ARC Letter

Back from Manchester. By popular request - well, by Sean M. Brook's request - I will quote in its entirety the text of the covering letter that accompanied the Advanced Reading Copy of SM Stirling's Theater Of Spies. Such promotional literature is enjoyable to read and imparts some information about the work in question. The letter legitimately compares the novel to Wonder Woman, to The Man In The High Castle and to James Bond, thus to three works that are widely known through their screen adaptations. Sf readers more naturally think of Poul Anderson's sf spy series about Dominic Flandry and also about Anderson's alternative history novels.

See also Interview With S.M. Stirling about Black Chamber.

The Letter
Dear Colleague,

With last year's Black Chamber, New York Times bestselling author S.M. Stirling set the stage for a new Roosevelt mythos and kicked off a series that had history buffs, sci-fi fans, and thriller readers all talking. In this alternate history series, Teddy Roosevelt is serving his third term as president right before WWI breaks out, and he's not afraid to use the Black Chamber, a secret spy network determined to keep America safe. THEATER OF SPIES (Ace Trade Paperback Original; $16.00; On-sale May 7, 2019), is the second installment, and it drops right back into the action with the badass agent Luz O'Malley and budding technical genius Ciara Whelan.

After foiling a German plot to devastate America's coastal cities from Boston to Galvestan, Luz and Ciara have earned a break. But before they can kick back in California, they discover a diabolical new weapon that could give the German Imperial Navy far too much control. Forced to go deep undercover and travel across a world at war, Luz and Ciara find themselves in Berlin attempting to ferret out the project's secrets. German agents are close on their trail, eager to get revenge - and Luz and Ciara's false identities can't hold up forever. From knife-and-pistol duels on airships, to the horrors of the poison-gas factories, to harrowing battles in the North Sea, the fight continues - with the world as the prize.

Wonder Woman meets The Man In The High Castle with a splash of James Bond in this thrilling series - besides the fascinating time period, it boasts stunning exotic locales, death-defying feats and battles, dangerous-yet-sexy agents of foreign powers, and the highest of stakes.

Please enjoy this copy of THEATER OF SPIES. I hope you will consider it for review/feature attention and summer reading roundups. S.M. Stirling is also available for interviews. We're happy to provide a copy of Black Chamber if you haven't read it. Thanks so much for your attention and happy reading!

Best,
Alexis Nixon, Assistant Director of Publicity    Lauren Horvath, Publicity

ABOUT S.M. STIRLING
S. M. Stirling is the author of many science fiction and fantasy novels. A former lawyer and an amateur historian, he lives in Santa Fe with his wife, Jan. Find out more about Stirling online at smstirling.com.

Well, after copying out all that, I am even more enthusiastic to continue reading the book.

20th Century Villains
WWI and II: Germans
Cold War: Russians
James Bond: SMERSH, then SPECTRE, also former Nazis and North American gangsters
Patrick McGoohan's The Prisoner: ambiguous
Stirling's retro-sf: back to WWI!

Draka Darkness

For recent blog comments by SM Stirling, see here.

The sub-genre of military sf is not my preferred reading. I value sf for new horizons and cosmic perspectives, not for high tech replays of World War II. However, good sf writers, notably Poul Anderson and SM Stirling, write good military sf - or maybe sometimes "good naval sf," if we transfer marine terminology to space combat: spaceships have Captains; space fleets have Admirals etc.

Clearly, Robert Heinlein approves of the society that he describes in Starship Troopers. Equally clearly, SM Stirling cannot possibly approve of what he describes in the Draka History! However - like Alan Moore depicting in merciless detail what a superhero-turned-villain would do to London -, Stirling is prepared to follow a fictional premise all the way to its horrific conclusion. Moore looks beyond London to a Golden Age whereas I suspect that Stirling's continuing series delves deeper into the Draka darkness.

We know from Marching Through Georgia that the Draka enslave populations and plan world conquest. In Under The Yoke (New York, 1989), they treat prisoners of war dishonorably. It is frankly sickening. I cannot bring myself to describe in detail what they do. Avoiding details, defeated enemy leaders are not respected but paraded, derided and shot. The Draka deliberately eschew any humane values.

