Interplanetary SF

One way to write interplanetary sf is to catalogue the Solar System. Characters travel to the Moon, Mars, Venus etc. Robert Heinlein's Scribner Juveniles begin with Rocket Ship Galileo about going to the Moon. His Future History begins with The Man Who Sold The Moon although the first four stories in that collection are about different technological advances pre-space flight.

By the time Poul Anderson was writing sf, the Solar System was taken for granted. His Technic History began with interstellar exploration although a later-written story set earlier describes the exploration of the outer Solar System. Larry Niven's Known Space future history begins with exploration of Mercury, Venus, Pluto, Mars and technological advances on Earth, to be followed by colonization not of Mars but of the asteroids. (Which is the more substantial future history, the Technic History or Known Space? I have my opinion.)

Two trilogies: 

the volumes of CS Lewis' Ransom Trilogy are set on Mars, Venus and Earth;

the first three volumes of SM Stirling's Lords Of Creation series are set on Venus, Mars and -? (I don't know. I haven't read it yet!)

There is always something new.

Gap

Although I have both editions of Poul Anderson's The Broken Sword, I have not been reading them in parallel. However, I wanted to check whether that anachronistic term, "dimensions," had been in the original text so here goes:

"Skafloc thought that the lands of the ice giants, like those of gods and demons, must not lie on earth at all, but in strange dimensions reached only by spells, out near the edge of all things where creation plunged into primal chaos."

-Poul Anderson, The Broken Sword (London, 2014), 22, p. 167.

"...strange dimensions..." is there but the rest of the sentence has changed. 

"...the edge of all things where creation plunged into primal chaos..." became "..the edge of everything, where creation plunged back into the Gap whence it had arisen."

"...primal chaos..." (my emphasis) must be the chaos which preceded creation, thus by implication the chaos from which "creation," an ordered cosmos, arose. In the revised text, creation arose from a (capitalized) "Gap." A gap between what? Anderson refers to the Ginnungagap of Norse mythology which was a gap between extremes of heat and cold. Somewhere in that Gap, ice melted and moistened and life began. Of course, in a mythological narrative, the first life was not single cells but giants and gods! Nevertheless, this is a materialist account. Consciousness is not primary but emergent. The creation of a world with earth, sky and sea came later when gods killed a giant and made the world from his body - 

flesh: earth; 

skull: sky; 

brain: clouds;

hair: trees;

bones: mountains;

eyebrows: Midgard;

blood: sea; 

teeth: stones;

eyes: sun and moon;

maggots: dwarves.

Cosmic SF

"Lodestar."

"The primordial element, with which creation presumably began, is hydrogen-1, a single proton accompanied by a single electron." (p. 350)

This paragraph proceeds to explain that:

"To this day, [hydrogen-1] comprises the overwhelming bulk of matter in the universe." (ibid.);

vast masses of hydrogen-1 condensed into increasingly hot globes, i.e., stars, where atoms combined into heavier elements;

novae and red giants spread these heavier elements through space;

later stars generated when these elements condensed produced planets with life and consciousness.

This understanding has become our modern cosmogony. Perhaps the creation myth closest to a scientific understanding was the Norse story of a void in which interaction between the extreme but opposed forces of heat and cold generated life, including the first giants and gods. Impersonal material forces preceded consciousness, then the gods fashioned the world that we know from the body of a giant: the sky from his skull; mountains from his bones; oceans from his blood etc.

I want to compare this passage with a reference to "ylem" in James Blish's Cities In Flight. However, we find not only that we have already quoted the Blish passage but also that Anderson too refers to "ylem." See here.

Two ultimate cosmic sf writers.

GENESIS

I am back from London where I heard Jeremy Corbyn speak after his election victory. When I am away from this laptop for a few days, I think of something longer to post although it might wander away from Poul Anderson's works, then return to them.

We have noticed Anderson's many Biblical references and maybe the last of them is simply the title of his last sf novel, Genesis. 

