"Omnilingual"

See combox here.

OK. I have now read H. Beam Piper's "Omnilingual." So what do we think of it?

First, since we are on Poul Anderson Appreciation, are Piper and Anderson comparable? Terrohuman History and Technic History? Paratime Police and Time Patrol? I have read almost no Piper so cannot comment any further. 

"Omnilingual":

yet another extinct humanoid Martian race, including Canal Builders;

strangely, "Luna" misnamed "Lunar," an English adjective instead of a Latin noun, the same mistake as in the Dan Dare comic strip;

the story is about how to translate Martian.

It seems too easy. These Martians sound like an ancient Terrestrial civilization, not like an extra-terrestrial species. A University library has survived, its books and periodicals printed on something more durable than paper. The language is alphabetical with consonants and vowels (somehow) distinguishable. Texts read from left to right with gaps between words. The number system is decimal with a stylized hook meaning "plus" and a stylized knife meaning "minus." The year is divided into ten nearly equal months named "First" to "Tenth." The illustrated Periodic Table and other such scientific diagrams are visually recognizable with explanatory words composed of affixes and suffixes below them.

But how will the explorers translate the many other words that do not have scientific or mathematical meanings?

Another Future Historian

For earlier references to Ursula Le Guin, see here. (It is a search result. Scroll down.)

Le Guin resembles Poul Anderson in that she wrote both a future history (here) and a fantasy series (here).

Recently, I invited comparisons of Anderson with several other future historians and sf writers:

Mack Reynolds
H. Beam Piper
Cordwainer Smith
Marion Zimmer Bradley
Frank Herbert
Philip K. Dick
Clifford Simak
etc

Clearly, Le Guin should also be on this list. My memories of reading the Hainish History decades ago are that:

it was uneven;
there was disappointment because an Enemy was referred to in some of the books but turned out never to have appeared in any of the books;
it felt as though the whole was less than the sum of the parts;
The Dispossessed, The Left Hand Of Darkness, The Word For World Is Forest and "The Day Before The Revolution" were individually good.

History And Time

Do H. Beam Piper's Terro-Human Future History and Paratime Police series approximately correspond to  Poul Anderson's Technic History and Time Patrol series, respectively? The Paratime Police travel between parallel timelines whereas the Time Patrol travels through time. However, both series address the question of alternative histories so their most basic premise is identical. I bought a copy of Lord Kalvan Of Otherwhen but never got into it.

(Short post at Motorway Services.)

Why Empires?

Why are there so many interstellar "Empires" in American sf? Notable examples are the works of Poul Anderson, Isaac Asimov, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Frank Herbert, H Beam Piper and Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle. Although James Blish's Cities In Flight features an interstellar "Hruntan Empire," the main emphasis of this series is on trade by the flying cities.

Empires resonate with much past Terrestrial history. The word "empire" evokes a realm both vast and powerful - although also oppressive and militaristic. It seems both implausible and unimaginative as a future form of social organization.

Poul Anderson wrote well about interstellar empires, then moved on to other kinds of fictional futures. "The Star Plunderer" makes the founding of the Terran Empire by Manuel Argos seem plausible and the Dominic Flandry novels make interstellar Imperial administration seem credible.

Greg Bear wrote:

"...Rome has been much abused. Lay off Rome for a while. And give me no spaceships in feudal settings...unless, of course, you are Poul Anderson, but you are most likely not."
-Greg Bear, "Tomorrow Through The Past" IN SFWA Bulletin, Fall 1979, pp. 38-41 AT pp. 40-41.

I agree that Poul Anderson made even feudalism with spaceships work. I can accept Niven and Pournelle's Empire of Man as part of a literary tradition and as the setting for their First Contact novel but sf must move on, as Anderson did.

More On American Future Histories

I listed four Campbell-edited future historians (Heinlein, Asimov, Blish and Anderson) but maybe should have included a fifth:

"H. Beam Piper was first and last a John W. Campbell writer, his first SF story, "Time and Time Again," appeared in Astounding in April 1946, and his last, "Down Styphon!," in Analog in November 1965."
-John F. Carr, "The Terrohuman Future History of H. Beam Piper" IN Bulletin of the Science Fiction Writers of America, Fall 1979.

