Fair Winds Forever

Poul Anderson was able to invent new characters for specific purposes, then invest them with substance. An omnibus collection contains twelve works (eleven stories and one novel) set before, during and after the period of the Polesotechnic League. Another novel, The People of the Wind, is set after this period. From this further novel, Anderson generated a title and interstitial passages for the collection. The People of the Wind is set on the planet Avalon where some humans and Ythrians are organised as the Stormgate Choth so the collection became The Earth Book of Stormgate. The rationale for the title is that the works in the collection present human perspectives on events preceding the founding of the Stormgate Choth on Avalon.

Five of the works feature Ythrians. Of these, four focus explicitly on human-Ythrian relations, three are set on Avalon, two are set after the joint colonisation of Avalon and one is about Falkayn, the founder of the Avalonian colony, and his employer, van Rijn. Of the seven non-Ythrian works, one is about Falkayn, one about his future travelling companion, one about a planet previously visited by Falkayn and three about van Rijn. The one remaining story mentions van Rijn. Thus, all twelve works are connected to each other but not all in ways that link them directly to Avalon. Anderson makes this further connection in the specially written Earth Book introductions to the works.

In "Esau," Emil Dalmady reports to van Rijn. The Earth Book introduction informs us that Dalmady's children joined the Avalonian colony where one of them wrote "Esau." The introductions to two other stories inform us that she also wrote them. Earth Book introductions mention three Stormgate members from The People of the Wind: Lythran, Blawsa and Christopher Holm/Arinnian. They also introduce new characters: the historian Rennhi, who wrote The Sky Book of Stormgate about Ythrian perspectives but who died before she could start the companion volume, the Earth Book, and her son Hloch who wrote the Earth Book. Arinnian wrote one Earth Book story and collaborated with Hloch on two others which were based on Rennhi's decipherment of records left by van Rijn and Falkayn on Falkayn's home planet, Hermes.

Hloch's other sources are:

Far Adventure by Maeve Downey, the autobiography of a planetologist;

a private correspondence recorded on Terra and kept in the archives of the University of Fleurville on the planet Esperance;

the reminiscences of James Ching, a spaceman who settled on Catawrayannis;

Tales of the Great Frontier by A. A. Craig;

stories by Judith Dalmady in the Avalonian periodical Morgana;

a historical novel about van Rijn originally published on either Terra or Hermes;

a tale brought to Ythri by the xenologist Fluoch of Mistwood and translated into Anglic by Arinnian;

the private journal of the spaceship captain Hiraharouk of Wryfields Choth on Ythri.

Hloch writes of Rennhi that her Sky Book, which we do not read, describes the history of the choth, the Ythrian ancestors, the Avalonian founders and their descendants to her own day.

"...of how past and present and future have forever been intermingled and, in living minds, ever begetting each other - of this does her work pursue the truth, and will as long as thought flies over our world." (1)

Thus, Anderson adds significantly to the works gathered in the Earth Book. Hloch signs off with:

"Now The Earth Book of Stormgate is ended. From my tower I see the great white sweep of the snows upon Mount Anrovil. I feel the air blow in and caress my feathers. Yonder sky is calling. I will go.
"Fair winds forever." (2)

(1) Poul Anderson, The Earth Book of Stormgate, New York, 1978, p. 2.
(2) op. cit., p. 434.

Near and Past Futures

A future history typically comprises stories or chapters set in the near future followed by others set in a further future. Several times now, the readers and the author if still alive have lived into the real near future and, of course, found that it differed from the imagined near future. This is not a problem because fiction is not prediction. Further, classic science fiction (sf), like The Time Machine or The War of the Worlds, endures over a century after it was written. On the other hand, more mediocre "past futures" come to seem dated. More significantly, it can be difficult for a still living author to continue writing a future history whose earlier parts contain not only counterfactual history but also outmoded science.

In his History of Technic Civilization, Poul Anderson avoided creeping counter-factualism by setting his earliest episode much later than any of us can expect to live. "Wings of Victory," for many years the earliest story in this series, is set on an extra-solar planet so that Anderson did not have to describe a near future Earth or even a near future Solar System, although he did speculate elsewhere about how Technic civilization and the Anglic language could had evolved from the world familiar to us. (1)

Later, Anderson did add one story set earlier, in the mid-twenty first century, describing exploration of the Solar System, and he took this opportunity to contradict a premise of much earlier sf. (2) Would immense time, energy and effort be invested in enabling three or four space-suited human beings to spend a few days in a single locality on the surface of Mars? Surely instead vast solar sailed colony ships containing entire communities of scientists and their families would cruise the System sending probes and manned craft to planetary surfaces? This might happen if industrial development of space became a way to save Earth from ruin.

