Romans

I highly recommend everyone to read about Terran Emperors in Poul Anderson's Technic History and about Roman Emperors in Suetonius' The Twelve Caesars. The latter informs us about vices that we might never have heard of. Such things would have happened during the reign of Terran Emperor Josip but Anderson rightly spares us unnecessary details. There are many potential spin-off series from the Technic History... 

Romans in fiction by Poul Anderson and Neil Gaiman inspired me to request Gaiman's source, The Twelve Caesars, from the Public Library. Understanding of how an author has woven diverse historical data into a coherent narrative enhances our appreciation of his fiction. 

Other but not unrelated Romans in fiction:

Alan Moore's Top 10 series has a parallel Earth where the Roman Empire has survived into the twentieth century, the first visual clue being a Police Commissioner wearing a head-band engraved with "SPQR." Their "barbaric" customs ask newly arrived travellers whether they are carrying any strange gods. ("Barbaric" is a joke by a "Praet" (Praetorian guard/cop).) 

At Blog Central, we have just received our copy of SM Stirling's To Turn The Tide. The AFTERWORD mentions the following relevant earlier works:

"The Man Who Came Early" by Poul Anderson

Household Gods by Harry Turtledove and Judith Tarr

A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain

L. Sprague de Camp's Lest Darkness Light

We know where we have come from but not where we are going to.

"Time Travel"

"Time travel" means many things. Decades ago, a guy saw me reading what I told him was a time travel novel and he thought that it must be about a group of people who had travelled into a past period and then encountered some difficulties in returning to their present! (He must have go that from somewhere.) "All" time travel books were like this... I tried to explain the concept of causality violation which apparently he had never heard of. 

Some Kinds of "Time Travel"

(i) There is a curious sub-sub-genre of juvenile fantasy novels by English women writers whose protagonists are transported back and forth between their present and a particular past period. (See The Time Travel Archives.)

(ii) Circular causality paradox narratives, perfected by Robert Heinlein and Poul Anderson.

(iii) Narratives about time travelling organizations. The only one that I know of that makes any sense, although it remains extremely paradoxical, is Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series.

(iv) Personal relationships of time travellers:

Bid Time Return by Richard Matheson

The Time Traveller's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger 

(v) Travellers exploring the future:

The Time Machine by HG Wells

"Flight to Forever" by Poul Anderson

"Welcome" by Anderson

"Time Heals" by Anderson

(vi) Characters transported into a past period when they either make some changes or fail to:

A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain

Lest Darkness Fall by L. Sprague de Camp

Bring The Jubilee by Ward Moore

"The Man Who Came Early" by Anderson

"The Little Monster" by Anderson

and a current series -

Make The Darkness Light by SM Stirling

I. To Turn The Tide

II. The Winds Of Fate

III. TBA

Stirling's series title seems to follow from de Camp's novel title. Stirling's characters are time travellers by design, not by accident. They have read the sf. They know what to take with them into the past and how to conduct themselves then - insofar as anyone can. This is not Anderson's Time Patrol. These are travellers who do change history for the better - so far.

Forward march.

Five References To Poul Anderson

Heinlein In Dimension.

(i) Anderson's After Doomsday asks something about humanity by placing a spaceship crew in an apocalyptic context. (I., p. 2)

(ii) Anderson was one of Heinlein's successors as a future historian. (V., p. 122) (The principle successor, in my opinion.)

(iii) Anderson's "The Man Who Came Early" is a good problem story. (V., p. 131) A time-transferred modern man cannot survive in the unfamiliar context of Viking Iceland. For "context," "people" and "problem" as story elements, see Elements Of Stories.

(iv) Anderson writes multi-sensory descriptions, e.g., in the opening scene of "No Truce With Kings." (VI., pp. 141-142)

(v) Too science-based a definition of sf would eliminate Anderson's The High Crusade. (VIII., p. 180)

We do not read a book about Heinlein to learn about Anderson. Nevertheless, it is instructive to note which aspects of Anderson's works become relevant when discussing Heinlein.

Not mentioned here: Heinlein perfected the circular causality paradox story whereas Anderson perfected that and every other aspect of time travel fiction.

Through Time

Sf shows cultural collisions, clashes etc when:

space explorers reach inhabited extrasolar planets;

time dilated space travelers return to Earth;

time travelers arrive in historical or future periods.

