Two Old Stone Age Stories

HG Wells wrote two companion stories, "A Story Of The Stone Age" and "A Story Of The Days To Come." Poul Anderson, a Wellsian science fiction writer, wrote two Old Stone Age stories.

In "The Long Remembering," Cro-Magnons drive back Neanderthals. In "The Forest," the Forest, advancing north as the glaciers withdraw, drives before it the reindeer and the people who live on them. Thus, both stories describe major turning points.

In "The Forest," Thunder Horse, a hunter of the People, explores the advancing Forest, thinking that his people might move there to combine their skills with those of the Folk of the Forest whose numbers are mysteriously small. The Folk would welcome the People but Thunder Horse realizes that the People do not belong in the Forest whose Folk grovel before gods, even sacrificing their first born - which helps to explain their small numbers.

The People retreating before the encroaching Forest preserve their freedom at the expense of poverty on land bared by the glaciers. In his introduction, Anderson mentions innovations such as skis and dugout boats. The latter was conceptualized by Argnach-eskaladuan-torkluk "...while I, the I of my secret name, stood on a high mountain thinking strong thoughts," i.e., while he was abstracted, in "The Long Remembering" (Anderson, Homeward And Beyond, New York, 1976, p. 30). So "The Forest" should be read first.

The Forest

I have just reread Poul Anderson's "The Long Remembering" and will reread his "The Forest" next but will get a night's sleep and do some other things first. The two stories are connected.

(i) Both are reprinted in collections where each story is preceded by a short auctorial introduction. In his introductions to both these stories, Anderson mentions the relevant opinions of his friend the French prehistorian Francois Bordes.

(ii) "The Long Remembering" is set in the Old Stone Age, maybe twenty thousand years ago. In his introduction to "The Forest," Anderson mentions that the Magdalenian set of cultures "...occupied western and central Europe from perhaps 16, 000 to 9500 BC..." and "Especially in its later phases it was the culmination of the Old Stone Age..." (Anderson, All One Universe, New York, 1996, p. 162). Thus, "The Long Remembering" is set towards the end of this period.

(iii) In his introduction to "The Forest," Anderson mentions innovations including dugout boats. The hero of "The Long Remembering," riding a log across a river, thinks of hollowing a log to keep his feet dry so, fictitiously, he was that innovator.

(iv) "The Long Remembering" is science fiction because it begins and ends with a twentieth century man who recovers ancestral memories with modern laboratory equipment. "The Forest" is what? Not historical fiction. Prehistorical fiction? Or, as Anderson's introduction at least implies, science fiction because the far past is as much a part of the universe explored by science as are atoms, DNA and the galaxy?

The Long Remembering

The Shape Of Things To Come by HG Wells refers to
An Experiment With Time by JW Dunne which refers to The Time Machine by HG Wells.

Other works of fiction or literature referring to Dunne are:

The Gap In The Curtain by John Buchan;
Time And The Conways by JB Priestley;
Tom's Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce;
"The Dark Tower" by CS Lewis;
"The Long Remembering" by Poul Anderson.

 The hero of "The Long Remembering" vividly remembers and relives some experiences of one of his own Old Stone Age ancestors of maybe twenty thousand years ago. Thus, despite one reference to minds moving back along world lines, he does not, like Olaf Stapledon's Last Men, mentally travel into the past to occupy the body of a member of an earlier generation observing through that body's sense organs so this is not time travel.

In "The Long Remembering":

three and a half pages are narrated by Armand, a chemistry graduate assistant who has volunteered for a psychophysical experiment in which his body will lie unconscious for several hours while his mind scans an ancestor's brain for the same period although, while scanning, he will not remember having been Armand;

nine pages are narrated by Arghnach-eskaladuan-torkluk, He Who Casts The Rope Against The Horse, true name held secret from warlocks and wind ghosts, of the Men who are in conflict with the goblins;

one and a half pages are narrated by Armand who, after the experiment, knows that the Men were Cro-Magnons and the goblins were Neanderthals.

Thus, what could have been written as a fantasy of ghosts and goblins is instead a science fiction story about a new technique of historical research. Arghnach is a genius who:

while riding a log across a river, thinks of hollowing the log to sit inside it, thus keeping his feet dry;

reasons that his fathers drove off the "goblins" "...because they could think more widely and run more swiftly. Thus they could kill more game and raise more children." (Anderson, Homeward And Beyond, New York, 1976, p. 35);

plans to lead the Men to take more lands from the goblins - whereas Armand feels sorry for them.

Armand also has the problem that his twentieth century wife in her artificial environment compares unfavourably with Arghnach's wife who lives with sun, wind, weather and cookfire. He had described the experiment as Faustian and, at the end, pays the price.