The story asks how human psychology would be affected by long periods of isolation in an entirely artificial environment. Not only is the story narrated in the third person but most of it lacks a single viewpoint. We read a dialogue involving three or four characters but do not perceive the dialogue from the point of view of any single character. However, italicized passages recount a fantasy psychodrama hypnotically played out by several of the characters in this hard sf environment. On the surface of Iapetus, they imagine Ginnungagap. Anderson wrote both sf and fantasy and here, as in "The Queen of Air and Darkness," combined them, although, in both these cases, the fantasy is a fiction within the fiction. Two characters in a life-or-death situation in the real world can end their distracting fantasy only by killing their characters. We must read on to learn whether they have killed or been killed in reality also. They have not but the fantasy had become a nightmare to which they cannot return.

The only internal evidence that this story is part of the History is that one of its characters is a former member of the Jerusalem Catholic Church which exists later and is important. The History begins with four stories preceding the introduction of the first series character, Nicholas van Rijn, as it ends with four works set after the period of the third series character, Dominic Flandry. 

The stages of the History are: 

interplanetary exploration;
interstellar exploration;
interstellar trade, the League;

League merchant, van Rijn;
van Rijn's protege, Falkayn;
Falkayn's colony, Avalon;

post-League Troubles;
Empire founded;
early Empire;

Empire v. Avalon;
Flandry defends Empire;
Flandry's daughter;

post-Imperial "Long Night";
civilization restored;
a later civilization.

"The Saturn Game" presents interplanetary exploration.
"Wings of Victory" and "The Problem of Pain" present interstellar exploration and introduce Falkayn's non-human fellow colonists.
"The Problem of Pain" also introduces the planet they will colonize.

"How to Be Ethnic in One Easy Lesson" introduces the League and Falkayn's later companion, Adzel.

"Margin of Profit" introduces van Rijn.
"Three-Cornered Wheel" introduces Falkayn and the planet Ivanhoe.
"A Sun Invisible": Falkayn working for van Rijn's company.

"The Season of Forgiveness": later events on Ivanhoe.

"A Little Knowledge": a League story referring to van Rijn.
The Man Who Counts: the first of five further works about van Rijn.
"Trader Team": the first of five works about van Rijn's team, including Falkayn and Adzel.

"Wingless": Falkayn's grandson on Avalon.

"Rescue on Avalon": later events on Avalon.
"The Star Plunderer": Troubles and founding of the Empire.
"Sargasso of Lost Starships": the early Empire.

The People of the Wind: Terran-Avalon war.

Ensign Flandry: the first of seven volumes about Flandry.
"Outpost of Empire": the first of two other works contemporary with Flandry's early career.
The Game of Empire: a novel about Flandry's daughter.

"A Tragedy of Errors": one story set during the Long Night.
The Night Face: the first of two works set in the Allied Planets period.
"Starfog": a story set in the Commonalty period.

The Chronology of Technic Civilization informs us that the establishment of the League preceded "The Problem of Pain" but I do not think the text of the story confirms this. The next three stories after "The Saturn Game" are all first person narratives although their narrators are not necessarily their central characters.

In "Wings of Victory," the first person narrator remains in the spaceship orbiting the newly discovered planet Ythri but recounts what her colleagues discover on the surface. In "The Problem of Pain," the first person narrator and his colleague Peter Berg explore the planet Lucifer where Berg recounts his earlier experience with Ythrians on the planet Gray/Avalon. The extended flashback to events on Gray is recounted in the third person. "How to Be Ethnic..." introduces Adzel but is narrated by James Ching who appears only here. However, the story ends with Ching about to be apprenticed to a Master Merchant of the League so it is an appropriate prequel to the introduction of Master Merchant van Rijn. 

(1) Poul Anderson, "Concerning Future Histories" IN Bulletin of the Science Fiction Writers of America, Vol 14 No 3, Fall 1979, pp. 11-12.
(2) Poul Anderson, The Saturn Game, New York, 1989.