However, returning to the authors that I do know something about, Poul Anderson not only wrote hard science fiction in the tradition of Robert Heinlein  but also, and completely independently of JRR Tolkien, wrote heroic fantasies derived from Norse mythology. These two literary traditions converged when Heinleinian sf writer Jerry Pournelle included "Sauron supermen" in his CoDominium future history.

In The Mote In God's Eye (London, 1979), Niven's and Pournelle's characters speculate as to whether isolated extrasolar colonists might not only regress sociologically but also evolve biologically. The concluding installments of Poul Anderson's Technic History address this question.

Mote presents its own distinctive version of hyperspace: instantaneous transit along "tramlines" (p. 32) between certain stars, with the usual restriction that this kind of travel is impossible from too deep within a gravity well. Travel time is necessary to and from tramline end points. By contrast, I think that the version of hyperspace in Anderson's Technic History is unique because it involves many instantaneous quantum jumps through normal, familiar, 3D space, not through any other kind of space.

We recognize Anderson-type world-building in the description of the New Caledonia star system on pp. 32-34 of Mote. I do not think that Heinlein did this? Direct Imperial rule of New Chicago after the defeat of its rebellion recalls the comparable situation on Aeneas in Anderson's The Day Of Their Return.

For the nationality of a space warship's Chief Engineer, Niven and Pournelle follow neither Heinlein nor Anderson but Star Trek:

"Like many engineering officers, Sinclair was from New Scotland. His heavy accent was common among Scots throughout space." (p.15)

How can a handful of writers create such fascinating texts? It continues to be a blast.

Five First Empires

(i) After the Fall of the Galactic Empire, the Second Foundationers plan to build a Second Empire in a mere thousand years. If they succeed, then the fallen Empire will be renamed the First.

(ii) Donvar Ayeghen, President of the Galactic Archeological Society, refers to excavations in the ruins of Sol City, Terra, and to Manuel Argos, the Founder of the First Empire.

(iii) Galactics who have come to evacuate Earth fly among the ruins of Sol City, capital of the legendary First Empire.

(iv) When Leonidas IV proclaims the Second Empire of Man in 2903, the Empire that had ended in 2640 becomes the First.

(v) The Terran Federation is succeeded by the First Galactic Empire.

(i) = Isaac Asimov's Foundation future history.
(ii) = Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization.
(iii) = Anderson's Psychotechnic History.
(iv) = Jerry Pournelle's CoDominium future history.
(v) = H Beam Piper's Terrohuman Future History.

Future Histories Overview

Some future histories I am unfamiliar with and would welcome input:

Cordwainer Smith;
H Beam Piper;
Marion Zimmer Bradley.

The ones that I do know divide into four groups:

British
Wells
Stapledon
Aldiss
RC Churchill (not well known)

Campbell-edited
Heinlein
Asimov
Blish
Anderson

An American sequence (overlapping with "Campbell")
Heinlein
Anderson (2)
Niven
Pournelle

Anderson's later future histories
six or seven

The magnitude of Poul Anderson's contributions is evident from these lists.

Overlapping Themes

I mentioned the overlapping sf themes of alternative histories and causality violation ("changing the past") time travel fiction here and had already discussed them here.

Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series is a culmination of causality violation. What would be a corresponding work of alternative history? Unfortunately, I have as yet read very few novels or series by Andre Norton, H. Beam Piper or Harry Turtledove, although I understand that Piper's Paratime Police are a sort of opposite number of the Time Patrol.

Of the alternative histories that I have read, SM Stirlings' are consistently superb, in particular The Peshawar Lancers and Conquistador. ...Lancers shows us not only an alternative history but also its corresponding literature and art.

Appropriately, the single Time Patrol story written by Stirling addresses one of the most important speculative questions of alternative history: what would the twentieth century have been like without the assassination at Sarajevo? Thus, this story is a major synthesis of these two temporal themes.

"Written By The Wind"

Great King's War is a sequel to H Beam Piper's Lord Kalvan Of Otherwhen. We are talking about some serious alternative history fiction here. Lord Kalvan... is one volume of Piper's Paratime series which, since it deals with the Paratime Police, is comparable to Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series.

