Old Phoenix POV's

Careful rereading is necessary. The first person narrator of Poul Anderson's "House Rule" informs us that the Peter Abelard whom he sees in the Old Phoenix Inn is:

"...still a whole man."

-Poul Anderson, "House Rule" IN Anderson, Fantasy (New York, September, 1981), pp. 9-20 AT p. 16 -

- i.e., has not been castrated, as he was in our history. 

The first person narrator of Anderson's "Losers' Night" informs us that he has:

"...heard, or seen for myself..."

-"Losers' Night," p. 111. (my emphasis)

- that several legendary, mythical, fictional, literary or historical persons have visited the Old Phoenix and that these include:

"...an Abelard who remained a whole man..." (ibid.)

I had to check. The absence of that phrase, "...or seen for myself...," would have implied different narrators for these two stories.

That narrator is absent from the Old Phoenix passages in A Midsummer Tempest which are all in the third person. Chapter xi begins with Prince Rupert's point of view (pov) but becomes omniscient narrator when he leaves the taproom. In xii, Rupert returns to the taproom and the narrative returns to his pov. In both cases, Valeria Matuchek is present. In the Epilogue, Rupert and his companion, Will, are long gone, Valeria has just finished recounting their story to a larger group of guests and the narration is from her pov.

And that is it for Old Phoenix povs. As Valeria concludes:

"'I hope you've enjoyed my story.'"

-Poul Anderson, A Midsummer Tempest (London, 1975), p. 229.

Here the author addresses his readers.

The Peak Of The Multiverse

Currently rereading Poul Anderson's "Losers' Night," I remain convinced that this single short story is the peak of Anderson's multiversal fiction. 

I have argued before that there should be a boxed set of uniform editions of:

Three Hearts And Three Lions

Operation Otherworld (in either one or two volumes)

A Midsummer Tempest

The Old Phoenix and other universes (a proposed title and collection)

Contents Of The Proposed Collection

"The House of Sorrows" (an alternative universe)

"Eutopia" (travel between alternative universes)

"House Rule" (the inn between the universes)

"Losers' Night" (again the inn but this time referring to characters from the previous three (or four) volumes - see Disappearance - and ending with Winston Churchill!

It is all there.

Disappearance

Three Hearts And Three Lions, NOTE (pp. 154-156). 

By the end of this NOTE and therefore also of the novel, Holger Carlsen has ransacked bookshops for:

"'Grimoires. Treatises on magic.'" (p. 156)

- and has disappeared. 

In A Midsummer Tempest, we learn that he has traveled between universes and is spending a night in the Old Phoenix. 

Poul Anderson's short story, "Losers' Night," confirms that Holger Danske has been in the Old Phoenix and also mentions other guests of that inter-universal inn:

Theseus (Greek myth)

Scheherazade (Arabian nights)

Falstaff (Shakespeare)

Huck Finn (Mark Twain)

Irene Adler (Sherlock Holmes)

Red Hanrahan (Yeats)

blind Rhysling (Heinlein)

"...an Abelard who remained a whole man..." (Anderson's "House Rule")

"...a Rupert of the Rhine who outfought Cromwell..." (Anderson's A Midsummer Tempest)

"Losers' Night" also lists several outstanding women including:

Gunnhild (Anderson's Mother Of Kings; Wikipedia article mentions Anderson twice)

Valeria Matuchek (Anderson's Operation Otherworld and conversation with Holger in the inn)

Not a small world but a big multiverse.

Poul Anderson, "Losers' Night" IN Anderson, All One Universe (New York, May 1997), pp. 105-123 AT p. 111.

Again The Two Inns

In Poul Anderson's "Losers' Night," people from different historical periods converse in the Old Phoenix.

In Anderson's "House Rule" and A Midsummer Tempest, people from different histories converse in the Old Phoenix.

In Neil Gaiman's The Sandman: Worlds' End, people from different histories tell stories in the Inn of the Worlds' End. Thus, the Worlds' End sequences are both a framing device and an additional story.