Three Integrated Series

Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilisation began when Anderson, on impulse, made Dominic Flandry, the hero of one series, refer to Nicholas van Rijn, the hero of another series now to be regarded as set not in an unrelated timeline but in an earlier period of the same timeline. However, the History is more than these two series strung together. It incorporates other works, including a third series. Two stories describe early human contact with winged Ythrians. Two further stories plus one novel are set on the joint human-Ythrian colony planet of Avalon. Thus, this "Ythrian" series comprises:

"Wings of Victory"
"The Problem of Pain"
"Wingless"
"Rescue on Avalon"
The People of the Wind

Then:

the entire period of the Polesotechnic League, including "The Problem of Pain" and the life of van Rijn, occurs between "Wings of Victory" and "Wingless";
the entire period of the later Terran Empire, including the life of Flandry, occurs after The People of the Wind;
one story of early interplanetary exploration precedes "Wings of Victory";
two stories covering the founding and early days of the Terran Empire are set between "Rescue on Avalon" and The People of the Wind;
four works are set after the Empire.

Thus:

"The Saturn Game"
"Wings of Victory"
the Polesotechnic League, including "The Problem of Pain"
"Wingless"
"Rescue on Avalon"
two stories of the early Empire 
The People of the Wind
 the later Empire
four works set post-Empire

Thus, the Ythrian series provides a framework around which the rest of the History is constructed. Van Rijn and contemporaries of Flandry meet Ythrians. Further, a collection, The Earth Book of Stormgate, begins with the first two Ythrian stories, ends with the third and fourth Ythrian stories and between them includes eight works set in the Polesotechnic League period. A fictitious Ythrian editor comments on the stories even revealing that some were (fictitiously) written on Avalon. Thus, an Avalonian Ythrian perspective is allowed to inform about half the narrative of the Polesotechnic League, including "Lodestar" about the planet Mirkheim, which is a turning point for the League, and "Day of Burning," which describes a turning point for the planet Merseia, the later rival of the Empire. Ythrians, although less prominent than either van Rijn or Flandry, are a major component of the fabric of the History.

We learn that:

van Rijn's protege Falkayn founded the Avalonian colony;
another protege, Dalmady, moved to Avalon where his daughter wrote one Earth Book story about Dalmady's encounter with van Rijn and another about Falkayn's grandson on Avalon;
the Ythrian editor and his human collaborator wrote the accounts of Mirkheim and Merseia from material provided by van Rijn and Falkayn. 

Anderson's skilful integration of disparate elements into a single fictitious history is more effective than Asimov's clumsy bringing together of Robots and Foundation:

Anderson
Ythrians
League
Terran Empire

Asimov
Robots
Galactic Empire
Foundation

Organic and Post-Organic

Part Two, Chapter I, of Genesis by Poul Anderson describes post-human, post-organic intelligences spreading through and between galaxies, learning and evolving. Chapter II, set back on Earth, describes a sea captain who is a member of a tribe, has fought barbarians and owns slaves, "...bred for generations to be draft creatures..." (1) 

How can pre-industrial human beings co-exist with post-human intelligences? Gaia, the intelligence controlling Earth, has re-created them. She hopes that they will build a stable technological civilisation but, in any case, she values them as living beings, despite their violence and suffering. Anderson is making a point.

When I corresponded with Anderson, it was unnecessary for me to address our political differences. There were other common interests to discuss. I think that a peaceful society with abundant wealth for all its members is now a practical possibility and that such a society can remain dynamic. 

Anderson disagreed with this idea - although he did occasionally show something like it in the further future. But his point in Genesis and in some other works is that human life is rich and of value even despite wars and oppression. He demonstrates this point in his characters and narratives and it is a point that I agree with.

(1) Poul Anderson, Genesis, New York, 2001, p. 112.

A Perfect Haiku

"The shadows, like life,
"moved beneath summer daylight.

"Evening reclaims them." (1)

A haiku is three lines of five, seven and five syllables, an exercise in verbal economy. In this haiku, two one-syllable words differing by just one letter refer to life whereas fifteen syllables refer to light. Shadows move because the light moves because a planet moves. Planetary motion matters in science fiction (sf) but not in a poem about what is seen on a terrace in a late afternoon. The haiku is framed by a chapter of an sf novel. In a far future, a poet has leisure to spend time watching shadows. His poem about them compares them to life and thus is about life. Like summer shadows, life is beautiful but brief. In this context, evening evokes not only age and death but even imminent racial extinction.