"In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth." (Gen. 1:1)

My commentary: "God" is personified reality. Reality creates appearances. However, reality does not consciously create anything. Instead, it becomes conscious of itself by appearing to itself. It "creates" appearances which are not identical with reality but are appearances of it: different appearances for different sense organs, e.g., our five senses and a bat's echolocation differently perceive the same reality.

Gen. 1:1 does not describe the earliest moment of consciousness. That would have been the first bodily sensation in a mobile marine organism. A sufficiently complex and sensitive organism that needed sustenance began to experience hunger, to feel hungry. A need for sustenance is objective whereas experience and feelings are subjective. The emergence of consciousness is the qualitative transformation of sensitivity into sensation. Similarly, an organism that was becoming harmfully hot or cold began to feel uncomfortably hot or cold. Thus also, conscious motivations began to replace automatic responses.

Long after bodily sensations, came visual perceptions. There is the appearance of a sky above and a ground below, "the heaven and the earth." Sky and ground are separated by an apparently empty space which is really full of air, electromagnetic and cosmic radiations, the gravitational field and any other forms of energy. Reality is continuous although heterogeneous and mostly invisible to itself. As an invisible subject of consciousness, it is an omnipresent "spirit," although not perennially conscious.

(In the Biblical Genesis, creation consists of separating the waters above from the waters below, then moving the waters below to one side so that the dry land appears.)

In Anderson's Genesis, the Terrestrial AI, Gaia, creates within herself "emulations," conscious simulations of past or alternative timelines. Within each such emulation, many conscious subprograms of Gaia experience themselves as individual human beings living entire lifespans in England, Greece or North America etc in particular historical periods. Gaia consciously creates appearances whereas reality unconsciously creates them.

Gaia also re-creates extinct humanity on the Terrestrial surface and communicates with them in the forms of gods. Rightly is this novel entitled Genesis although Gaia's creativity occurs billions of years in our future.

How It Began

Beginnings in one series each by Ian Fleming, CS Lewis and James Blish and three by Poul Anderson.

At the end of Ian Fleming's Casino Royale, James Bond, who has had some serious questions and doubts, has become determined to stay in the 00 Section, to which he had recently been promoted, and to go after SMERSH.

CS Lewis' The Magician's Nephew, the prequel to his The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe, recounts the creation of Narnia and the beginning of travel between worlds and explains why Narnians have human kings and queens and speak English.

James Blish's Cities In Flight, Volume I, They Shall Have Stars, describes the two scientific discoveries that make flying cities possible although no cities fly until Volume II, A Life For The Stars.

At the end of Poul Anderson's "Time Patrol," Manse Everard, a new recruit to the Time Patrol, has been promoted to Unattached status which he will retain throughout the series.

At the end of Part One of Anderson's The Star Fox, the new interstellar privateers leave the Solar System.

At the end of part one of Anderson's Orbit Unlimited, it has been agreed that an ideological group that does not fit in on Earth will colonize the extra-solar planet, Rustum. In part two, they are en route but might turn back. In part three, they are in orbit around Rustum and transferring to the surface. Finally, in part four, a new generation grows up on Rustum. And there is a second volume as well as another story set on yet another extra-solar planet.

All good stuff. Read them all.

Ends And Beginnings

The previous post about change in Poul Anderson's Technic History ended with a new beginning at the end of the Technic History and therefore connected with a new beginning at the end of Volume I of James Blish's future history, Cities in Flight. Any change is an end and a beginning. Cities in Flight, Volume IV, ends with the ultimate new beginning:

"Creation began."

-James Blish, The Triumph of Time IN Blish, Cities in Flight (London, 1981), pp. 467-596 AT CHAPTER EIGHT, p. 596.

Returning to that conclusion of Volume I, when Wagoner wonders whether to sign his name, he reflects:

"There was writing enough in the stars that he could see, because he had written it there. There was a constellation called Wagoner, and every star in the sky belonged to it. That was surely enough." (p. 129)

What an inspiring introduction to a future history series. Wagoner has been responsible for the discovery of the antigravity and the antiagathics that make interstellar flight possible. Blish, more than any other future historian, devoted early instalments of a series to the invention of the necessary technology. Anderson devotes the first instalment of his Flying Mountains series to the discovery of gravity control, thus paralleling Blish.

