From Wells To Anderson

In HG Wells' The Time Machine, a nineteenth century scientist constructs the Time Machine, sets off into the future and learns that mankind will devolve.

In Poul Anderson's Time Patrol, a twentieth century engineer is recruited by a time travelling organization founded in the future by our evolutionary successors. The Patrol addresses those "...curious possibilities of anachronism and of utter confusion..." that Wells' outer narrator had only hinted at. 

Although Wells and Anderson are not the only sf writers to address the concept of time travel, the treatment of this idea by these two authors is extremely comprehensive. This is my last thought of the day after the completion of a rereading of Anderson's Wellsian narrative, "Flight to Forever."

What comes next? (We don't know yet.)

Good night.

The Future History In "The Star Beast"

Poul Anderson, "The Star Beast" IN Anderson, Alight In The Void (New York, August 1993), pp. 61-102.

See Procyon in:

Wikipedia

Poul Anderson Appreciation (scroll down)

Procyon is 11.46 light-years from Sol. In this fictional future, interstellar spaceships can travel at only half light-speed. The journey between Sol and Procyon takes twenty years.

Nearly nine hundred years ago, human beings colonized the Procyonite System where their long and bitter struggle for survival has involved a centuries-long war of extermination against the Czernigi. During that time, the Procyonites, as they now are, have had no contact either with Earth or with any other extra-solar colonies. However, a warship of mutated human beings from Procyon has just arrived in Earth orbit. Its captain, Felgi, and a squad of blaster-wielding guards descend in an armed boat. Felgi converses with Coordinator Ramacan who constitutes the sole government of an unarmed and undefended Earth. When Ramacan has confirmed Earth's defenselessness, Felgi announces that he and his men are taking over.

What Has Happened On Earth During Nine Hundred Years

Seven or eight centuries ago:

"'The ultrawave was discovered...'" (p. 72)

The ultrawave transmits solar power to the whole Solar System and can also transmit matter. Hence, teleportation. From teleportation, duplication, including duplication of rejuvenated, healthy bodies onto which memories can be electronically superimposed. Duplication and transmission enable individuals to live far apart. Robot ships can transport recorded personalities to extra-solar colonies with which there is no contact except through occasional curious wanderers.

Thus, yet another STL (slower-than-light) future history is summarized in a single short story.

"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.

Knowledge And Understanding

Are there things "that man was not meant to know"? Of course not. Not meant by whom for a start? Knowledge is good for its practical applications and, in my opinion, is a value in itself. We are better for knowing, since 1925, that our galaxy is not the entire universe. (I have met people who either disagree with me on that or do not even see the point of such a value judgment.) James Blish's After Such Knowledge Trilogy addresses the question whether secular knowledge is evil.

Sometimes an author reaches a limit of what he is able to explain or account for within a given text. Discussing time travel paradoxes, Manse Everard of the Time Patrol breaks off and says:

"'I hope you understand what I'm saying. I don't.'"

-Poul Anderson, The Shield Of Time (New York, July 1991), PART SIX, 18,244 B. C., II, p. 304.

His fellow agent, Komozino, helpfully adds:

"'It requires a metalanguage and metalogic accessible to few intellects...'" (ibid.)

- and besides:

"'We haven't time to quibble about theory.'" (ibid.)

So the text can move on to practical matters! (But one thing that they do have is time. Komozino might already have spent weeks, months or years of her lifespan on their current problem. Anderson's characters have come a long way from Wells' Time Traveller and his outer narrator wondering about curious possibilities of anachronism and of utter confusion.) 

When Valgard asks Illrede about the new god, the troll-king replies:

"'Best not speak of mysteries we cannot understand.'"

-The Broken Spear, XIII, p. 92.

Indeed, none of us can understand such a mixing of mythologies!

In Neil Gaiman's The Sandman: The Wake (New York, 1997):

"...there are some powers that no one, not even the Endless, seeks to inquire into deeply." (p. 17, panel 4)

Why not?

Wind And A Sign

The Fleet Of Stars, 21.

Swearing Kinna to secrecy, Fenn tells her that she must not say a word to anyone, not even to her parents, to her robot pet:

"'...or the wind.'" (p. 278)

The wind is becoming incorporated as a character.