Like a photograph or a very short film, Anderson's haiku captures a moment of fading light (present tense: "...reclaims...") at the end of a sunny day (past tense: "...moved..."). The person in that moment contemplates both that moment and all moments - life. His companion suggests that he could have compared their artistic revivals from the database, like the haiku form, to transient shadows. He and she live in a darkened city with few remaining human inhabitants. She rejects the suggestion that she bear a child but they agree to the diversion of an adventure in reality, training for a wilderness trip to the Himalayas. They appear in only one chapter of a novel spanning billions of years.

"Evening reclaims them." (1)

Appreciation of a haiku requires more than seventeen syllables. After appreciating a historical trilogy, a fantasy tetralogy and a multi-volume sf series by Anderson, it is good to pause on three lines and a single moment. This haiku can be appreciated either in its novelistic context or independently as universally applicable. 

(1) Poul Anderson, Genesis, New York, 2001, p. 91.

Social And Political Stories In A Future History

Some stories in a future history series are set entirely within a single period of the fictitious history whereas others describe transitions between periods. Thus, Robert Heinlein's " 'It's Great To Be Back!' " describes aspects of life on Earth and the Moon in the early period of interplanetary travel whereas "If This Goes On-" presents the later transition from the Prophets to the Covenant. The first work presents a future society whereas the second presents a political transition and thus also advances the multi-story narrative. By this criterion, Isaac Asimov's Foundation series and James Blish's Okie series are entirely "political," not "social." (John W Campbell edited the Future History, Robots, Foundation and Okies but clearly did not impose any single perspective or approach on three different writers.)

The seven works in the Solar Union period of Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History comprise a "political" tetralogy and a "social" trilogy. Because of a single story, "Cold Victory," we know, first, that the Psychotechnic Institute was suppressed after the successful Humanist Revolt of 2170 and, secondly, that the Institute remained suppressed even after the Humanists in turn had been overthrown. Thus, there are two political transitions in a single work. (Similarly, "If This Goes On-" informs us both that the Prophets had been wielding power and that they were overthrown.) A behind the scenes struggle to re-shape society preceded the Humanist Revolt, in "Holmgang," and succeeded it in "The Snows of Ganymede," when the Institute tried to make a comeback. Finally, the escalating social discord and continued political intrigue of "Brake" prefigured the later period called the Second Dark Ages. The Solar Union grew from the UN world government of the earlier History and was succeeded, after the Second Dark Ages, by the Stellar Union. Thus, the Solar Union is a major unifying political force in the History and the four works mentioned so far are a political tetralogy set within this period.

Anderson also set three "social" stories in the Solar Union period. "Quixote and the Windmill" addresses the Asimovian question: will robots cause unemployment? "What Shall It Profit?" addresses the Heinleinian question: what would be the consequences if some human lives were indefinitely prolonged? "The Troublemakers" addresses both the Asimovian question: can there be a science of society? and the Heinleinian question: can social stability be maintained inside a large multi-generation interstellar spaceship? The Asimovian questions are the bases of that author's Robots and Foundation series. The Heinleinian questions are the bases of the last two volumes of that author's five volume future history. Anderson, using the background of his first attempted future history, addressed the four questions in three stories and, of course, presented different answers.

Because of the rapidity of technological advances, the first robot is himself obsolescent, redundant and unemployed so that he is first resented, then either ridiculed or pitied, by economically redundant human beings. Organisms that are immortal only because they are sheltered underground from all radiation are a useless dead end, their existence concealed from the general populace, and they are not mentioned again in the series. This story makes its point but does not advance the series narrative. The science of society can be used to manipulate dissent and to prevent mutiny in the generation ship - although it cannot prevent the Humanist Revolt. Unlike robots, immortality and generation ships, the idea of an applicable science of society appears not just once in the History but is also the basis of the Psychotechnic Institute which is presented as a force for good in the earlier stories but then goes wrong. The Institute is less successful than Asimov's Second Foundation but is at least temporarily successful like the priestly psychodynamicists of Heinlein's Prophetic theocracy.

Social and political interact. Social division and dissent generate political conflict in the generation ship but this story does not contribute to the political development of the Solar Union and emphasizes how people live within the ship.