The conclusion of the preceding post reminds us of time travel stories by Poul Anderson:

"Welcome"

Time travelers to a near future are welcome to share a cannibalistic meal.

"Time Heals"

Increasing incomprehension with increased futurity.

"The Man Who Came Early"

A modern man does not succeed in an earlier period contra Mark Twain.

"The Little Monster"

A young boy's effect on proto-men.

"Flight to Forever"

Succeeding civilizations, either hostile or indifferent.

Also:

The Quincunx Of Time by James Blish

Not time travel but nevertheless increasingly incomprehensible messages from further futures.

Heinlein And Co

Some passages in Poul Anderson's main future history series, the Technic History, strike me as very Heinleinian. I will return to this theme in a while. 

The four Campbell-edited future historians were:

Robert Heinlein

Isaac Asimov

James Blish

Poul Anderson

I encountered these authors in approximately that order although I am not sure about Anderson. I was seven in 1956 when Anderson's first Nicholas van Rijn story, "Margin of Profit," was published but I had no knowledge of that then. At that time, I liked pictures of men in spacesuits in comic strips or, less frequently, on TV and preferred them to men on horseback or in military uniform. Many of my contemporaries preferred footballers. What determines early preferences?

From 1956 to 1960, I was at a small boarding school in Scotland. From 1960 to 1967, I was at a large boarding school in the Republic of Ireland. I live in England. In Scotland, I saw a boy reading a large format omnibus collection of several juvenile adventure novels, illustrated. A second boy was looking over the first boy's shoulder and saying, "That's ridiculous!" Intrigued, I looked and saw that the object of his ridicule was illustrations of aliens. Even more intrigued, I subsequently borrowed the book and read that story which was called Starman Jones. Presumably the author's name was displayed but authors' names meant nothing to me that far back.

Early in the 1960-'67 period, I found in a Public Library the Gollancz edition of Orphans Of The Sky by Robert Heinlein and was intrigued by its at that time unique environment. Generalizing from a single instance, I imagined that this guy, Heinlein, had written only a few books that were short but of high quality, the exact opposite of the truth. Next came - I am not sure in which order - the Pan paperback edition of The Man Who Sold The Moon, thus an introduction not only to Heinlein's Future History but also to the idea of a future history series, and a Public Library copy of Starman Jones by Robert Heinlein. At last I connected that title with that author.

Early in the 1960-'67 period, having noticed that there were adult paperback novels with spacemen, aliens and robots on the covers, I decided to buy some, not sure whether I would like them. I chose two by different authors:

The Caves Of Steel by Isaac Asimov;

The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester.

At an airport, while returning to school in Ireland, I saw Earthman, Come Home by James Blish, a new name, read the blurb and bought the book because I was intrigued by the idea of cities flying through interstellar space. Also during that period, I bought and read After Doomsday by Poul Anderson. I do not think that that was my first Anderson but do not remember what was. He was making less impression than the others as yet but that would eventually change big time.

Two Great SF Collections

My two favourite kinds of sf are time travel and future histories. Poul Anderson excels at both and made multiple contributions to each.

Time Patrol collects all of Anderson's Time Patrol series except the long novel, The Shield of Time, which has to remain a separate volume. The Earth Book of Stormgate collects eight of the sixteen Polesotechnic League instalments and four Ythrian short stories with new fictional introductions and afterword. The Earth Book completes the League history, almost completes the Ythrian history and refers to the Terran Empire although not to Dominic Flandry. Thus, it is a pivotal volume of the Technic History.

Before Time Patrol, read Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, HG Wells' The Time Machine, L. Sprague de Camp's Lest Darkness Fall, Ward Moore's Bring The Jubilee and Anderson's Past Times which should be revised to include "The Man Who Came Early." Before the Technic History, read Robert Heinlein's Future History and Anderson's Psychotechnic History.

Time Travel, Abstract And Concrete

"Time travel" means several things that are simply different.

Would a time traveller stranded in a pre-industrial period be able to use his modern knowledge to survive and thrive back then? And would he be able to change the course of history? These are not the same question. Twain answers the first, implausibly, but not the second.

In a single continuous timeline, how can causality violations be prevented if there are time travellers and can causality be circular?