Blish's canon is smaller. In Cities in Flight, the interstellar traders and empires exist only in Volumes II and III. We blog more about Anderson partly because of his larger output.

Creating Universes

I am reading about Mike Carey's characters creating universes in his graphic fiction series, Lucifer, and therefore also remembering how certain prose sf writers address the creation of the universe.

Keith Denison of the Time Patrol, when captured in ancient Persia, kicks his timecycle into time-drive:

"'It was only a few hours in this century, then it probably went clear back to the Beginning.'"

-Poul Anderson, "Brave To Be A King" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 55-112  AT 6, p. 83.

 

Reading this sentence, we might imagine that Time Patrol temporal vehicles "travel through time" by enduring either futureward or pastward time dilation. This is the kind of time travel undergone by Wells's Time Machine, by the mutant time travelers in Poul Anderson's There Will Be Time and by the "time projector" in Anderson's "Flight to Forever." However, Time Patrol vehicles jump directly from one set of spatiotemporal coordinates to another in zero subjective time. Therefore, if Denison's vehicle did go to the Beginning, then it did so without traversing all the intervening time. It follows that the Danellians and their Patrol can have instant access to the Beginning when they can directly observe the earliest events, provided that they are adequately protected from that hostile environment. But we are told nothing else about the Beginning. (In an episode of Doctor Who, the Doctor glanced into a book about the creation of the universe and said something like: "Wrong on the first page! They should have asked someone who was there!" That should have been "...someone who was then!")

 

In other works by Anderson:

 

both the time projector and a relativistic spaceship pass from the end to the beginning of the universe;

 

the Elder Race not only travels between universes but is present at the formation of a monobloc with the possibility of influencing and entering the subsequent universe;

 

time travel experiments confirm the otherwise empty philosophical speculation that the universe, complete with false memories, records, geology etc, began to exist relatively recently.

In SM Stirling's Emberverse series, consciousness, manifesting as either deities or as demons, passed from an old to a new universe.

 

In works by James Blish:

 

energy beings called "Angels" came into existence in the first twenty minutes of the universe and will last as long as it does;

New Earthmen and Hevians survive a cosmic collision long enough to become new monoblocs.

Supernovae And The Periodic Table

"Lodestar."

There are two infodumps. The first, about supernovae, is in the flashback to Coya's search at Luna Astrocenter where she works with "...data banks and computers..." (p. 652) (Now we just say "computers.") The second, which interrupts and explains the continuing conversation between van Rijn and Coya, is about the periodic table. Of course, they are connected.

Supernovae

"The task [van Rijn] set her was sufficiently interesting to blot out her fears. However unimaginably violent, the suicides of giant suns by supernova bursts, which may outshine a hundred billion living stars, are not rare cosmic events." (p. 652)

 

In this passage, the first sentence explicitly expresses Coya's pov. It follows that it is she who thinks the second sentence about supernovae.

 

Further on:

 

"Supernovae, hurling atoms together in fusing fury, casting them forth into space as their own final gasps, have given us all the heavier elements, some of them vital, in our worlds and our bodies." (ibid.)

 

The narrator of this passage speaks as one of "us," Coya's contemporaries or successors. Again, it may be Coya herself although Hloch's Introduction to this story informs us that it was written by him and Arinnian who live centuries after Coya.

The Periodic Table

I am trying to identify an omniscient narrator of passages describing cosmic processes but maybe not finding one. The periodic table infodump begins:

"The primordial element, with which creation presumably began, is hydrogen-1, a single proton accompanied by a single electron." (pp. 655-656)

An omniscient narrator would know, not presume.

 

The next sentence:

 

"To this day, it comprises the overwhelming bulk of matter in the universe." (p. 656)

 

"To this day..." means that the narrator lives contemporaneously with his readers even though these readers are a fictional future audience, not Poul Anderson's twentieth-century reading public. The elusive omniscient narrator lives at no place or time.  