Security Strategos Vashon, remembering such a victory spectacle, reflects:

"...that had been a good time. A time to be at one with the Race, when they could relax from the long years of grinding effort and feel the pride of a great accomplishment. Limitless vistas of power and possibility opening out before them..." (p. 55)

Sounds good? Sure, if our "Race" is the human race and if "power" does not mean subjugation.

Vashon thinks that it is a "...self-evident lie that all men were created equal." (p. 57) We are unequal in abilities but can be equal before the law. Alfie Rouse was hanged not for murdering anyone important but for burning to death an unknown, and still unidentified, hitchhiker. The law would have treated Rouse no worse if he had assassinated the Prime Minister whereas serfs (euphemism for slaves) who attack Draka are impaled as examples.

A ten year old Citizen girl, armed with a knife, thinks that her mother should punish two uppity serfs. Her mother gives her the advice quoted in the second image. Sound, pragmatic advice to a slave-owner, no doubt. But not all Draka give orders that they know will be disobeyed. Serfs can become trusted domestic servants and friends, albeit still unsalaried and unfree. Individual compassion is possible even within an oppressive system. See Schindler.

Systematic cruelty often brings out the worst in those who climb one step up the ladder, e.g., serfs becoming security guards. That this does not have to be the case is shown by Yasmin who protects fellow serfs and deflates a bullying guard. Because she is owned by a powerful family, she can strike the guard but he cannot risk striking her back...

When the ten year old girl has become old enough to think about clothes, she also wants to buy a serf of her own with money saved from her allowance. Imagine bringing up a child to think like that! And what chance does she have of learning to think any differently? If only one global generation could be brought up free from the "muck of ages..." I believe that adults should tell children, "This is what I think but you might think differently when you have learned more." But this means that I disagree with all the parents who want their children's education to include religious instruction. And it would also be wrong for me to try to enforce my view through legislation. Intolerant secularism is no better than intolerant belief.

I have passed over two instances of torture, both enjoyed by Draka witnesses. Finnish Resistance fighters, waging all out war against the Draka invaders, call them "...the snakes..." (p. 40), a denial of their humanity - appropriate in the circumstances. We, in our timeline, do not face the Draka but do face comparable threats, even including neo-Nazis. Stirling simply presents a worst case scenario for the history that he and his readers live in.

I am too young to remember World War II but did attend three different talks by Holocaust survivor Leon Greenman, who stayed with us when he spoke at Lancaster Town Hall. Leon ended one question-and-answer session by saying, "If anyone here is a Nazi, do not do it! You will become a monster, hated by your fellow men." In the Draka timeline, some European refugees escape to Britain... (Ketlan and my daughter leafleted every afternoon showing of Schindler's List to build for the Greenman public meeting, which filled a large hall to capacity. Later, Holocaust deniers attacked and damaged Leon's house so I got my union branch to donate to his defense fund.)

In our timeline, EP Thompson wrote The Making Of The English Working Class and Eric Hobsbawm wrote The Age Of Revolution, The Age Of Capital, The Age Of Empire and The Age Of Extremes. In the Draka timeline, EP Hobsdown wrote The Age Of Domination.

A possible proofreading point: on p. 17, Andrew von Shrakenberg seems to change his name to Alfred and back again?

It is Wednesday. I am reading new works by Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman and drafting this post. As yet, I have read only a small part of Under The Yoke so there will be more posts about this novel. Stirling shows us oppressors who are credible human beings but who have become as accustomed to oppressing the serfs that outnumber them as we are to using twenty first century technology: unsettling but plausible.

Strategos Cynthia Carstairs informs Chiliarch Denford de Fourneault:

"...Security tells me there's another of those loony cults running through the factory compounds, claiming all the Draka are being spirited away by their master Satan."
-SM Stirling, Marching Through Georgia (New York, 1991), pp. 210-211.

So many of the Draka have gone to war that they must have been spirited away... Carstairs contemptuously refers to a "loony cult" but the factory serfs are deliberately isolated and kept in ignorance. Consequently, they can explain external events only by recourse to superstition: an appalling regime but one that the Draka must now maintain for their own survival.

Dedication And Quotations

The Michelson-Morley experiment in our timeline becomes "'...the Jawaheer-Morley experiment...'" in the Angrezi Raj.
-SM Stirling, The Peshawar Lancers (New York, 2003), p. 155.

The Raj is in a timeline where history diverges but not physics. The same discoveries are made but by different scientists or in different circumstances.