How would a time traveller from our period cope with future societies and incidentally what would such societies be like? (That second question is the subject-matter of much sf in any case.)

I have just proofread a novel that addresses the Twain and changing history questions and am now reading a new novel that addresses the preservation of consistency question. They are not only different narratives but also completely different kinds of narratives with "temporal displacement" or "time travel" as an extremely abstract link.

Twain classically addressed the Twain question.

Wells classically addressed the time traveller in a future society question.

Ward Moore classically addressed the changing history question.

Before that, de Camp classically combined the Twain and changing history questions.

Heinlein classically addressed circular causality and the preservation of consistency.

The main point here, of course, is that Poul Anderson addressed all these questions in different works:

the Twain question in "The Little Monster" and "The Man Who Came Early";

the changing history question in the Time Patrol series;

circular causality and the preservation of continuity in The Corridors of Time, There Will Be Time and The Dancer from Atlantis;

time travellers in future societies in "Welcome," "Time Heals" and "Flight to Forever."

Poul Anderson is a culmination, arguably, but that does not prevent more recent authors, like Audrey Nifenneger and Kate Mascarenhas, from finding completely new angles.

An Incompletely Critical Look at DAGGERS IN DARKNESS, by Sean M. Brooks

I am calling this article of mine "incomplete" because I am commenting only on some of the highlights in that book which especially caught my attention the first time I read it. DAGGERS IN DARKNESS is the latest in the series of linked novels by S.M. Stirling which features Luz  O'Malley, an Irish American/Cuban field agent of the Black Chamber, an Intelligence agency created by President Theodore Roosevelt in an alternate universe where he won the Presidential election of 1912, after the premature death of President William Taft opened the  way to TR's victory.

DAGGERS IN DARKNESS gradually shows us how Luz and Ciara were coming into usually violent contact with increasingly senior agents of "The Mad Baron," Roman von Ungern-Sternberg, a real, historical person who in our timeline briefly succeeded in making himself ruler of Mongolia in 1921. In the Black Chamber universe he came to rule Mongolia earlier and succeeded in staying in power.  His ambitions of gaining chemical weapons and the steps he took for achieving that were what drew the attention of the US and the Black Chamber to him.

 

DAGGERS IN DARKNESS opens in 1922, after WW I ended in a drastically different way from the Great War of our timeline. The US had conquered Mexico and annexed Canada; a Greater German Reich overran France and vast parts of eastern Europe and Russia; the British Empire was forced to evacuate Great Britain and relocate to India; Japan seized eastern Siberia, Manchuria, and chunks of China.

 

In the US, Theodore Roosevelt's "Progressive Republican" policies were so popular and seemingly successful that he had become virtually President for Life, easily winning every election since 1912. One of the things that first caught my eye and which I thought deserving of comment was this bit from Chapter 1, pages 8-9, about TR's eldest son Theodore: "Organizing the American Legion for veterans in '18 had shown he could move men to action in peacetime by his words and force of personality. The job in Manila [as Governor General of the Philippines] was a chance to show what he could do as an administrator. If he did well in it, there was no reason he couldn't be President himself someday, perhaps after a stint in a Cabinet post... Secretary of State or War, say... or nomination as Vice President in '28, and in either case in '32, when the young man was in his prime."

 

The US had become so vastly more powerful and larger that it was more an empire than anything else.  What we are seeing here, whether TR himself understood it, were  the old institutions coming to seem too small and inadequate for managing the demands of ruling an empire. We see TR coming more and more to think in dynastic terms, of his eldest son eventually succeeding him as President. If the younger Theodore governed as successfully as his father and was also blessed with an able son, would that son be proclaimed Emperor of America, instead of being only President?

 

Next, on page 27, I saw this: "Luz and Ciara's theoretically and legally adopted orphans were in biological fact half-sisters who now unmistakably resembled their mothers AND their sire, a man named Sven Lundqvist, who'd met her and Ciara under carefully arranged false circumstances. With the expectation that he'd soon be five thousand miles away and under the impression that his extremely entertaining weekend at a hot-springs resort in West Virginia had been just good luck and charm on his part; in fact his ship had disappeared on the way back to Stockholm; possibly a U-boat, probably a mine."