Two Deaths

Both Dominic Flandry's fiancee, Kossara Vymezal, and Fenn's fiancee, Kinna Ronay, are shot dead during exchanges of gunfire. Kossara's death was devastating and I thought that Chives' immediately ensuing flippant dialogue:

"'I say...you chaps might pitch in a bit, don't you know.'"

-Poul Anderson, A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows IN Anderson, Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight Of Terra (Riverdale, NY, 2012), pp. 339-606 AT XVII, p. 562 -

- was highly discordant and inappropriate.

By contrast, I had forgotten about Kinna's death and was surprised by it on rereading The Fleet Of Stars although I had remembered that Fenn would not wind up happily married. How does he wind up? Glancing ahead to the last page of the novel, we find that the concluding chapter, 32, comprises two words:

"FENN WOKE." (p. 403)

And thus ends this tetralogy. To quote the Coda of James Blish's Tetralogy, Volume I:

"'Every end,' Wagoner wrote on the wall of his cell on the last day, 'is a new beginning.'"

-James Blish, They Shall Have Stars IN Blish, Cities In Flight (London, 1981), pp. 7-129 AT CODA, p. 129.

 

(Volume IV of that Tetralogy ends: "Creation began." (p. 596))

The universe continues:

"The hugeness, diversity, mystery of the universe through space, through time. What was coming into being as he talked, what joys, triumphs, griefs, horrors, creations - what life?"

-The Fleet Of Stars, 19, p. 230.

Poul Anderson shows us some of it.

The Technic History And Cities In Flight II

In James Blish's Cities In Flight, Earth Colonials meet and defeat the Vegan Tyranny but the Earthman culture is later superseded by the Web of Hercules whereas, in Poul Anderson's Technic History, a Grand Survey ship makes first contact with Merseia and the Polesotechnic League saves Merseia from supernova radiation but the Terran Empire must later contend with a resentful and aggressive Merseian Roidhunate. The Merseians, originating as standard space opera villains, are green, scaled and tailed whereas we are told that an atypical man could pass as a Vegan. However, the Vegans, like the few other alien races mentioned in Cities In Flight, remain off-stage whereas, in the Technic History, human beings interact with many intelligent species, usually described in detail.

The Technic History is admirably consistent whereas, in Cities In Flight, the inconsistencies:

"...are too numerous and too prominent to be regarded as anything other than an essential feature of the overall story."

-Richard D. Mullen, AFTERWORD: THE EARTHMANIST CULTURE: CITIES IN FLIGHT as a Spenglerian History IN James Blish, Cities In Flight (London, 1981), pp. 597-607 AT p. 599.

Since Blish rigidly controls point of view, each statement can be attributed to a particular character so Mullen concludes that the tetralogy is not a consistent history but "...a historical narrative with a large admixture of myth..." (ibid.)

The Technic History ends at the edge of another spiral arm of the Milky Way galaxy whereas Cities In Flight goes further to the Greater Magellanic Cloud, then to the Metagalactic Center and the creation of new universes:

 

"Creation began."

-James Blish, The Triumph Of Time IN Cities In Flight, pp. 466-596 AT CHAPTER EIGHT, p. 596.

 

If you read Anderson, read Blish.

Beyond The End

Although a future history series cannot avoid having a last installment, it is possible to conclude a text in such a way that:

"...even after the last line the feeling remains of the story still rushing on into the magic distance of the universe."

- as A.E. van Vogt commented on Larry Niven's other future history, A World Out Of Time (New York, 1977).

Sandra Miesel performs this task for Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History:

"To Earth there's no returning. She vanished with the childhood of our race. Yet a poet once said, 'No matter how far we range, the salt and rhythm of her tides will always be in our blood.'  One chapter has ended. Humankind's saga flows on."

-Sandra Miesel IN Poul Anderson, The Complete Psychotechnic League, Volume 3 (Riverdale, NY, 2018), p. 216.

 

Blog readers can think of other examples. Three from Blish:

Chronology Of The Beep

"Creation began."