Poul Anderson's name appears twice in my edition of The Peshawar Lancers although not in the text. First, the dedication is:

In memoriam:
To Poul Anderson
1926-2001

This is entirely appropriate. Several aspects of this novel, not least the colorful descriptions, are worthy of Poul Anderson.

Secondly, Anderson is quoted commenting on Stirling's Island in the Sea of Time.

Chapter One of ...Lancers begins, quite properly, on p. 1 of the text. It is preceded, after the cover, by twelve unnumbered pages. Let us number them i-xii.

pp. i-iii are quotations about some of Stirling's novels.
p. iv lists Other Books by S.M. Stirling.
p. v is the title page.
p. vi is publishing information.
p. vii is the dedication.
p. viii is blank.
p. ix is Acknowledgments.
p. x is blank.
p. xi is a short verse, unattributed.
p. xii is blank.

p. i is headed:

PRAISE FOR S.M. STIRLING
The Peshawar Lancers

p. ii is Islands in The Sea of Time

p. iii is Against the Tide of Years and On the Oceans of Eternity

On p. ii, Anderson is quoted as saying:

"A perfectly splendid story...endlessly fascinating...solidly convincing."

Over pp. i-iii, Harry Turtledove describes Stirling's research as tight, meticulous and impeccable. Library Journal also describes it as impeccable. 

The extent of Stirling's research is shown by the number of italicized non-English language words in his text. I have stopped googling them because this was interrupting the narrative too much. 

CONAN - BLOOD OF THE SERPENT by SM Stirling

We have just reread and posted about Conan The Rebel by Poul Anderson. It has been brought to our attention, editorially, that SM Stirling has written Conan: Blood Of The Serpent. 

Since this blog recognizes SM Stirling as a worthy successor of Poul Anderson, we have ordered a copy of Blood Of The Serpent on eBay and expect its arrival early next week. Reading it will be interrupted by the monthly visit to Andrea above the Old Pier Bookshop.

We gather that Stirling's novel is set early in Conan's life. It should therefore precede Anderson's novel and probably also Conan's relationship with Belit.

Anderson and Stirling have also both contributed to the Man-Kzin Wars sub-series of Larry Niven's Known Space History. We can follow these two authors' contributions to other authors' series without necessarily reading any other instalments of those other series.

Quite a while ago now, I was rereading and posting in detail about Poul Anderson's Rogue Sword. However, this was interrupted by problems with the computer. When a working computer had been restored, I had lost my focus on Rogue Sword and instead began to post about the Ythrian stories in Anderson's Technic History. It might be time to return to Rogue Sword but time will tell.

See:

The Merman's Children In Context

More Reflections On The Blog

result of blog search for "Lucas"

SM Stirling

See here and here.

We discuss SM Stirling's works on this blog because:

aspects of Stirling's and Poul Anderson's works are comparable (see the above links);

Stirling contributed to Anderson's Time Patrol series;

like Anderson, Stirling has contributed to Jerry Pournelle's CoDominium future history, one of several such series that in some ways parallel Anderson's Technic History;

Stirling has developed alternative histories further than Anderson did.

I expect shortly to begin reading the first of the two CoDominium novels co-written by Pournelle and Stirling. While discussing such works, it is usually possible to keep touching base with Poul Anderson and other future historians.

I should also track down Anderson's single contribution to the CoDominium History.

Anderson And Stirling

Science Fiction Weekly on SM Stirling's Dies The Fire
"The Willamette Valley of Oregon and the wilds of Idaho are depicted with loving care, each swale and tree rendered sharply. The smell of burning cities, the aftermath of carnage, the odor and sweat of horses - Stirling grounds his action in these realities with the skill of a Poul Anderson...."

Science Fiction Weekly on SM Stirling's A Meeting At Corvallis
"Stirling manages to fashion a narrative that acknowledges that humanity is a creature of both soul and body, heart and mind, lust and sacrifice, much in the manner of Poul Anderson."

Detailed, multi-sensory descriptions are indeed a feature of both Anderson's and Stirling's prose. Stirling shows the struggle for physical survival After the Event in the Nantucket Trilogy and After the Change in the Emberverse series. Both recognize that we also live by myths. See here and here. Where does Everard quote Stalin asking derisively how many divisions the Pope commands?

"Man Remakes Himself"?