Roland Green, co-author of Great King's War, also wrote the Drakas! story, "Written By The Wind, A Story Of The Draka." Two Draka observe a Japanese-Russian air-sea battle in 1905. The Japanese who are about to die are said to be approaching the Yasukuni Shrine, founded by Emperor Meiji, who is named in the story.

One Draka carries a crucifix and survives. The other carries a Thorshammer and doesn't. Dying, she holds out the hammer and says:

"'Take it - take it to a shrine. Or - or Ran's.'" (Drakas!, p. 119)

Ran was the wife of the sea giant, Aegir. See here. Welcoming the dead under the sea, she resembles Naerdha. At the end, the surviving Draka, holding the hammer, asks:

"'...if there is a shrine to Thor or Ran in the Empire?'" (p. 121)

Obviously, there is not. Equally obviously, his colleague meant that her amulet should be given to the sea.

The story is mainly about the deployment and effects of military hardware. Although most of us do not want to be in a land, sea, air or space battle, we often enjoy reading about them. See here and here.

Alternative History Fiction: Its Origins And A Culmination

My eyes have been opened by reading the Wiki article on Alternative Histories. Alternative history fiction itself has a long history - its earliest origins were historical, even Roman - although HG Wells may have been the first writer to describe travel between alternative histories.

The article rightly states that it is impossible to discuss separately from each other alternative history fiction and time travel fiction in which history is changed. Thus, the article appropriately refers both to Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series (time travelers changing history) and to his Old Phoenix stories (travelers between alternative histories).

However, here is at least one culmination of this sub-genre:

SM Stirling's Draka series recounts an alternative history from 1779 to 2445 and also describes travel between histories;

the series comprises four novels by Stirling and one anthology of twelve stories by other authors, edited by Stirling;

Poul Anderson is quoted on the back cover of the anthology as commenting "...an exciting, evocative [and] horrifying read."

The twelve contributors to the anthology, Drakas! are:

William Sanders, writer of fantasy and sf, including alternative histories;
John Miller, author of graphic novels and of stories set in George RR Martin's Wild Cards alternative history series;
Roland Green who has continued H Beam Piper's Great King's War alternative history;
David Drake, author of the Hammer's Slammers future war series;
Jane Lindskold, a former professor of English;
Lee Allred, author of alternative history fiction;
William Barton, author of When We Were Real;
Harry Turtledove, often called the master of alternative history;
Anne Marie Talbott, published here for the first time;
Markus Baur, a high tech sector worker resident in Vienna;
John Barnes, who introduces his crosstime-travel hero, Mark Strang, to the Draka; 
Severna Park, sf novelist.

Stirling explains the reasoning behind the series:

What were the good and bad consequences of European colonialism?
What if its worst consequence, slavery, had grown until it was unstoppable?

Thus, as I suspected, Draka world domination is part of the premise and has to be accepted as such.

"Of Time And The Rover"

Sandra Miesel, "Of Time And The Rover" IN Poul Anderson, The Guardians Of Time (New York, 1981), pp. 245-254.

Brilliant title. "The Rover" is Poul Anderson and some of his characters:

"The same thought must have occurred to the time rover." (p. 241)

Sandra Miesel advises us to:

"Compare [Anderson's] Old Phoenix Inn filled with heroes from everywhen in A Midsummer Night's Dream, 1974, with the gatherings in Robert A Heinlein's Number Of The Beast, 1980." (p. 246)

I prefer not to!

Miesel writes that Anderson's "...time transit stories...compare favorably with the famous efforts of John Brunner, L Sprague de Camp, Fritz Leiber, Ward Moore, Larry Niven, Andre Norton, H Beam Piper, Keith Roberts, and Robert Silverberg." (p. 246)

I disagree. I think that Anderson's time travel works are far superior to any of these. And several of the mentioned writers make a complete mess of time travel paradoxes.

in "Brave To Be a King":

"The climactic procession celebrating the Birthday of Mithras would take longer for a critic to analyze in full than it does for Anderson to describe." (pp. 249-250)

This is probably right. Next, I will reread "Brave To Be A King."