To seal the secret:

"She made a curious gesture, right forefinger flitting from left to right shoulder, then from brow to breast.'" (ibid.)

Gestures outlast their origins.

"...Harpagus drew the sign of the cross, which was a Mithraic sun-symbol."

-Poul Anderson, "Brave To Be A King" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, December 2010), pp. 55-112 AT 5, p. 77.

A neighbour made the sign of the cross when I informed her of another neighbour's death.

During a pause in their confrontation, we are told that Fenn and Kinna:

"...could not hear the Martian wind, and the dust devils afar spun in silence." (pp. 279-280)

Could not hear them? But wind and devils must have been in their minds or the text would not have mentioned such inaudible outdoor phenomena.

I have written more than I expected to this evening but with Poul Anderson that is always possible.

What was the secret? Read The Fleet Of Stars.

Limitations

World Without Stars, VIII.

Ya-Kela thinks that ya-Valland has:

"...curious weaknesses.'" (p. 52)

He is blind at night, awkward in the marshlands, lacking either tail or webbed feet, and ignorant of dangers like dart bushes. Of course Valland is awkward and ignorant in this environment! That ya-Kela does not understand that is a limitation on his part, not on Valland's. In a city, if he ever visited one, ya-Kela would not know to look both ways before crossing a street.

More seriously, if the stranger is not after all "'...from God...,'" (p. 53) then ya-Kela:

"'...will plunge the first spear into ya-Valland.'" (ibid.)

Many on Earth would regard the Azkashi's devotion "'...to God alone...'" (p. 54) as admirable but we have learned from experience how this can go wrong. In London, an Evangelical preacher went to the assembly point of a demonstration in order to address Muslims with remarks like:

"They say that He is not the Son of God and what a blasphemy that is!"

Not a blasphemy, just a different belief!

(What constitutes respect or disrespect to the Lord is largely a matter of tradition. Someone who entered our meditation hall was shocked to see people sitting for meditation with their backs to the Buddha.) 

Here at Blog Central, we, editorially speaking, are suffering from a mild cold, therefore reading and posting sluggishly. Also, we are still giving some attention to the less-read James Blish Appreciation blog.

Go with God. (As Blish's Jorn the Apostle says.)

This One

Poul Anderson captures slight differences in modes of speech. On Aeneas, Nords speak Anglic without the articles, "a" and "the," e.g.:

"'Do I have choice?'"

-Poul Anderson, The Day Of Their Return IN Anderson, Captain Flandry: Defender Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, February 2010), pp. 74-240 AT 7, p. 121.

"'I don't think "supernatural" is right word... I'd call Cosmenosis philosophy rather than religion.'" (p. 128)

- although I have found one instance of the indefinite article:

"'What are we? Sparks, cast up from a burnin' universe whose creation was meanin'less accident?'" (p. 129)

Aenean Riverfolk replace "a" with "one":

"'That was one coffin.'" (12, p. 169)

In the Psychotechnic History, Nomads sometimes replace "I" with "this one." Peregrine Joachim Henry says of himself:

"'This one has been sort of curious for the last few years...and he's been keeping his eyes open.'"

-The Peregrine, CHAPTER II, p. 9.

However, Joachim immediately reverts to the first person pronoun:

"'You might think I was a Cordy, the way I've been reconstructing the crime.'" (ibid.)

In spiritual practice, "this one" might be more appropriate than "I." Who or what is present in all experience and thus also in meditation? First, an individual subject of consciousness. Second, the universe conscious of itself through the individual. I usually call these the individual self and the universal self but "this one" and "the One" would be simpler. This one is not separate from the One which is much more than this one. This one exists by responding to others and must also respond to the One which is experienced as transcendent other. That other is personified but persons are self-conscious individuals, thus individual subjects, not the universal subject. 

Narrative Structures

Poul Anderson, "Wings of Victory" IN Anderson, The Earth Book Of Stormgate (New York, 1978), pp. 15-32.

The first person narrator of this story has a curious status. First, she is not named in the story. It is the Earth Book compiler, Hloch of Stormgate, who afterwards informs us that her name is Maeve Downey, that she is a planetologist and that this story is an extract from her autobiography, Far Adventure. (An evocative title.)