 

In many ways, I found Luz and Ciara's behavior here open to criticism. They wanted children, but refused to get them by either marrying men or honestly asking a man to knowingly become the father of their children.  I did not like the obvious implication that Luz had no intention of ever telling Sven that he had become the father of four daughters. He too had rights over those children!

 

It was too convenient, to have the hapless Sven Lundqvist disappearing on the way home to Sweden.  It meant there would be no awkward personal and legal difficulties in the future if Sven found out about his hitherto unknown children. It also meant there would be no trouble when the twins started asking questions why there was no father in their lives when other children they knew had fathers. And these children might want to know about Sven's parents and possible brothers and sisters. Which again could be awkward for Luz and Ciara. His too convenient death made that less likely, at least for a long time!

 

Candidly, I thought Luz's treatment of Sven callous and cynical, he was a mere sperm donor for her and Ciara. An impression which this bit from page 161 (Chapter Nine) did not lessen, after Luz learned of how the Swedish ship carrying Sven and other diplomats had been sunk by a German mine or U-Boat early in 1918: "...sinking a Swedish flagged merchant liner not far off the Kattegat, while carrying diplomats back to Stockholm in the spring of 1918. She'd been mildly sorry to hear that via naval connections, and hoped it had been quick at least..." A casually used and discarded sperm donor!

 

I also thought it very implausible that both Luz and Ciara would have twins, and that ALL of those children would be girls. it's far more likely that either Luz or Ciara would have had only one child, not twins. And I thought it very unlikely, even granting that,  that none of them were boys. It was far more likely that at least one or two of them would have been boys. It was too neat and schematic, for Luz and Ciara to both have twins and that all four children were girls.

 

Despite my distaste for the methods Luz took for her and Ciara to get children, that does not mean I am hostile to those children! Colleen, Mary, Patricia, and Luciana are thoroughly likable, bright, active, and energetic. I did wonder if they seemed too ideal, too perfect to be entirely convincing. But, I can see how if, the parents were healthy, intelligent, and free of any overt disabilities, that kind of selective breeding would maximize the chances of any children they had also being intelligent and healthy. But I continue to have my doubts about the plausibility of all four of them being girls.

 

And here is as good a place as any to state frankly I did not like the lesbianism of Luz and Ciara. Because I believe homosexuality is a distorting, a warping of the sexual and reproductive drive. So I read through the more lesbian parts of DAGGERS with resignation.

 

And in Chapter Three, page 66, I saw this: "...plenty of Jews but not as many since the Germans and Austrians plagued them now far less than now-defunct Russia and Romania had before 1914."  The question I had being: what happened to the rest of Russia? I would expect a victorious Germany to annex Russian Poland, the Baltic States, and much of Ukraine, but not ALL of Russia (I assume Austria-Hungary annexed Romania). Because I read of how, in the earlier Black Chamber books, Nicholas II abdicated as Tsar in 1916, with his son succeeding as Alexis II, under the regency of their respected cousin Grand Duke Nicholas.  While I would expect the Regent to often be compelled to yield to German demands, I saw no mention of Germany deposing Alexis II and annexing all of Russia at least as far east as the Ural Mountains. But DAGGERS IN DARKNESS seems to clearly indicate that was what happened by 1922. Did Germany seize all of Russia east of Ukraine or not? Was there a Russian remnant state in western Siberia? We see no mention of what happened to Alexis II and the Regent.

 

I don't think Wilhelm II and Paul von Hindenburg would have tolerated a gruesome massacre of the Romanovs, of the kind ordered by Lenin in our timeline, which occurred at Ekaterinberg and Alapayevsk on July 17-18, 1918 in our universe! 

 

I especially loved the Chinese parts of DAGGERS, because of how I went through a Chinese phase earlier in my life, leading me to read a lot about Chinese history, including translations of parts of historical works such as Ssu-ma Chien's RECORDS OF THE GRAND HISTORIAN.  But I do have one quibble: Stirling's use of Pin Yin for Romanizng Chinese names and words jarred on me, felt like a false note. Because, in OUR timeline (and presumably the Black Chamber's), the Wade-Giles system for Romanizing Chinese words and names is what was actually being used a century ago. Lastly, I simply don't like Pin Yin, "Beijing" strikes me as inelegant and poor English compared to "Peking."