Four future histories:

The Shape of Things to Come by HG Wells

Last and First Men by Olaf Stapledon

the Foundation series by Isaac Asimov

the Psychotechnic History by Poul Anderson

- ask whether mankind can change itself for the better. ("MAN REMAKES HIMSELF" is a chapter heading in Last and First Men.) CS Lewis, in his Ransom Trilogy, replies that, although individuals can change themselves with divine help, any attempt by mankind to change itself will consist in some men controlling, and ultimately destroying, others. Lewis adds that any such project will be demonically inspired. Without necessarily sharing either Lewis' theology or his demonology, we can take sides in this debate:

Incidentally, I think that was the point in GENESIS -- that 'perfecting' human beings would essentially abolish them.

-SM Stirling in the combox of this blog (see here)

Six sf writers and one big question. Stirling refers to Poul Anderson's single-volume future history, Genesis, not to the First Book of Moses although the latter is also relevant, particularly to Lewis' world-view. (We often find that Anderson comes onto the list more than once.)

We, editorially speaking, share Lewis' concern for human moral development but believe that humanity has risen from animality, not fallen from a divinely created Paradise. If mankind has come into existence by changing his environment and also himself in the process, then why cannot he change himself further? He can, but the timescale is important. See SM Stirling's most recent comment here.

I prefer cooperation to conflict and argue that the former is essential to humanity but have had to accept SM Stirling's point, also made in the combox, that the earliest human beings cooperated in order not only to hunt more efficiently but also to engage in conflict with other groups of human beings.

The phrase, "human nature," is often used as a cliche to mean something unchanging and, in that sense, I do not believe that "human nature" exists. We are defined by change, not by anything unchanging, but that does not mean that we can quickly and easily change either ourselves or our society for the better. Obviously not.

Anderson enters the discussion a third time. The telepathic Dreamer offers to remove the time travellers' neuroses:

"'No, thanks,' said Belgotai. 'I like my little neuroses.'"

-Poul Anderson, "Flight to Forever" IN Anderson, Past Times (New York, 1984), pp. 207-288 AT CHAPTER FIVE, p. 261.

I don't. I would accept the Dreamer's help provided that he was able to explain clearly what he was doing. 

Mountain Valley And October First

SM Stirling, The Sword Of The Lady (New York, 2009).

Rudi explains Montival as "Mountain Valley" on p. 267 of Chapter Ten.

A few significant phrases have appeared in the text:

"game of thrones" (obvious);
"Chaos and Old Night..." (Milton);
"Principalities and powers..." (St Paul);
"'October first...'" (p. 286)

Why do I regard that date as significant? Maybe it isn't. I read the remainder of the page carefully but found no reference to lateness. See here.

In some sf, a superior technology intervenes and human beings must respond to events or circumstances beyond their understanding or control:

in Poul Anderson's The Avatar, an older civilization has distributed T-machines throughout the universe;

in SM Stirling's Lords of Creation books, a superior technology has terraformed Venus and Mars;

in Stirling's Nantucket-Emberverse series, some mysterious malevolent entities have caused the Event and the Change;

in Fred Hoyle's October The First Is Too Late, someone has generated a composite Earth with Greece in Socrates' period, France in World War I, Britain and Hawaii in 1966, the US apparently pre-1750 but really in the post-catastrophe fourth millennium, Mexico about 6966, Russia still uncivilized, China after the Sun has melted and fused the Terrestrial surface etc.

And sometimes it is natural events without any interventions by intelligent beings that change humanity or its circumstances, e.g.:

In The Days Of The Comet by HG Wells;
Brain Wave by Poul Anderson; 
The Peshawar Lancers by SM Stirling.

Worlds Within Worlds

Two Observations About Alternative Histories

(i) Persons and events that are fictions in one history may be realities in another. Thus, Poul Anderson's A Midsummer Tempest is set in the seventeenth century of an Earth where Shakespeare was the Great Historian, not the Great Dramatist. Figures as diverse as Sherlock Holmes, Huckleberry Finn, Winston Churchill, Nicholas van Rijn and the Prince Rupert of the Rhine from the Shakespearean history congregate in the Old Phoenix, an inn between the worlds.