Secondly, she is not involved in the action that she recounts. Three explorers descend to the surface of the newly discovered terrestroid planet. They are a xenologist, a pilot and a gunner and therefore do not include the planetologist.

Thirdly, her narrative uses the techniques of fiction, describing events from the point of view of the pilot and informing us of his reactions and feelings. This does not surprise us because we know that we are reading a short story written by Poul Anderson but Hloch's Avalonian audience does not know that!

The story presents information about several members of the Olga crew and I propose to outline and discuss this information but that will have to wait until after a visit to the gym. Life continues in Lancaster as well as on Ythri.

Impoverished

Before Wanda Tamberly attends the Time Patrol Academy, Manse Everard tells her that pre-civilization Earth was "'...fit for gods...'" (Searching the blog reveals that we have quoted this phrase several times.)

In Beringia in 13,212 BC, Wanda sees for herself. Nine kinds of birds fly "...in their hundreds...":

"After two years she still found marvel in the lavishness of life, at the very gates of the Ice. Not before leaving her home world had she really known how impoverished it was."

-Poul Anderson, 13,212 B. C., I, IN Anderson, The Shield Of Time (New York, 1991), pp. 139-149 AT p. 140.

In case I have made anyone curious and they do not have the book to hand:

gulls

ducks

geese

cranes

swans

plover

snipe

curlews

one hovering eagle

But the main point here is that our world is impoverished. That is a point not to be read past but to be pondered. Maybe we have a responsibility to restore that lavishness of life? And to put industries into space?

A Long Way

 

What a long way we have come from The Time Machine to the Time Patrol! 

The Time Machine is a single long story or short novel in which a single Time Traveller makes a single journey on a single Time Machine while the outer narrator considers "...curious possibilities of anachronism and of utter confusion..." (see here) whereas the Time Patrol is a series of stories and novels in which an organization of time travellers with bases throughout history avoids anachronisms and averts utter confusion. 

In The Time Machine, we engage with the discussion of Time and enjoy the descriptions of time travelling. With the Time Patrol, we engage with the discussion of time travel paradoxes and enjoy the history. 

Although Patrol timecycles bypass spacetime instead of dilating through it, the mutant time travellers of Poul Anderson's There Will Be Time recapture the Time Traveller's experience of observing external events flickering past. Anderson, in the Time Patrol and in his other time travel narratives, fully develops all those implicit "curious possibilities."

Grisly Paradoxes

 

The Corridors Of Time, CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.

Hu's group has arrived in 1827 BC some weeks later than he had wanted. The width of the human body causes an uncertainty factor when exiting a time corridor. He considers reentering the corridor and trying again but decides against this when his men show alarm and one even begins to object. Hu says:

"'No. That sort of thing can entangle you in the grisliest paradoxes, if you're unlucky.'" (p. 156)

What paradoxes? Hu's remark recalls the "curious possibilities" that HG Wells mentions but leaves unspecified. Later in The Corridors..., Lockridge and Auri do catch sight of their younger selves but that paradox is otherwise avoided in this narrative. Hu has had some couriers back and forth during a few weeks so he has some idea of what to expect in 1827 BC at least as of about month before this latest arrival. If any disaster has struck in that time, he does not know about it yet...

Two Classics Of Time Travel

See:

Classics

The Classics

HG Wells' The Time Machine and Poul Anderson's There Will Be Time are two "classics" of time travel fiction whereas the former and not the latter is a "Classic" of English literature. Scholars of time travel fiction will agree with me about the Anderson novel whereas scholars of English literature will not have heard of it.

Although written by an author of genre sf, There Will Be Time does not obviously belong to that literary ghetto. It is free of any of the accumulated cliches like faster than light drives, routine interstellar travel etc.

Can we talk about conceptual sequels as well as about linear sequels? There Will Be Time is very much a conceptual sequel to The Time Machine. It obliquely acknowledges Wells and ingeniously develops the "curious possibilities" of time travelling that that author had merely hinted at.

The Time Machine has a first person outer narrator, who seems to be Wells himself, and a first person inner narrator, the Time Traveller. Anderson's novel has two first person outer narrators, Poul Anderson and Robert Anderson, and an inner third person viewpoint character, Jack Havig. Thus, Anderson outdoes Wells as regards narrative complexity. In both cases, it is possible that the core narrative is a fiction within the fiction although Wells' outer narrator does see the Time Machine departing right at the end.