 

Next, a minor point. In Chapter Five, on page 96, I read this: "A big Marine marching band in smart dress blues and billed saucer hats cane first..." It was a mistake for Stirling to say Marines wore HATS, because the Navy (of which the Marines are a part of) insists on calling head wear "covers." A US Navy officer I used to know online made a point of stressing Navy personnel wore COVERS, not "hats."

 

 Mr. Stirling is a scrupulously careful writer. After showing so many of the seemingly beneficial things brought about by the New Nationalism of Theodore Roosevelt's so called "Progressive" Republicans, he was careful to show us some of the darker things underneath the glossy surface. For instance, in the same Chapter Five, on page 103, I read this: "...San Francisco had always been a strong union town, and the Party heartily approved of labor unions, as long as they were safely Party-affiliated." 

 

"SAFELY Party-affiliated"?  I don't like that. It sounds all too ominously like the puppet "unions" controlled by the Communist Party both in and out of the USSR. It looks menacingly like the United States becoming a de facto one party regime ruled by TR's so called "Progressive" Republicans. The text quoted below came from the same page 103 of DAGGERS.

 

   "The International Workers of the World hadn't been. The Wobblies had tried

to call strikes during what they called the capitalist-imperialist Great War. Many

of the Wobbly leaders and militants had been summarily shot in the back of

the head for that under the Espionage Act, as de facto enemy agents, so estab-

lished in nice fair fifteen minute executive-court hearings. Others had been

lynched by local patriots on a free-enterprise basis; one group had been

locked in boxcars and left in the Arizona desert to die of thirst and heatstroke

just to drive home the neighbors disapproval.

 

 "Most of the remainder were still repenting their sins in Federal Bureau

of Security corrective-labor camps in very remote places doing very hard

work for very long days in very unpleasant climates on a diet of just

enough scientifically enriched and fortified corn-and-soy mush to keep

them going; it was also scientifically designed to be absolutely tasteless.

You didn't die of starvation on that, or of scurvy or pellagra, and the

profoundly unsympathetic FBS guards didn't beat you to death with their

lead-weighted rubber truncheons or shoot you or lock you in a small iron

box to broil or freeze... unless you tried to escape or shirked or disobeyed

orders... but after a while you might not want to live very much."

 

The understated sarcasm in the passages I quoted above makes it plain Stirling himself did not approve of how the Wobblies were treated.  And I agree with him!  However much I would disagree with the views of the so called International Workers, they had every right to their own ideas and beliefs, as guaranteed by the First Amendment to the US Constitution. They should never have been treated so brutally and any trials of the Wobblies should have been in the regular state or US courts, with all the protections granted to accused persons in United States law. AND only for charges based on actual crimes allegedly committed by the Wobblies. Not for mere political opinions.

 

In Chapter Seven, page 136, I saw this: "This is Universal Imports," a voice said at the other end." As all readers of Ian Fleming's James Bond stories should immediately see, Stirling was having a little joke with the "Universal Exports" used as a cover by 007 and other agents of the British Secret Service.

 

Here I digress to touch on a minor misprint I noticed on page 276 (Chapter Fourteen): "Beds of chrysanthemums glowed gold and white and red in the dusk against the green LAWS...."  Of course I realized at once this was simply a misprint and Stirling had meant "lawns."

 

Some of my comments above, especially of Luz and Ciara, were critical. But I don't want readers to think I did not enjoy reading DAGGERS IN DARKNESS. I did! So much so that I stopped taking as many notes as I should have for writing a really satisfactory article about this book. I loved the story and it was a true page turner.

 

DAGGERS is very much an action/adventure novel, and not all readers might care for that, especially the more violent incidents to be found in the book. But Stirling, like Poul Anderson, always added so much more than simple blood and thunder and derring-do to his stories. Many times, through out the tale, readers will find historical and philosophical asides adding richness, depth, and nuance to the plot.  The example I quoted below, selected almost at random, came from Chapter Thirteen, page 268 of DAGGERS, Luz speaking first.

 

"What I've heard is that the Red Gang...the Honghang...and a faction within the

Green Gang...don't want to cooperate with Mr. X. Partly it's a regional thing; the

Red Gang are linked to southern China and the Canton triads, and so are some

elements within the Green Gang. Politics are involved too; the Green and Red

gangs were allied for a while to support Sun Yat-Sen and the Kuomintang a few

years back, before and during the war...they called it the Mutual Progress Asso-

ciation of the Chinese Republic. The Honghang want to revive that."