(ii) Every work of fiction is set in an alternative history, one that did not contain the author imagining its events. For example, SM Stirling imagined one of his Draka:

"...loose in our world. Or at least something very like our timeline; one without an S.M. Stirling, who imagined the Draka." (Drakas!, p. 284)

DC Comics had fun with a multiverse including:

Earth 2, inhabited by the original versions of the superheroes;
Earth 1, inhabited by the current versions of the superheroes;
Earth X, conquered by Nazis resisted by super-powered Freedom Fighters;
other Earths inhabited by superheroes bought from former competitors;
Earth Prime, inhabited by comic book writers mentally tuning in to the other Earths.

In Drakas!, edited by SM Stirling, Anne Marie Talbott contributes a story in which Stirling's Draka character Gwen crosses to an Earth where Drakas are fictions and indeed seems to meet the author of this story.

A World That Wasn't

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

In fiction, there are three kinds of history: past, future and alternative. Much of Poul Anderson's fiction is set in the past or the future with a smaller number of works set in alternative timelines, including one series with magical instead of scientific technology in the twentieth century.

Later science fiction writers, Harry Turtledove and SM Stirling, have specialized in the third kind of history, each generating several lengthy series set in divergent timelines. Worlds That Weren't is an anthology of original alternative history stories by four different authors. SM Stirling comments in his afterword, pp. 149-152, that "Alternative history has many uses..." (p. 149) and that one such use is to restore the terra incognita that our twentieth century banished from Earth and even from Mars and Venus. An even more fundamental use is to remind us that our timeline, in which an asteroid killed the dinosaurs but no such catastrophe has as yet killed humanity, is just one of many possibilities.

We know of Stirling's Angrezi Raj timeline from 1878, the point of divergence, to 2025. In "Shikari in Galveston," Eric King and Ranjit Singh, both of the Peshawar Lancers, are in North America during the reign of Queen-Empress Elizabeth II (1989-2005). In The Peshawar Lancers, their sons, Athelstane King and Narayan Singh, also both of the Peshawar Lancers, are in India at the end of the reign of King-Emperor John II (2005-2025) and at the beginning of the reign of King-Emperor Charles III (2025- ). Narayan, but not Eric, survives into the later narrative. Eric never suspects that his daughter, Athelstane's sister, will become Queen-Empress.

These two works, set in different continents, are separated by a generation and thus are well on their way towards becoming a fictitious history. I have yet to read "Shikari..." to its conclusion - but it must compete for reading time since I have been drawn back into Stieg Larsson's trilogy!

Poul Anderson And SM Stirling

I am informed that a character in Conquistador by SM Stirling is a Poul Anderson fan. Further, this novel shares a premise with a Poul Anderson short story. These are adequate reasons to discuss the novel on this blog but first I must buy and read a copy.

There have been two previous Anderson-Stirling connections.

(i) Both The Game Of Empire by Anderson and The Peshawar Lancers by Stirling refer to Kipling. This got me to read Kim for the first time.

(ii) Sf writers including Anderson cameo in the Prologue to Stirling's In The Courts Of The Crimson Kings. This prompted me to reflect on fictional versions of Mars in general and on Anderson's several versions in particular.

Comparisons with Wells, Stapledon and Heinlein are productive and Stirling is now definitely on this list.

Fiction, History And Evil

The previous two posts (here and here) and their comments demonstrate that fantastic fiction, in this case by Poul Anderson and SM Stirling, is able to facilitate reflection on real history.

The works discussed also highlight a point of comparison between Anderson and Stirling:

"Compared to [the Draka] the Nazis were nothing, cheap reproductions from a cut-rate plant, a child's flattery, a slave's imitation."
-SM Stirling, Under The Yoke (New York, 1989), p. 233.

Contemplating the Draka while remembering the cannibal Satanists of Stirling's The Peshawar Lancers, Anderson fans have to acknowledge that Stirling is way ahead of Anderson in creating truly evil villains! But Stirling also shows the Draka as credible human beings, loving their children, enjoying friendship and companionship, appreciating art and beauty - and raping or torturing "serfs," defined as any human beings that are not Draka.

Count Ignatieff, the Satanist high priest, believes that, after death, he will enter Hell, not as one of the damned but as one of their torturers, forever eating his enemy's livers and drinking their blood. I think that Ignatieff and the Draka have to be morally the worst characters anywhere in fiction?

Water On Venus

SM Stirling, The Sky People (New York, 2006).

Stirling writes "...Venusian..." (p. 11), not "Venerian."