When Did The Time Traveller Go?

We know, because it is the basic premise of Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series, that those who go into the past on timecycles can alter the course of past events, whatever our theoretical understanding of this paradox, but we do not know the same of HG Wells' Time Machine. The outer narrator of The Time Machine reflects that time travelling suggests curious possibilities (scroll down) but Wells leaves it to his successors to explore such possibilities and Anderson is the most comprehensive such successor.

We have wondered what happened to the Time Traveller and also tried to tie him in with other fictional time travellers. Causality violation suggests somewhen else he could have gone. If he altered a past event, then he would have initiated a divergent timeline and gone into that timeline, disappearing from ours. Am I the first to suggest this?

The Mystery On Gwydion

The Night Face, IX.

The Gwydiona have scientific research, artistic innovations, engineering projects and philosophers and are eager for interstellar contact yet they do not investigate legends of subterranean creatures or forest skulkers that might be evidence for the existence of hidden natives which in turn could explain damage done to towns during Bale time as well as the mystery of why some of the Gwydiona themselves do not return from the Holy City after Bale time. The damage to towns has significantly decreased in recent years and this is cited as a reason why there is little incentive to study the problem! But what of the Gwydiona who fail to return? That still happens.

Are no scientific researchers curious or concerned? What do the philosophers do? Read Plato and Aristotle or try to understand the world around them? Scientists and philosophers have served obscurantist regimes...

Might Again

Mirkheim, III.

"Neither Adzel nor Chee Lan would take kindly to the idea of manning oars in a Grecian galley. Not but what they hadn't done equally curious things from time to time, and might again." (p. 80)

This is an understated expression of the passage of time. We know that the trader team has done many things, both routine and curious, in the past even though we have seen them only three times - in fact, only twice if we are reading the Technic History in its original book publication order. They "might again." This is possible although it is less likely with the passage of time and in fact it is no surprise to learn that this novel is to be the last trader team instalment in terms of fictional chronology. In the following chapter, the reassembled team will conduct its mission to Babur as vigorously as it had conducted itself on Ikananka and Merseia and all three team members will be in action again on occupied Hermes later in Mirkheim. But there is a last time for everything.

Fiction And Literature

Value judgements can be individual or collective. An example of an individual value judgement would be if someone said something like, "I think that the literary qualities of Poul Anderson's A Midsummer Night's Tempest are so outstanding that this novel counts as 'literature.'" However, a collective value judgement is shown by which works of poetry, prose fiction or drama are permanently in print. For present purposes, I refer to the permanently in print as "literature." All science fiction is fiction but how much of it is "literature"? Frankenstein and The Time Machine definitely are. They are also pre-genre science fiction. The Frankenstein theme is continued in Poul Anderson's Genesis and time travel in several of Anderson's works that we do not need to list yet again.

The Time Machine owes its status, I think, to:

its discussion of the nature of Time (I disagree with everything that is said but the point is that there is a discussion);

its vivid descriptions both of time travelling and of several future periods;

its vision of the future and sunset of mankind;

its characterization;

its hints at curious possibilities of anachronism and of utter confusion;

its final mystery about when the Time Traveller went and whether he will return;

its poetic descriptions of the past ages when he might have gone.

Enthusiasts for time travel fiction rightly value Poul Anderson's several contributions to this sub-genre although these works have not become "literature."

At The Landmeet

The Winter Of The World, XVII.

Donya and Josserek speak from a wagon. Their immediate audience is only about fifty, mainly wives, seated or standing. However, unpaid but trained, strong-lunged and strategically placed stentors shout what they hear to the small groups scattered throughout the crater. A curious procedure. Obviously, the members of the groups do not want to be close enough to ask questions or to participate in any discussion.

After speaking about the invaders:

"At the end, beneath a sky where thunderheads towered and a smell of storm blew on a rising cold wind, through brass-colored light, he and she stood alone in the wagon." (p. 145)

The wind at least always has its say and the approaching storm exactly parallels the approaching invaders just as approaching thunder parallels approaching Huns at the end of Anderson's "The Sorrow of Odin the Goth."