    "We heard about that," Tommy said. "Didn't come to much, after Yuntai's Dad

declared himself Emperor."

 

Here Stirling shows his knowledge of Chinese history, in particular of how Sun Yat-Sen's base of support was mostly limited to southern China, with the northern provinces either indifferent to or hostile to his aspirations of founding a Republic of China after the fall of the Ch'ing Dynasty in 1911-12.  And "Yuntai's Dad" was none other than the treacherous Yuan Shikai who, after deliberately not fighting as hard as he could have for the Ch'ing, made a deal with the naive Sun that in return for forcing the abdication of the last Ch'ing Emperor, Sun would agree to Yuan becoming President of China. In our timeline Yuan tried to secure his grip on power firmly enough that he could proclaim himself Emperor, but failed. In the Black Chamber timeline, he succeeded, but only at the heavy cost of becoming a puppet of Japan. To quote some more from page 268:

 

    It's ever so common, just being a President,"  Holly said, with an ironic quirk

at the corner of her mouth, as she glanced sidelong at the Americans. "Even a

President for life with a son being groomed for the job."

"As opposed to being Lord Protector," Ciara said, her tone equally pawky-dry.

    The fact that he'd chosen Cromwell's title didn't endear Viscount Milner to her,

and she hadn't liked him to begin with. The Irish Republican Brotherhood had

sympathized with the Boers during the South African War and its guerrilla after-

math, and she'd heard a good many stories--some even true--of Milner's and

Kitchener's cruelties when she was an impressionable child.

 

In the Black Chamber's timeline Theodore Roosevelt had become de facto President for Life and was grooming his eldest son to eventually succeed him. And in our history the British had been harsh in breaking Boer resistance to their rule, including the use of concentration camps as a means of doing that. And anyone knowledgeable in British history understands at once what "Lord Protector" means!  All these are good example of how much Stirling could "pack" into his stories.

Reality And Continuity

Reality has continuity. We know that a public figure like our very own Boris Johnson continues to exist between the occasions when we see him on TV or, less frequently, in the flesh. Obvious, you might say. But we have to imagine that a fictional character like Poul Anderson's Nicholas van Rijn continues to exist between the installments of his series. Van Rijn's only material manifestations, so to say, are in several finite installments separated by narrative discontinuities.

The illusion of continuity is generated by:

a long series, especially one that reflects the passage of time;

references to events occurring between installments;

sometimes, installments written later but set earlier;

references to the character in other works by the same author;

sometimes, continuations by other authors.

Thus:

at the end of Anderson's Three Hearts And Three Lions, Holger Danske embarks on a journey between universes;

we learn something of Holger's journey when he visits the Old Phoenix in Anderson's A Midsummer Tempest;

we learn more in Harry Tutledove's "The Man Who Came Early," which ends with Holger re-entering the Old Phoenix;

 

a young woman who joins the staff of the Inn of the Worlds' End in a story by Neil Gaiman still works there in a story by Mike Carey.

 

Multi-authored inter-universal inns are good continuity venues, especially since van Rijn shows up in the Old Phoenix.

(I am stricken with a cold so please don't expect frequent posts, folks.)

Twain, Wells And Anderson

See Series In NESFA.

Furthermore, of the eight non-series stories in the fifth NESFA collection, "The Nest" is in Past Times and indeed should be in an even more comprehensive collection of Poul Anderson's shorter works on time travel. Anderson replies to Twain and Wells.

Twain

Would a modern man be able to survive and thrive in an earlier period?

 

Yes in A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur's Court and in "The Little Monster."

 

No in "The Man Who Came Early."

 

Wells

Would a time traveler arrive in a future dystopia involving cannibalism?

 

Yes in The Time Machine and "Welcome."

 

What would a time traveler find in the remote future?

 

Comprehensive answers in The Time Machine and "Flight to Forever." 

 

One further point about "The Nest": Norman bandits using the Time Rover are time travel equivalents of the barbarians with spaceships and nuclear weapons in Anderson's Technic History.

Death

There Will Be Time.