The image shows the planet Venus above water on Earth. One version of the goddess Venus rose from the sea. There used to be an idea that there was a lot of water on the planet Venus, the opposite of the truth.

Olaf Stapledon: sea-dwelling Venerians;
Edgar Rice Burroughs: Pirates Of Venus;
CS Lewis: an oceanic Venus, "Perelandra;"
Robert Heinlein: frog-like, swamp-dwelling Venerians;
Ray Bradbury: heavy rain on Venus;
Poul Anderson: an inhabited oceanic Venus in one story and an uninhabited dry Venus in another.

Also, the colonized Venus of Anderson's Time Patrol universe is one factor that does date that series historically. SM Stirling, implausibly, presents the Venus of the Time Patrol timeline as having been terraformed. (Stirling's Time Patrol story is discussed here.)

The Venus of Stirling's 2006 retro novel has an Arctic supercontinent and an Antarctic continent with a chain of islands between (p. 8).

ERB And SM Stirling

In his two "Lords of Creation" novels, SM Stirling follows his ERBian model to the letter.

Premise: both Mars and Venus are humanly habitable and inhabited.

Rationale (ERB did not need one): they were terraformed.

So far, so good. But Stirling goes further. The heroes of both his novels marry native princesses! This is at least possible if, as premised, the natives are not merely humanoid but fully human.

Stirling takes another step. He must combine his premise that the terraformed Mars was seeded from Earth with the tradition that Mars is an older planet. Simple:

"Although Mars was sterile until terraformed by the ancients two hundred million years ago, life on the Red Planet is, in a very real sense, 'older' than on Earth. It lacks the catastrophic mass extinction that followed the Yucatan asteroid impact of 65,000,000 mya..." (...Crimson Kings, p. 153)

Neat. I should not have to use that word but I am reduced to it.

"As a result of the uninterrupted evolutionary history, apart from a few subsequently introduced mammals, the lineages of most Martian species run back without interruption to the most successful of the late-Cretaceous introductions, birds, and the closely related therapod dinosaurs." (ibid.)

So they are older.

Poul Anderson occupies an intermediate stage: more scientifically oriented and accurate than ERB but not retro-ing like Stirling.

"Beautiful country..."

When reading a collaborative novel, I do not often wonder which author wrote which passage. However:

Poul Anderson deliberately appealed to three or more senses in descriptive passages;
SM Stirling learned such techniques from Anderson;
in Jerry Pournelle's and SM Stirling's Go Tell The Spartans, we find -


"'Beautiful country,' he said contentedly..."
-Jerry Pournelle and SM Stirling, The Prince (New York, 2002), p. 706.

In the following passage:

tall, gold-green grass;
dense wild rose and semibamboo ("semi-" because Sparta is a terraformed planet);
big fire-gold and scarlet maples;
fallen leaves muffling hoof beats;
afternoon light making the ground a flaming carpet;
hollow sounds indicating kilometers of giant caves below;
springs and pools;
on the horizon, gleaming peaks higher and longer than the Himalayas;
chill clean air, "...smelling of green and rock..." (ibid.);
good game country with imported pheasant, duck, rabbit and venison.

Yes! It is worthwhile to pause and analyze such passages.

Soap Bubbles

(Posting was interrupted by an always enjoyable visit to Preston.)

I am going to disagree with some of SM Stirling's characters although not necessarily with SM Stirling!

"'...are you sure this isn't our California, a long time ago?...And we could all go pop, like a soap bubble, if we change the things that made us.'"
-SM Stirling, Conquistador (New York, 2003), p. 26.

I discuss such issues on the Logic of Time Travel blog.

If X, born in timeline A, travels to timeline B and prevents the birth of X in timeline B, it follows that, in timeline B, X is not born, does not grow up and does not become a time traveler. However, it does not follow that the X who was born in timeline A, traveled to timeline B and prevented the birth of X in timeline B will cease to exist after preventing the birth of X in timeline B. There is no reason why X should cease to exist and there is a reason why he should continue to exist, namely the conservation laws.

Of course, scientific laws are empirical generalizations, not logical necessities. Thus, cessation of existence is logically possible at any time but there is no specific reason for the cessation of X's existence. What happens when a birth is prevented? Does the person who would have been born exist into adulthood and then cease to exist? No, he does not exist in the first place.