 

"...some quiet voice whispered a judgment:

"'It is decided. We abandon the Hegemony of Malis. The men of Earth, the dolphins of Earth, the beadmungen of the twin radioceles, the coming children of the Aaa, and those others of which we know, or which we can foresee - those are the races that will rule with us. This has been written where what is willed must be.'

"Jack Loftus never heard that whisper, nor even dreamed of it. Nor did his great-great-grandchildren. But he already had more than enough reasons for joy."

-James Blish, Mission To The Heart Stars (London, 1980), CHAPTER ELEVEN, p. 127.

 

"A great future!"

-Robert Heinlein, "By His Bootstraps" IN Heinlein, The Menace From Earth (London, 1983), pp. 40-87 AT p. 87.

 

OK. This is not just about Poul Anderson's "The Chapter Ends." Don't read just one or a few future histories. Read them all.  

"The Fatal Fulfillment"

Poul Anderson, "The Fatal Fulfillment" IN Door To Anywhere, pp. 324-358.

I am having multiple problems with this story. First, the Publication History on p. 6 states that it was published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, May 1970, but it is not listed here in the contents of this issue.

Secondly, I am finding the narrative too surreal. The viewpoint character endures a sequence of simulated (?) scenarios but how can he be sure that he is back in the real world at the end?

The text is divided into:

Prologue (pp. 324-326)

Fate the Second (pp. 326-334)

Fate the Third (pp. 334-339)

Fate the Fourth (pp. 340-350)

Fate the Fifth (pp. 350-357)

O Ye of Little Fate (pp. 357-358)

 

Brief Observations (So Far)

(i) The reference to a "...a 1989 Chevrrolet..." (p. 329) places Fate the Second nineteen years in the future.

(ii) Fate the Fifth ends with "Creation began." (p. 357) - like James Blish's Cities In Flight.

 

(iii) "O Ye of Little Fate" is yet another disguised Biblical reference.(Matthew 8: 26) Should I stop mentioning these?

(iv) Maybe the few previously uncollected NESFA collection stories aren't as good?

Elementary...

I dropped science early at school and never got to grips with the periodic table. Poul Anderson gives us some information in "Lodestar" and repeats it in Mirkheim.

Creation began with the primordial element, hydrogen-1, the smallest atom, a single electron orbiting a single proton. The primordial fireball fused some hydrogen into helium which, I gather, comprises two electrons orbiting two positrons and usually also two neutrons. (See here.) Heavier elements are fused by adding protons to a nucleus. Hydrogen condensed into stars which fused elements heavier than helium. The shedding of gas by red giants and the explosion of stars as either novae or supernovae spread heavier elements through space where they condensed into a second generation of stars and of planets bearing life. Proteins use carbon; bones use calcium; animals breathe oxygen.

Although small stars fuse no element heavier than iron, supernovae fuse copper, gold and uranium. Too many protons in a nucleus generate repulsive forces counteracting attraction and destabilizing the nucleus. However, for some reason that is unexplained, nine elements with atomic numbers 114 to 122 are stable, only weakly radioactive and highly valuable as catalysts, conductors and components in strong alloys.

Observations

Since "...to this day [hydrogen-1] comprises the overwhelming bulk of matter in the universe...," ("Lodestar," p. 388) many more universes can be created from existing materials.

Empirical scientists have achieved what rationalist philosophers attempted, discovered the components of reality.

Cosmology And SF

See Significant Dates.

Verne and Wells began writing long before it was known that there were other galaxies, let alone that galaxies recede.

In the 1960s, when Poul Anderson wrote Tau Zero, there were two main rival theories:

Big Bang, either oscillating or expanding forever;

 

steady state, with "continuous creation" counteracting the effect of cosmic expansion and also with the possible addition of a theory of electron-proton imbalance that would counteract gravity and thus explain the cosmic expansion.

Now the consensus is Big Bang expanding indefinitely but with the addition of much previously unanticipated data. Continuous creation of hydrogen atoms does not sound so implausible when there is continuous creation and mutual annihilation of virtual particles.