In A Midsummer Tempest, the Old Phoenix is almost a framing device although it appears in the middle and at the end instead of at the beginning and the end.

Both series could have been extended indefinitely, the Old Phoenix as short stories, Worlds' End as very high quality monthly comic books, with some of the same historical characters visiting both.

Happy June.

Poets And Hack Writers

Three Hearts And Three Lions, CHAPTER TEN.

When enough evidence has accumulated, Holger deduces that he is in a universe where the myths of Charlemagne are literally true just as later, in A Midsummer Tempest, Valeria Matuchek deduces that Prince Rupert is from a universe where the plays of Shakespeare are literally true. 

"'...that what was myth in one world might always be fact in some other.' PERELANDRA"

-CS Lewis, "Forms of Things Unknown" IN Lewis, The Dark Tower and other stories (London, 1983), pp. 124-132 AT p. 124.

(Lewis based a short story on a quotation from his own novel, Perelandra.)

Holger goes further:

"The mystics, dreamers, poets, and hack writers of home had in some unconscious way been in tune with whatever force linked the two universes; the corpus of stories which they gradually evolved had been a better job of reporting than they knew." (ibid.)

- which is precisely how DC Comics explained the differences between the Golden Age and Silver Age versions of their superheroes.

This idea covers a lot of territory and can unite a lot of literature.

Absent Heroes And Unwritten Sequels

Poul Anderson's The Broken Sword and his Three Hearts And Three Lions have in common that:

each implies a sequel that remains unwritten;

however, their main characters do appear briefly in later volumes, Skafloc and Mananaan in The Demon Of Scattery and Holger Danske in A Midsummer Tempest.

Three Hearts... concludes:

"...meanwhile new storms are rising. It may be that we shall need Holger Danske again."

-Poul Anderson, Three Hearts And Three Lions (London, 1977), NOTE, p. 156.

A fantasy novel can comment on the real world by highlighting the absence of a hero when one is needed. John Brunner was quoted as saying that Grendel is loose and there is no Beowulf.

Fantasy or sf - CS Lewis' Ransom Trilogy is both - can hint that its fantastic content relates to real life:

"What neither of us foresaw was the rapid march of events which was to render the book out of date before it was published. These events have already made it rather a prologue to our story than the story itself. But we must let it go as it stands. For the later stages of the adventure - well, it was Aristotle, long before Kipling, who taught us the formula, 'That is another story.'"

-CS Lewis, Out Of The Silent Planet (London, 1963), XXII, p. 180.

What rapid march of events? Out Of The Silent Planet was published in 1938.

Holger had lived through World War II, and also through the parallel conflict in the Carolingian universe, but new storms were rising.

The Power And The Inn

I am searching for blog references to the power unknown that granted the charter for the Old Phoenix, e.g.:

Powers Unknown 

The Taverners' Charter And Sagittarius 

Moving Between The Universes

After Or Between

The Time Patrol And The Old Phoenix

"Anomalous Variations In Reality"

That seems to be all.

In A Midsummer Tempest, xii, Valeria Matuchek tells Prince Rupert that the Old Phoenix is in "'...a pocket universe...'" (scroll down)

A "power unknown" controlling a pocket universe in a multiverse that contains not only high tech civilizations but also gods... Whatever the source and purpose of this power, it seems clear that the inn can be kept supplied with food and drink without the Taverners needing to collect coinage from diverse periods from their customers.

See the question in the combox for Telling The Tales.

Telling The Tales

 

Unfortunately, the inter-universal inn, the Old Phoenix, appears only in:

"House Rule"

"Losers' Night"

A Midsummer Tempest, xi, xii and Epilogue.

xii concludes:

"Valeria and Rupert settled themselves for conversation. The landlord listened." (p. 106)

I would resent being listened to but that is part of the deal. The landlord listens and learns instead of charging for food, drink and accommodation!

In the Epilogue, a larger number of guests exchange stories. Impatient to hear from others, Valeria Matuchek concludes her tale, and thus also the novel, abruptly:

"'Enough. I hope you've enjoyed my story.'" (p. 229)

Mister Gaheris: "There.