Anderson skilfully alternated between stories which advanced the narrative of the series and others which used backgrounds provided by the series to make one-off comments on wider issues and on ideas familiar from the works of other writers. My discussion of this series has two handicaps. First, "The Snows of Ganymede" was not included when the series was collected so I have not read it. Secondly, I have, I hope temporarily, mislaid Volume II, Cold Victory, which covers the Solar Union period. Readers of this article are invited to correct any lapses of memory on my part?

The History of Ys

As Gratillonius, Roman centurion and future last king of Ys, approached Ys, he found an inscription marking an immemorial frontier. The inscription was dated DCLXXXVIII AVC (= 688 from the founding of Rome = 65 BC). (1) Gratillonius reflected that that was four and a third centuries ago. Thus, Gratillonius entered Ys about 368 AD and reigned for over two decades before Ys was destroyed. After that, Gratillonius, who had been a Mithraist and, while King, an incarnation of Taranis, became a Christian. The Empire withdrew and the Dark Ages, containing the seeds of the Middle Ages, began, polytheism becoming witchcraft.

Ys was a colony of Carthage which had been a colony of Tyre. One Witch-Queen's arcane instruments include a female figurine from ancestral Tyre. Both Tyre and Carthage play important roles in Anderson's Time Patrol series. The title of the Patrol story, "Delenda Est," refers to the Latin phrase, "delenda est Carthago," meaning "Carthage must be destroyed." (2) Hannibal must be prevented from sacking Rome. Romans must destroy Carthage. Time criminals must be prevented from destroying Tyre.

Caesar visited Ys but did not mention it in his writings although it then became a foederate of Rome. Brennilis, one of the Nine Witch-Queens of Ys, negotiated with Caesar for eternal silence about the new age of Ys which she had seen in a prophetic vision. The Three of Ys held Themselves and Their city apart from the new God Who was to come. Ys grew obscure as chronicles about it crumbled. We read of it as a legend and, in the Andersons' tetralogy, as a fiction.

The Anderson character, Skafloc, saw with elf-eyes things only glimpsed or dreamed by mortal sailors, including "...the drowned tower of Ys..." (3) Mermen must have seen it. (4) The parallel universes accessed from the Old Phoenix might include a world where the towers of Ys were never inundated and still exist in the far future with spacecraft and alien visitors. (5)

(Added, August 3rd, 2011: A "foederate" was a subordinate ally. Rome could insist that Ys accept a Christian chaplain but not prevent Ysans from worshiping the Three. The third volume implies that, when Ys was destroyed, Grallon (Gratillonius) had been there for seventeen years so less than two decades. (6) The volume also implies that Ys was destroyed in 400 AD which contradicts the date as calculated above. (7) ) 

(1) Poul and Karen Anderson, The King of Ys: Roma Mater, London, 1988, p. 99.
(2) Poul Anderson, Time Patrol, New York, 2006, p. 173.
(3) Anderson, The Broken Sword, London, 1973, p. 31.
(4) Anderson, The Merman's Children, London, 1981.
(5) Anderson, A Midsummer Tempest, London, 1975, pp. 90-106, 228-229.
(6) Poul and Karen Anderson, The King of Ys: Dahut, London, 1988, p. 450.
(7) op. cit., p. 483.

Comments on the Time Patrol Timeline

Some readers of the Timeline (see here) will spot two references to another fictitious character.

The third Technological Renaissance includes the development of the Trazon matter transmuter which could create either unlimited wealth for the entire species or an unlimited supply of weapons. The Patrol intervenes to suppress the transmuter. Usually, the Patrol protects the actual course of history, however destructive. In this case, the actual course of history must include their intervention. The Patrol partly resembles James Blish's fictitious organisation, the Service (see "Interconnected Series of James Blish"), which receives messages from itself in the future, including messages describing the Service preventing disasters and presiding over a peaceful expanding civilisation. As the Patrol protects the course of history, Service personnel protect and indeed implement the future history described in the messages from the future. Although, unlike the Service, the Patrol preserves many disasters, it knows that the history containing the disasters eventually moves beyond animality and humanity to the Danellians.

When events have not been recorded, the Patrol must learn what events it needs to protect. Hence, Specialists like Denison, Sandoval etc.