The Foreword ends with Poul Anderson's account of Robert Anderson's death the previous year (1972?) whereas the opening chapter begins with Robert Anderson's account of Jack Havig's birth in 1933. Novels have always been able to move backwards in time even when they did not involve time travel.

Robert Anderson dies in his sleep. Vikings and ERB's green Martians want to die fighting. Dominic Flandry wants to see death coming and fight it. See here. Which is the best way to go? In "The Man Who Came Early," Ospak thinks that everyone dies at a preordained time but I doubt it. Life is ruled by Fortuna, not by the norns.

The Voice Of The Wind

"The Man Who Came Early."

When Gerald, losing a fight with Viking weapons, draws his gun and shoots his opponent dead:

"A stillness came, where only the wind and the sea had voice." (p. 209)

Yet again, in a Poul Anderson work, the wind comments on the action.

Leaving Ospak's household, Gerald stays with a crofter. If he had known to declare the killing, then he would have been safe at least until the Thing had decided on the matter. However, keeping it secret makes him immediately a murderer and outlaw. As soon as it is known where he is, he is hunted down and fights till his gun gives out, then is cut down while defending himself with a dead man's sword.

Ospak had to withdraw his support for Gerald in order to prevent a feud between his family and that of the man whom Gerald had killed. We see the limitations of the Icelandic legal system.

We know of two time travelers killed in combat and buried in barrows: Stane and Gerald Samsson.

The Godi

"The Man Who Came Early."

Ospak is:

"...a godi, a chief who holds sacrifices..." (p. 195)

A chief who is also a priest, like Melchizedek? Church-state unity? No. The unity that preceded the differentiation of sacred from secular and of states, "bodies of armed men," from the rest of society.

"'We have no king on Iceland,' [Ospak] grunted. 'Our forefathers came hither to get away from kings. Now we meet at the Things to try suits and pass new laws, but each man must get his own redress as best he can.'" (p. 197)

Anarchists and Terrestrial equivalents of Poul Anderson's Ythrians. 

Wisdom From Ospak

"The Man Who Came Early."

"'Women are a kittle breed, priest, and you who have foresworn them belike understand them as well as I who have slept with half a hundred in six different lands. I do not think they understand themselves. Birth and life and death, those are the great mysteries, which none will ever fathom, and a woman is closer to them than a man." (p. 206)

We have fathomed a lot about birth, life and death since then: natural selection; mutations; genes; DNA; cerebral processes. I am confident that neuronic interactions generate consciousness, which will cease when they do, and will be very surprised to experience anything after after that.

Nevertheless, life and death remain mysteries.

What Gerrard Can And (Mostly) Cannot Do

"The Man Who Came Early."

Can

Wrestle.

Kill a horse for sacrifice with his "gun." (But this clumsy weapon blows a hole in the skull, wasting the brain.)

 

Cannot

Round up strayed cattle.

Compose verse.

Use the smithy or carpentry tools.

Ride a horse well.

Spin.

Weave.

Butcher or smoke a hog.

Salt a fish.

Turf a roof.

Make the "cannon" that he describes.

Mix the powder for it.

Sail a ship.

Manage the larger, more maneuverable ships that he describes.

Find the lodestone that he mentions.

I think there is more.

Inter-Era Communication

"The Man Who Came Early."

The aitsjbom is a kind of Greek fire.

Gerald Robbins is renamed Gerald Samssom because his father is Sam.

Ospak is broadminded enough to have a Christian in his house despite local fear of witchcraft.

Christians lack the useful practice of human sacrifice. (It is useful to threaten thralls with it.)

Gerald makes a face at the home-brewed beer, perhaps his first social error. (When I still drank beer, I learned a useful social trick. I disliked the taste of my host's home-brew but it occurred to me that we taste only when we have swallowed so I knocked it back, thus flattering my host - "He likes my beer!" - who poured me more.)

Gerald speaks of Leif Eirikson before that chief has become well-known...

Ospak knows of Bjarni Herjulfsson who gave Manse Everard a polar bear rug. Of course, this has to be a different Bjarni Herjulfsson, or does it? Patrol scientists might discover that the time travel effect is sometimes generated between thunderstorms in different historical periods.

Testimony And Evidence

"The Man Who Came Early."