"That's my tale told. Who's next?"

-Neil Gaiman, The Sandman: Worlds' End (New York, 1994), p. 41, panels 5-6.

Valeria surprises us by saying that she had spent some time in the Shakespearean timeline:

"'...learning how things worked out.'" (p. 228)

After conversing with Rupert, she had consulted history books elsewhere, then travelled "'...through that universe...'" (ibid.) before returning to the Old Phoenix. So she has control over her inter-universal travel unlike Holger, whom she tries to help.

Inter-universal inns are more crowded at some times than at others:

Chiron the centaur: "I have never seen the inn so full."

-Worlds' End, p. 141, panel 5.

"There were many gathered this evening, to sit before the innkeeper's fire, enjoy his food and drink and regale him with their tales."

-Epilogue, p. 228.

"About a score of people were present..."

-Poul Anderson, "Losers' Night" IN Anderson, All One Universe (New York, May 1997), pp. 105-123 AT p. 108.

Misquoting Shakespeare

 

Will Fairweather misquotes Shakespeare here.

So did a guy in a dream that I had just before waking this morning. He said:

"The time is out of joint. O cursed spite.

"I have refused to stand against the night."

For the original, see Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 5, lines 210-211.

I would have forgotten this if I had not written it down so I might as well write it here.

Returning to Poul Anderson, I am amazed at how much is to be drawn out of his texts by rereading them carefully and by comparing, e.g., his A Midsummer Tempest with his Time Patrol series and with Neil Gaiman's The Sandman: Worlds' End, to cite just these two examples. I will finish rereading the Old Phoenix chapters of A Midsummer Tempest before either returning to The Broken Sword or moving on to something else.

Facsimiles And Verse

Valeria Matuchek:

"'...the theorems I do know let me cross from continuum to continuum, with a fair probability of landing in whichever one I want, or a reasonable facsimile of it.'"

-Poul Anderson, A Midsummer Tempest (London, 1975), xi, pp. 95-96.

The hostess of the Inn of the Worlds' End:

"You will return to the worlds from which you came, or ones very similar."

-Neil Gaiman, The Sandman: Worlds' End (New York, 1994), p. 158, panel 3.

Here is another parallel. In either multiverse, a traveller might arrive not in the intended world but in one so similar that any differences do not matter or might not even be noticed.

The landlord of the Old Phoenix:

"'...I'm a fat and cunning spider, albeit male,

"'which weaves a subtle web bedewed with ale

"'and wine and stronger waters, and thus ensnares

"'a singing swarm of lives,

"'to batten on the fables that they bear.'" (xii, p. 97)

We saw before that much of the text is verse laid out as prose. I have rearranged this passage according it to its rhythm, as far as I have been able to. 

When the landlord introduces Clodia Pulcher from Rome, Prince Rupert protests that she has been dead for sixteen hundred years. The landlord replies:

"'Not in the world that is her own, my lord.

"'And here may come, from every time and clime,

"'aye, every cranny of reality,

"'whoever finds a way to find the door

"'And brings uncommon tales wherewith to pay.'" (ibid.)

(And I need a food break after that.)

N And Lincoln

The Wardens and Rangers and later "time wardens" of Poul Anderson's The Corridors Of Time inhabit a single immutable timeline.

The mutant time travellers of Anderson's There Will Be Time inhabit a different single immutable timeline.

His Time Patrollers believe that they inhabit a single mutable timeline although it is impossible to formulate a coherent account of all the events that are described as occurring in the Time Patrol series.

The patrons of Anderson's Old Phoenix inhabit multiple timelines.

An immense dimensional framework would be necessary to incorporate such diverse scenarios into a single multiverse.

However, we find similar theoretical language and practical examples in the Time Patrol universe and in the Old Phoenix multiverse.

According to a Time Patrol instructor, both instantaneous transportation and travel into the past require infinitely discontinuous functions for their mathematical description and also involve:

"'...the concept of infinitely-valued relationships in a continuum of 4N dimensions, where N is the total number of particles in the universe.'"