Sf paralleled and reflected twentieth century cosmology. Poul Anderson contributed continually for over half a century.

Older Than Creation

Poul Anderson, Operation Chaos (New York, 1995), pp. 1-3.

Steve Matuchek's unnumbered and unentitled opening three-page passage is potent and might generate several posts. To begin at its end:

"Where to begin? I suppose where the affair really began for me, during World War II, though of course the roots run much deeper and further back; the strife is older than creation..." (p. 3)

We like to contemplate anything really old, a tradition or a conflict that goes back to Adam or earlier and what can be older than something that began before creation?

Lord Arux: There are alliances and obligations between my vassal lords that go back to the darkness before light.
-Mike Carey, Lucifer: Inferno (New York, 2004), p. 8, panel 5.

Did conscious beings capable of making alliances preexist "light," which here means creation? Impossible but we imagine it.

Endings

We have discussed future histories and Latin in the works of Poul Anderson so which future history ends with a three-word phrase in Latin? No, it is not one of Anderson's. In fact, what is the appropriate way to end a future history?

"The laughter was somewhat of a victory."
-Poul Anderson, "Starfog" IN Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (Riverdale, NY, 2012), pp. 709-794 AT p. 794.

"...an aggressive order of religiously devoted men and women who will try out and establish and impose a new pattern of living upon our race.
"THE END."
-HG Wells, The Shape Of Things To Come (London, 1974), p. 493.

"For we shall make after all a fair conclusion to this brief music that is man."
-Olaf Stapledon, Last And First Men IN Stapledon, Last And First Men/Last Men In London (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1972), pp. 5-327 AT p. 327.

"'...the blind recollection of past light.'"
-Stapledon, Last Men In London IN op. cit., pp. 329-605 AT p. 605.

"...this brief effort of animalcules striving to win for their race some increase of lucidity before the ultimate darkness."
-Olaf Stapledon, Star Maker (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1972), p. 262.

"'...here's one monkey that's going to keep on climbing, and looking around him to see what he can see, as long as the tree holds out.'"
-Robert Heinlein, Methuselah's Children (London, 1966), p. 191.

"'...always Good Eating.'"
-Robert Heinlein, Orphans Of The Sky (London, 1965), p. 111.

"Creation began."
-James Blish, The Triumph Of Time IN Blish, Cities In Flight (London, 1981), pp. 467-596 AT p. 596.

"We who have already superseded you record these scenes now in your honour, as you once honoured man. REQUIESCAS IN PACE."
-Brian Aldiss, Galaxies Like Grains Of Sand (London, 1979), p. 188.

So which of these do we prefer?

Higher Elements

"Lodestar."

Continuing the summary, which becomes more condensed as it proceeds:

too many protons packed into an atomic nucleus generate forces of repulsion which, sooner or later, overcome the forces of attraction;

above number 84, no isotope is stable;

generally, higher atomic numbers are less stable;

it was thought that elements higher than uranium (neptunium, plutonium etc) must have decayed long ago and could now exist only if generated artificially;

then some traces, but only with atomic numbers below 100, were found;

proton repulsion makes the creation of higher elements difficult and their brief existence makes it less rewarding;

it was thought that 120 would never be reached;

however, "Beyond a certain point, nuclei become more stable." (p. 389);

there is an "island of stability" between 113 and 123 and, theoretically, higher islands;

beyond 100, most half-lives last for seconds or less so there are no intermediate stages to higher stabilities;

114, eka-platinum, would be industrially valuable but is impossible to produce in large quantities;

even on Satan, only elements below 100 can be produced;

then a new company, Supermetals, began to sell large quantities of supermetals at high but affordable prices.

Thus, the summary moves imperceptibly back from science to science fiction. Clever.

Supermetals ships use evasive maneuvers that the Polesotechnic League thought were its secrets. Someone high in the League founded Supermetals.

Eating And Ending

(Genghis Khan, the Ancestor.)

Two authors whom we compare with Poul Anderson we now briefly compare with each other, with a guest appearance by CS Lewis.