On the testimony of Eilif Eirikson, who served in the Varangian Guard, Ospak accepts that:

Greek fire burns on water;

the Emperor has "'...a beast of gold before his high seat which stands up and roars.'" (p. 185)

I suspect that Eilif, former Varangian or no former Varangian, has heard of this beast from someone else but not seen it for himself.

At school, I read a story about Galileo which, whether or not it is historically accurate, epitomizes scientific method. According to the story, Galileo did not accept accounts of tides in the Atlantic because:

there are no tides in the Mediterranean;

he did not accept sailors' stories of mermaids or sea serpents;

the suggestion that the tides were linked to the Moon was even more dubious because that would be astrology.

I concluded that, temporarily and provisionally of course, Galileo was right to come to what we know to have been a wrong conclusion. Shown a tide, he would immediately have accepted it but why should he accept anything in advance of convincing evidence? A guy I knew thought that it was contradictory to say that Galileo rightly accepted a wrong conclusion. However, this same guy:

thought that the "logical" was merely the familiar or expected, thus that a talking lion would be illogical;

seemed to get his understanding of logic from Spock, not from Aristotle;

when I had said that a single discontinuous timeline (with an uncaused event preventing the event that would have caused it) was counter-intuitive but not illogical, misquoted me as having said that it was illogical;

when I had said that Zen meditation did not give me one particular insight, misquoted me as having said that I got nothing from Zen;

when I suggested, as a fictional premise, that Wells wrote a true account of the Time Traveler's adventures, thought that that I did think that Wells had written a true account;

thought that scientists claimed infallibility and showed themselves up to be charlatans every time they revised their conclusions;

accepted science when it confirmed his preferred views but otherwise rubbished it;

dismissed the mathematical proof that there is no highest prime number as "gobbledygook" merely because he did not understand it (I did not understand it the first time I read it).

How much misunderstanding remains in a scientific age?

Attitudes And Explanations

"The Man Who Came Early."

"'I'm not staying near a man under a curse!' yelped Sigurd, and started to run away.

"'Come back!' I bawled. 'Stand where you are or I'll cleave your louse-bitten head.'

"That stopped him,..." (p. 190)

 

Why?

 

"...for he had no kin who would avenge him..." (ibid.)

 

So, otherwise, Sigurd might have kept running in the hope that the threat of vengeance would restrain Ospak? Just as we can usually assume that the threat of legal consequences restrains our contemporaries from violence?

The temporally displaced man had been out in a thunderstorm and there had also been a great thunderstorm the previous night in 998. It seems appropriate to hypothesize that there was some kind of transtemporal link between the two storms. And Ospak finds a plausible explanation:

"'Maybe Thor's hammer knocked you from your place to here.'" (ibid.)

Poul Anderson's Collections

Poul Anderson, "The Man who Came Early" IN Anderson, The Horn Of Time (New York, 1968), pp. 68-90.

"The Man Who Came Early" is not in Past Times but is in another Anderson collection. See above. Of the six stories in this other collection, The Horn Of Time, three are installments of different series:

"The Horn of Time the Hunter," the Kith History;

"Marius," the Psychotechnic History;

"Progress," the Maurai History -

- and, as such, are rightly collected elsewhere, the first and third in Maurai And Kith - which needs to be split up. And "The Man Who Came Early" should go into a revised Past Times.

One big overhaul of all of Anderson's collections is needed.

Two Questions About Time Travel

Two related but nevertheless distinct questions about pastward time travel:

(i) Would it be possible to apply modern knowledge to good effect in an earlier period?

(ii) Would it be possible to change the course of past events?

Obviously, (i) could lead to (ii) but not necessarily. These questions enable us to tread a path through several sf works.

A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain answers yes to (i) and is ambiguous on (ii). The technological changes made in the Arthurian period do not survive but might they have done?

The Time Machine by HG Wells addresses neither question because it is only about travel to the future.

Lest Darkness Fall by L. Sprague de Camp answers yes to both.

Bring The Jubilee by Ward Moore does not address (i) but answers yes to (ii).

"By His Bootstraps" by Robert Heinlein is about travel to the future but shows its traveler applying modern knowledge to good effect in a less sophisticated future society.

Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series answers yes to both.

Anderson's "The Little Monster" answers yes to (i) and does not address (ii).

Anderson's "The Man Who Came Early" answers no to (i) and does not address (ii).

Comprehensive or what?