-Poul Anderson, "Time Patrol" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, December 2010), pp. 1-53 AT 2, p. 9.

According to Valeria Matuchek:

"'Nobody's proved, in my world, whether there's an infinity of [universes], or whether the number's finite but enormous - N factorial, to be exact, where N is the total number of matter and energy particles that exist....'"

-Poul Anderson, A Midsummer Tempest (London, 1975), xii, p. 101.

OK. "N" means the same in both cases but, in the first case, there is a single continuum with 4N dimensions whereas, in the second case, there are possibly N factorial continua!

Secondly, there is a common practical example.

As far as the Time Patrol is concerned:

"'...suppose I went back and prevented Booth from killing Lincoln. Unless I took very elaborate precautions, it would probably happen that someone else did the shooting and Booth got blamed anyway.'"

-"Time Patrol," 2, p. 15.

And for Valeria:

"'...suppose I happened to meet Abe Lincoln here...given a lot of time together, I probably couldn't resist warning him against Ford's Theater. Lord knows what that might do to his world. Make a new continuum? I'm not sure if that's possible.'"

-A Midsummer Tempest, xi, pp. 93-94.

The host of the Old Phoenix performs the same function as the Time Patrol by preventing conversations that would result in an Abraham Lincoln that was going to be assassinated by Booth not being assassinated by Booth.

And the scenarios have similarities because they have a common creator.

(Lastly, Sheila and I now live on Lincoln Rd, Lancaster.)

Basia, Fanden, Holger And Valeria

We will be away from Lancaster, and I will be away from this computer, from early on Saturday, 23 May, until late on Wednesday 27 May. That will be a welcome break.

Blogwise, the discussion of a single phrase, "strange dimensions," has diverted us from Poul Anderson's The Broken Sword into several multidimensional narratives. But that is what happens when we follow lines of enquiry on the blog. As Le Matelot says in Trader To The Stars, "We are on our way." (But we don't know where we're going.)

Combining this with our interest in languages, we find that, in the Old Phoenix, a woman says:

"'Da mi basia mille.'"

-Poul Anderson, A Midsummer Tempest (London, 1975), xi. p. 94.

She means: "Give me a thousand kisses."

The man whom she addresses responds:

"'Det var som Fanden!'" (ibid.)

He means: "It was like damn" or "I'll be damned."

He continues:

"'I've forgotten practically all the Latin I ever had, except for church.' Slowly: 'However, is language required?'" (ibid.)

However, another woman with whom he has been conversing reminds him that they have serious matters to discuss. He addresses her as "Valeria" and she has already addressed him as "Holger." Thus, they have identified themselves as characters from other novels by Poul Anderson.

The plot thickens.

Skafloc In Ireland

The Broken Sword, XXI.

Acting on information imparted by the dead, Skafloc rows to Ireland where Lugh of the Long Hand, anticipating the arrival of:

"'...an elf...with strange tidings...'" (p. 148)

- has already:

"'...called all the Tuatha De Danaan to council in the cave of Cruachan, and the lords of other people of the Sidhe as well.'" (ibid.)

For some relevant references, see:

Snow, Sea, Sun, Stars And Sidhe

Angus Og

The Tuatha De Danaan remind us of Anglo-Israel theory. See:

A Midsummer Tempest II

British, English, Israelites And Trojans

But what I did not mention before was the extraordinary history of the Stone of Scone.

Multiverses

See Anderson And Andrea. 

In addition to discussing the state of this world, Andrea and I also watch superhero TV series that involve inter-universal crossovers within a fictional multiverse.

Worthwhile prose sf that I have read about multiverses includes:

Conquistador by SM Stirling;

Poul Anderson's A Midsummer Tempest in which -

the Prince Rupert of the Rhine from the Shakespearean universe of this novel (A Midsummer Tempest),

Holger Danske from Carolingian myth and from Anderson's Three Hearts And Three Lions,

and Valeria Matuchek from the magical universe of Anderson's Operation Otherworld -

- meet each other in the inter-universal inn, the Old Phoenix, from Anderson's "House Rule" and "Losers' Night," the first cameoing Nicholas van Rijn from Anderson's Technic History and the latter featuring among others Winston Churchill.