"I just saw the Ancestor's emissaries devour a man's soul."
-SM Stirling, The Sky-Blue Wolves (New York, 2018), CHAPTER TWENTY, p. 332.

"'The thing that called itself Screwtape let slip to Lewis that demons do eat souls.'"
-James Blish, The Day After Judgement IN Blish, After Such Knowledge (London, 1991), pp. 427-522 AT p. 432.

At the end of The Sky-Blue Wolves, Orlaith says that the ending is a beginning whereas Reiko replies that both are illusions and that there is only life, unchanged by the Change.

"'Every end,' Wagoner wrote on the wall of his cell on the last day, 'is a new beginning.'"
-James Blish, They Shall Have Stars IN Blish, Cities In Flight (London, 1981), pp. 7-129 AT CODA, p. 129.

"Creation began."
-James Blish, The Triumph Of Time IN Cities In Flight, pp. 467-596 AT CHAPTER EIGHT, p. 596.

For a Lewis-Stirling comparison, see Visions Of Heaven.

Cosmic Beginnings

A universe begins in each of three works by Poul Anderson:

"Flight to Forever"
Tau Zero
The Avatar

(Anderson also wrote a novel called Genesis in which a post-organic planetary intelligence recreates extinct humanity.)

At the end of James Blish's Cities In Flight, nine characters, ironically called "the Survivors," each create a new universe from his or her own body and spacesuit:

"Creation began."
-James Blish, The Triumph Of Time IN Blish, Cities In Flight (London, 1981), pp. 466-596 AT p. 596.

These universes will initially be small, fifty light years across, but will be added to by "'...continuous creation...'" (p. 594)

The word "creation" implies a creator. One theological meaning of "creation" is "from nothing." However, Blish's "Survivors" create, although not from nothing, and continuous creation is from nothing but without a creator.

In Tau Zero, when Captain Telander of the relativistic spaceship, the Leonora Christine, sees:

"'The germ of the monobloc...The new beginning.'"
-Poul Anderson, Tau Zero (London, 1973), Chapter 21, p. 181 -

- he kneels in tears and says:

"'Father, I thank Thee...'" (ibid.)

- although what he sees is a cyclical new beginning, arguably not needing a creator.

(The Bible also is cyclical: from the separation of the waters to the Flood is one universe; from the re-emergence of dry land to the Apocalypse is a second universe; at the end of Apocalypse is a new heaven and earth, a third universe.)

We sometimes speak mythologically, knowing that we are doing so. Thus, if I say that the only original thinker was Adam and that everyone else has modified received ideas, I do not mean that I am a Biblical fundamentalist. I think that Blish uses language in this way when he describes the metagalactic center as:

"...that place where the Will had given birth to the Idea, and there had been light."
-Blish, op. cit., p. 577.

(This mixes Hebrew and Platonic ideas.)

Anderson matches Blish's "Creation began...":

"The universe was dead!"
-Poul Anderson, "Flight to Forever" IN Anderson, Past Times (New York, 1984), pp. 207-288 AT p. 284.

"The universe was reforming."
-ibid, p. 285.

"The monobloc had exploded. Creation had begun."
-Tau Zero, p. 183.

Two ultimate sf writers.

The Embodiment Of Ideas

See The Sword and Ideas.

Let us conclude this philosophical trilogy of posts by referring to a third author (see image). Alan Moore suggested in conversation that artistic creation is magic. The creative/magical process is:

(i) nothing;
(ii) an idea in the creator's head;
(iii) the expression of that idea through the raw materials which, for a writer, start with his language;
(iv) a tangible, material artifact, e.g., a book, on sale to the public.

The artifact is the material embodiment of the idea or concept which, I think, was generated by a process that began in a material brain. Moore was trying to understand the nature of consciousness so he might by now have formulated a different view of the role of the brain. But, in any case, the idea originates somewhere in the mind and/or brain of a human being and is embodied in the raw materials of the English language, paper, ink etc. So I cannot find any conceptual space for Artos' notion of an embodied concept or tangible thought that is not physical matter.