After a night with Donya, Josserek knows what he might do so the narrative approaches its climax when some decisive measure will be taken against the invaders.

 Read on.

Through Time And Into The Future With Wells And Anderson

HG Wells' solitary Time Traveller seated on his single Time Machine, hurtling through tomorrow into futurity, then returning to the same day but to the opposite corner of his laboratory because the Morlocks will move the Machine from a lawn to inside the White Sphinx in 802,701 A.D., suggests:

"...curious possibilities of anachronism and of utter confusion..."

-HG Wells, The Time Machine (London, 1973), 3, p. 17 -

- whereas Poul Anderson's thousands of Time Patrol agents seated on their mass-produced timecycles, appearing and disappearing throughout history and prehistory, guard time against anachronism and confusion. The Time Traveller suggested a problem that the Time Patrol addresses. Before the Nine, the Neldorians, the Exaltationists, individual time criminals or personal causal nexuses was the original Time Traveller - albeit in an alternative timeline but the Patrol addresses divergent timelines. Its agents preserve the evolution of human beings into Danellians and prevent aberrations like devolution into Morlocks and Eloi.

Wells' single volume of future history contrasts sharply with Anderson's many volumes recounting eight or nine future histories. Read Wells, then Anderson. 

Memories

In the concluding paragraph of some novels by Dornford Yates, the first person narrator recalls several highlights from the just-completed narrative and informs us that he frequently remembers those experiences later in life. 

I am having the familiar experience of remembering but not being able to find a passage near the end of A Circus of Hells. Djana remembers the time when when she and Flandry had hunted for wealth on Wayland. There is a similar passage near the end of The Rebel Worlds:

"Theirs had been a curious intimacy when they traveled hither... dreamy talk of old days and far places, much reminiscence about little events on Dido..."

-The Rebel Worlds, CHAPTER FIFTEEN, p. 505.

Those are events that we did not read about. We know that that journey was long whereas Anderson's narrative is almost telegrammatically compact. Those little events were too trivial to be mentioned.

One later incident on Dido stays in my memory. Passing himself off as a rebel, Flandry converses with white-bearded Director Jowett in Port Frederiksen. Jowett says that the Josipists:

"'...won't give our Emperor the decisive battle he needs.'"

-CHAPTER THIRTEEN, p. 493.

When asked whether the rebels should yield:

"The old head lifted. 'Not while our Emperor lives!'" (ibid.)

I appreciate the archaism of the director of a scientific base on an extra-solar planet surrounded by an interstellar civilization expressing loyalty to "our Emperor."

Anachronisms

"'But I have experimental verification,' said the Time Traveller.

"'It would be remarkably convenient for the historian,' the Psychologist suggested. 'One might travel back and verify the accepted account of the Battle of Hastings, for instance!'

"'Don't you think you would attract attention?' said the Medical Man. 'Our ancestors had no great tolerance for anachronisms.'"

-HG Wells, The Time Machine (London, 1973), 1, p. 11.

"...odd potentialities...practical incredibleness, the curious possibilities of anachronism and of utter confusion..."

-ibid., 3, p. 17.

"'We can't allow an extra anachronism on the scene. That could scramble events beyond any repair.'"

-The Shield Of Time, PART FOUR, 1990 A. D., p. 184.

Anachronism, utter confusion, scrambled events: Wells realized the mess that he was leaving for later writers - L. Sprague de Camp, Ward Moore and Poul Anderson.

Appropriately, Time Patrol agents often meet in anachronistic settings:

"Entering, Everard found the interior cool, dim, anachronistic. Mahogany, marble, embroidered upholstery, deep carpet, maroon hangings, leather-bound books with gold-stamped French titles, molecularly perfect copies from Toulouse-Lautrec and Seurat, hadn't much business nowabouts, did they?"

-The Shield Of Time, PART TWO, 1987 A. D., p. 66.

"The hotel where Cynthia was to make a reservation and meet him stood on the Left Bank, a charming, slightly dilapidated anachronism where croissants for breakfast were fresh-baked on the premises and the staff liked guests who were lovers...."

-The Shield Of Time, PART SIX, p. 283.

"They met downtown next morning, in the anachronistic opulence of the St. Francis Hotel lobby." (p. 430)