We can't get enough of it. (But fortunately Anderson gives us quite a lot.)

Addendum, 29 April: Life has gotten busy here. (I use an Americanism out of respect for Poul Anderson.) So far this year, we have had 440 posts in 4 months so maybe that is enough until some time early next month? On Saturday, there will be a May Day March and Rally in Lancaster and, on Sunday, I might get a lift to a Wesak (The Buddha's Birthday) Festival in Northumberland. Did both last year. (Maybe not many people celebrate both.) Anderson-wise, we are still rereading Harvest The Fire. After that, who knows? Onward through the multiverse.

Narratives And Perspectives

Poul Anderson presents mutant immortals in The Boat Of A Million Years and mutant time travellers in There Will Be Time. Far from bring successive instalments of a single series, these works are the exact opposite of that: alternative speculations. An immortal can remember a historical period but not revisit it whereas a time traveller who does not remember a period can visit it for the first time. Thus, history plays different roles in these narratives, as also in the same author's historical novels.

Fictional characters sometimes experience time travel very differently. Anderson's Time Patrollers, seated on timecycles, experience what is to them an instantaneous transition from one set of spatiotemporal coordinates to another whereas the protagonists in Anderson's "Flight to Forever" are enclosed within their vehicle, called a "time projector," while external events fast forward around them. Anderson's mutant time travellers, travelling by will power alone, see the rest of the world fast forwarding or rewinding around them as does HG Wells' Time Traveller and this is not surprising because we are to understand that it was one of the mutants who gave the time travel idea to Wells.

Some completed bodies of work are straightforward boxed set material like four volumes of The King Of Ys, four of Harvest Of Stars, three of The Last Viking etc whereas others are not what readers would expect like:

three Maurai future history short stories;

one long Maurai novel;

There Will Be Time in which the Maurai History is fiction -

- or:

two Kith future history short stories;

a long novel presenting an alternative Kith history -

- or:

A Midsummer Tempest in which Holger Danske from Three Hearts And Three Lions and Valeria Matuchek from Operation Otherworld meet in the inter-universal inn, the Old Phoenix, from "House Rule " and "Losers' Night." 

Reading through any of these sequences gets you to somewhere completely unpredictable.

Poul Anderson's Series

Does anyone know how many series Poul Anderson wrote?

The Wikipedia Poul Anderson bibliography lists:

Hoka (with Gordon R. Dickson)

The Psychotechnic League (which I call the Psychotechnic History)

Tomorrow's Children, collected as Twilight World

The Technic History

Time Patrol

History of Rustum

Maurai and Kith (giving the wrong impression that these are one series)

Harvest of Stars

The King of Ys (with Karen Anderson)

Operation Otherworld

The Last Viking

The Trygve Yamamura Trilogy (not named as such)

This bibliography lists Tales Of The Flying Mountains as a collection although not as a collected series.

It does not mention:

connections between Three Hearts And Three Lions, A Midsummer Tempest, Operation Otherworld and two "Old Phoenix" short stories;

the three Wing Alak stories;

a few other connections between works.

For earlier posts on series, see here.

Different Kinds Of Universes

Sf writers imagine future periods or alternative histories whereas fantasy writers imagine alternative realities with magic instead of science and supernatural beings instead of extraterrestrials. Poul Anderson did both. A divergent timeline where the Carthaginians won the Second Punic War or where there was no Reformation is closer to home than a different kind of universe where the Carolingian myths were real, where magic worked or where Shakespearean plays, including A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Tempest, were true histories. However, Anderson's comprehensiveness includes an inter-universal inn, the Old Phoenix, where travellers from different kinds of universes meet, including van Rijn from Anderson's own Technic History and Rhysling from Robert Heinlein's Future History. This observation is nothing new by now but is occasioned by a remark in T'Kela And Pax that sometimes the future histories seem very close.

Breakfast post. Crumpets, jam and coffee. We are up early for a long river walk.

