spans of his readers and his Time Patrollers, although they know the entire history of the twentieth and twenty first centuries, wisely do not refer to any of it in detail until after the events have occurred from the point of view of Anderson's readers.

The Little Monster III

Poul Anderson, "The Little Monster" IN Anderson, Past Times (New York, 1984).

The narrative alternates between the points of view of the time traveling twelve year old Jerry Parker and Pithecanthropus. Do we read the pov of one representative Pith or do they have some sort of collective consciousness? Or did that distinction even exist back then?

We read telegrammic phrases expressing immediate sensory experiences:

"First light. Wind cold over skin...

"Lion smell!" (pp. 146-147)

Next, we have a memory without, as yet, a tense for the verb:

"Last night lion prowl outside thorn wall." (p. 147)

The Pith have constructed a shelter of thorns, enclosing a tree which mothers can climb with cubs if the lion penetrates the thorn wall. Males, "Hes" (p. 147), have spears. The lion is known to be "Helion" (ibid.) by its mane. On first reading, I misread "Helion" not as "He-lion" but as "Hel-ion," thus as a name, like that of the Greek god, Helios. The lion is big but limping which is why it might hunt man.

Hes preserve Old Father's skull on a pole, howl, dance and ask him for help. They form a defensive circle, hes enclosing half-cubs enclosing shes and cubs, spears outward, when a pride of lions approaches but the pride passes sleepily. The man band must wait until a mastodon has left the water hole before it can drink, then, guided by the sight of descending vultures, goes with sharpstones to investigate the lions' kill but must retreat as hyenas approach. The band eats insects and seeks small game but remains hungry.

Everything changes. Attacked by the lion, they see the lion itself attacked and forced to retreat by the stranger with fire brands and a fire-hardened spear. The stranger has gone (thirty hours have elapsed) but the ashes of his fire remain warm and can be blown back to life. The fire can be fed and used to harden spears - they saw him do it. Now they can fight lions and hyenas and kill big game. Old Father sent stranger and stranger was Old Father? - who gave holy fire which they will never let die.

Jerry does not know that he has caused a revolution and Pithecanthropus have almost created Christianity.

The Little Monster II

Poul Anderson, "The Little Monster" IN Anderson, Past Times (New York, 1984).

The title of this story is ironic. A time traveling Boy Scout thinks of Pithecanthropus as "'...those little monsters...'" (p. 161) and they think of him as "...little monster..." (p. 152). And both opinions have to be reconsidered.

The previous post introduced the twelve year old (American) Jerry Parker and the (Spanish) physicist and engineer, Antonio Viana. Now it can be revealed that Jerry is Antonio's nephew, visiting his uncle's time projection lab while on holiday. But how is Jerry accidentally projected into the Pliocene Period, about one and a half million years ago?

The technicians working on the projector had closed the main circuits but disconnected the fail-safe devices and had not told Antonio this. Meanwhile, Antonio let Jerry enter the projector and Jerry, neglecting to ask permission before touching anything, closed the door...

Jerry must endure thirty hours in the Pliocene. However, although "...horrified..." (p. 146) to see the door close, Antonio and the technicians are not obliged to wait thirty hours for Jerry's return because every return is to almost the moment of departure. Looking in through the window of the cylindrical steel projector, immediately after the door has closed, they might have seen a dead body or even bare bones but they in fact see Jerry still alive. Meanwhile, we have read about his thirty hours.

He is in "...1,500,000 B.C., give or take enough millennia that there was no possibility of sending him help." (p. 149)

Uncle Antonio had explained that arrival dates are so uncertain that "'...no two expeditions have landed even within thousands of years of each other.'" (p. 145)

So Jerry is right to think that no help can be sent but seems to forget that there would in any case be no time even to think of sending help. His body, alive or dead, will return immediately after its departure.

That figure of thousands of years between arrivals in the past is an estimate. The expeditions take astronomical instruments but the night sky changes considerably over time. The hero of Anderson's time travel novel, There Will Be Time, carries a small but elaborate instrument that scans star positions, even through an overcast, then tells him his exact date and time of arrival, thus sparing him wasted life-span casting about for his intended destination. But Jack Havig has complete freedom of movement in time, unlike Antonio's anthropologists.

The Little Monster

Poul Anderson, "The Little Monster" IN Anderson, Past Times (New York, 1984), pp. 142-163.

This one-off story, originally published in Way Out, edited by Roger Elwood, 1974, describes a time traveling Boy Scout's encounter with Pithecanthropus. This puts it in the same category as the two Technic History stories in which teenage colonists of an extrasolar planet encounter winged Ythrians.

Jerry Parker is twelve in 1995. The future world of 1995 has:

aircars;
telecasts from Mars;
Mitsuhito's theory of temporal relativistics;
Antonio Viana's engineering application of Mitsuhito's theory;
thus, the new science of Temporalistics.

Every time travel story must clarify its premises, including any limitations on time travel, which help to avoid paradoxes. In this story:

"time projection" involves n-dimensional forces and the warping of world lines;
Viana's lab is a small part of an international project;
it is not yet possible "'...to enter the past at a later date than about one million B.C.'" (p. 144);
the temporal inertia effect prevents travel either to the recent past or to the future and "'...causes great uncertainty about arrival dates'" (p. 145);
time travelers are projected from, not in, a steel cylinder (whereas, in Anderson's "Flight to Forever," the cylindrical time projector carries the travelers in it while HG Wells' Time Machine carries his Time Traveler on it);
anything sent into the past automatically returns "'...after thirty hours [in the past], because of built-up stresses in the continuum'" (ibid.);
it returns to almost the moment of departure and also to the same place even if it moved elsewhere in the past (again unlike the vehicles in "Flight to Forever" and The Time Machine);
time travelers cannot bring anything back with them, except the matter that they have breathed, eaten or drunk because this is held by intermolecular forces.

There is far more in any Poul Anderson novel or collection than can be realized by anyone who merely reads it through once from cover to cover. This single story presents a time travel scenario to rival that of the Time Patrol series and will require more than one post to discuss it fully.