Christiansen thinks that time travel is self-contradictory (p.115). It is not but contradictory conclusions are often drawn from it. An effect (a time traveler's arrival) preceding its cause (the time traveler's departure) is not contradictory. However, an effect followed within a single timeline both by departure and by prevention of departure is contradictory. Several consistent scenarios allow for time travel. Poul Anderson's Time Patrol is a borderline case.

Marses

SM Stirling, In The Courts Of The Crimson Kings (New York, 2008).

"Martians called their planet Zho'da..." (p. 26).

Did they? We must take SM Stirling's word for it! I know Martians who call their planet Barsoom and others, speaking Solar, not Martian, who call it Malacandra. But there are many races of Martians... CS Lewis casually informs us that HG Wells' Martians are very different from the real Martians. Of course they are!

Zho'dans have several similarities to Barsoomians:

airships;
canals;
"...traveling silks and furs..." (p. 27);
swords;
an ancient civilization;
monarchical government;
human form.

(A longer list than I realized when I started to write it.)

How would Terrestrials seem to Martians? We should be able to deduce this but, of course, we need an imaginative writer, in this case SM Stirling, to tell us:

"'...they ooze. They're positively slick with water and mucus most of the time. You can feel it on their breath.'" (p. 24)

Earth is wet, Mars is dry... We should have been able to deduce that for ourselves.

How many Martian races does Poul Anderson present?

The War Of Two Worlds
Shield
"Duel on Syrtis" and its sequel
The Technic History
Are Martians mentioned in the Psychotechnic History? (I cannot remember off hand.) (Later: They are. See here.)

Overlapping Trilogies

(I have discovered that "Man-Kzin Wars IX" looks like "Man-Kzin War Six" if it is typed in lower case without punctuation or spaces: mankzinwarsix.)

"Iron" by Poul Anderson is in The Man-Kzin Wars (1988).

"The Children's Hour" by Jerry Pournelle & SM Stirling is in Man-Kzin Wars II (1989).

"The Asteroid Queen" by JE Pournelle & SM Stirling and "Inconstant Star" by Poul Anderson are in Man-Kzin Wars III (1990).

"In The Hall Of The Mountain King" by Jerry Pournelle & SM Stirling is in Man-Kzin Wars V (1992).

"Pele" by Poul Anderson is in Man-Kzin Wars IX (2002).

Each of these trilogies should be read in the order of publication. However, how do they relate to each other chronologically? I think that "In The Hall Of The Mountain King" precedes "Inconstant Star." However, any such judgment is subject to further reading/rereading and to other readers' comments.

Future histories are a subject of endless research.

Daggers In Darkness

SM Stirling, Daggers In Darkness (Eric Flint's Ring of Fire Press, 2021).

I was involved in proof-reading this novel but have not reread it since its publication. I have recently acquired a copy.

This blog regards SM Stirling as a worthy colleague and successor of Poul Anderson. Anderson wrote some alternative history fiction. Certain other authors, SM Stirling, Eric Flint and Harry Turtledove, have specialized in this sf sub-genre. I have not read widely in it. 

Its title page describes Daggers In Darkness as "Book Five of the Tales from the Black Chamber."

It is my practice to post about a work while (re)reading it so this will probably happen with Daggers In Darkness. 

Real People And A Setting Sun

In historical fiction, we sometimes read about real people in fictional situations:

in Ian Fleming's From Russia, With Love, Serov telephones G, the fictional Head of SMERSH;

Poul Anderson's Manse Everard meets Hiram of Tyre.

In alternative history fiction, we sometimes read about real people in fictional histories. See Prince Rupert, Disraeli and Prince William (here).

I mention this because at least two more historical figures show up in unexpected circumstances in SM Stirling's Theater Of Spies. I say no more now. No images or Wiki links.

Paolo Roberto is not the only public figure to have played himself in a film. Sometimes the hero of one set of narratives is a villain in another.

Looking back at Prince William, reminded me of:

"...the halls of sunken Ys."
-SM Stirling, The Protector's War (New York, 2006), CHAPTER EIGHT, p. 236.

- and:

"...the sun was already setting. It made a path of blood and fire across the water, stretching clouds like hot gold and molten copper along the horizon."
-op. cit., p. 237.

Pure Poul Anderson...

And pure SM Stirling, of course!