Revels Ended

William Shakespeare wrote A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Tempest. 

Poul Anderson wrote a sequel to both, A Midsummer Tempest, and quoted:

"The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,

"The solemn empires, the great globe itself,

"Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve

"And like this insubstantial pageant faded

"Leave not a wrack behind -"

-The Tempest, Act 4, Scene 1 -

- in "Star of the Sea" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (December, 2010), pp. 467-640 AT 2, p. 480.

Robert Heinlein quoted more of that same speech:

"Our revels now are ended. These, our actors,

"As I foretold you, were all spirits, and

"Are melted into air, into thin air:

"And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,

"The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,

"The solemn temples, the great globe itself,

"Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve

"And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,

"Leave not a rack behind."

- in Between Planets, Double Star, Have Spacesuit - Will Travel and Farnham's Freehold.

However, despite quoting from the beginning of the speech, Heinlein omitted its concluding sentence:

"We are such stuff

"As dreams are made on; and our little life

"Is rounded with a sleep."

Heinlein denied death! Anderson did not. Although he did not write about the deaths of van Rijn or Flandry, we do read stories set long after their deaths. Although the mutant "immortals" in Anderson's The Boat Of A Million Years plan to reconvene a million years hence, there is no guarantee that any of them will in fact survive that long.

James Blish wrote The Triumph Of Time to show that even beneficiaries of antiagathics will be killed by the end of the universe if not by anything else before then.

Poul Anderson's Crossovers

We find that I have written many posts about fictional crossovers.

I think that some of the best such crossovers are to be found in Poul Anderson's works:

Holger Danske is introduced in Three Hearts And Three Lions;

Valeria Matuchek is introduced (indeed, is born and becomes a teenager) in Anderson's Operation Otherworld;

Anderson's A Midsummer Tempest introduces an alternative historical Prince Rupert of the Rhine;

in some chapters of A Midsummer Tempest, the alternative Rupert meets Holger Danske, now lost between universes, and Valeria Matuchek, now a graduate student, in the inter-universal inn, the Old Phoenix;

also in the Old Phoenix but in an Anderson short story, "House Rule," Nicholas van Rijn from Anderson's Technic History drinks with Sancho Panza from Cervantes' Don Quixote and with Eric the Red from history;

Sherlock Holmes appears in Anderson's Time Patrol series and, along with several other fictional characters, in the A Midsummer Tempest epilogue.

While in a divergent timeline, Manse Everard of the Time Patrol could have met and crossed over with a character who was a hero of that timeline. Indeed, Lorenzo de Conti, the personal causal nexus, probably meets that criterion.

Who Is Real?

We find that this blog includes several posts on the theme of "fiction within fiction." They came up on a blog search here.

In Poul Anderson's The Corridors Of Time, Malcolm Lockridge refers to James Bond as a fictional character. An early indication that Storm Darroway is not native to the second half of the twentieth century is that she has to ask who Bond is. 

In Anderson's "Time Patrol," Manse Everard meets a Victorian private investigator whom we recognize. This is one detail in which the Time Patrol universe differs overtly from ours.

In the timeline of Anderson's A Midsummer Tempest, Hamlet, Macbeth, Oberon, Titania, Romeo, Juliet, King Lear, Falstaff and Othello existed, there were cannon and a University of Wittenberg in Hamlet's time and clocks in Caesar's time, Richard III was a hunchbacked monster, Bohemia had a seacoast and witchcraft works.

In Anderson's There Will Be Time:

Jack Havig refers to Superman as a fictional character;

Anderson's Maurai stories and There Will Be Time are works of fiction;

a real time traveller gives the time travel idea to a nineteenth century English writer.

In Neil Gaiman's The Sandman: The Wake, Clark Kent, disliking dreams in which he is an actor in a bad TV version of his life, asks his companions whether they get those. The Batman asks doesn't everyone and the Martian Manhunter replies that he doesn't.

Imaginative writers turn reality inside out. One character is referred to by different names in There Will Be Time and in The Sandman: The Wake.