We are told that the Exaltationists are earlier than the discovery of time travel but we can see that they are not. I suggest that they are earlier than the public announcement of time travel. Anderson's text reads as if only a single "Interregnum" period separates the late thirtieth century from the Ing Empire but that would put the Ings downtime of the Nine so the Ing trader should not have open access to a time machine yet the text refers to "...an Ing-model time shuttle..." (1) An alternative reading would be that the Interregnum immediately precedes the Ings but does not immediately succeed the late thirtieth century.

Obviously, Anderson did not intend his scattered references to future events to amount to a coherent history. Nevertheless, when chronologized in a Timeline, the series does mostly present a past and future history comparable to Anderson's various future history series.

(1) Anderson, Poul, Time Patrol, New York, 2006, p. 42.

The Time Patrol Timeline

The Oligocene.	The Patrol Academy exists for half a million years in the American West, then is carefully demolished. Babylonian recruits cannot understand time travel and have to be given a battle-of-the-gods routine. An ancient Roman does not understand that a machine cannot be treated like a horse. Stephen and Helen Tamberly meet at the Academy. Everard meets Whitcomb and Elizabeth Gray. Wanda Tamberly meets Tu Sequeira, from Mars in the Solar Commonwealth, who will monitor early spacefaring. The Academy is the venue for an emergency conference to deal with the Punic timeline.
31,275,389 BC.	Wanda Tamberly, training at the Academy, is interviewed by Guion who is investigating the possibility of temporal changes not caused by time travellers.
Miocene-Pliocene transition.	A Patrolwoman from the First Matriarchy makes a full-sensory record of the Atlantic flowing into the Mediterranean. Tom Nomura rescues and marries her.
The Pleistocene.	A Patrol lodge in the Pyrenees employs Cro-Magnon guides. Half an hour after departing for 1960, Unattached Agents Everard and Van Sarawak return to the lodge from a timeline where Carthage won the Second Punic War.
18,244 BC.	The Pleistocene lodge is the venue for emergency conferences to deal with two divergent timelines. Wanda Tamberly and Keith Denison return from the European theocracy of 1989alpha AD.
15,926 BC.	A Patrol ranch in pre-human North America.
15,000 BC-900 AD.	Stephen and Helen Tamberly holiday in archaic Japan.
13,212 BC.	The Paleo-Indians cross Beringia, observed by Patrol Specialists Ralph Corwin and Wanda Tamberly.
2937-2930 BC.	Patrolman Stephen Tamberly, marooned in South America by Luis Castelar, duplicates contemporaneous Japanese pottery.
2930 BC.	Guillem Cisneros of the Universarium of Halla solves the archaeological mystery of the Valdivia ware and rescues Tamberly.
1765 BC.	A Patrol base in a vault under the Babylon of Hammurabi. Disguised and guided, Denison and Mikelian tour the city after tracking Indo-European migrations.
c.1550-1292 BC.	Unattached Patrol Agent Komozino investigates the disappearance of an expedition from her home millennium that was seeking cultural inspiration in the Egyptian Eighteenth Dynasty. Patrol bases in 1137 AD contact her about their crisis.
c.1300 BC.	Everard and Cynthia Cunningham holiday in pre-human Hawaii.
c.1040-597 BC.	Epsilon Korten from twenty-ninth century New Edom on Mars directs Jerusalem Base which is responsible for temporal traffic in Hebrew lands from the birth of David to the fall of Judah.
950 BC.	Exaltationist time criminals threaten to destroy Tyre. Zakarbaal (Chaim Zorach) and his wife are Patrol agents in Tyre. Everard recruits Pummairam, who expects to battle wizards in a strange realm, and captures Varagan but the latter's clone mate, Raor, remains at large.
500's BC.	Keith Denison, Patrol Specialist in East Indo-European Proto-History, traces the migration of Aryan clans.
578 BC.	Everard and Denison prevent the murder of the infant Cyrus, thus also preventing Denison's sixteen years as a surrogate Cyrus.
542 BC.	(Everard, investigating the disappearance of Keith Denison, receives hospitality from Croesus, then learns that Cyrus the Great is Keith Denison.)
218 BC.	Neldorian time criminals intervene, and the Patrol counter-intervenes, in the Battle of Ticinus.
213 BC.	Plautus' Asinaria is first performed. The date and the exact text do not agree with what later scholars recorded. Guion thinks that this indicates instability in that section of history.
209 BC.	Patrolman Benegal Dass has spent and will spend widely separated decades watching the growth and death of a city now threatened by Exaltationists. However, Everard captures the remaining Exaltationists, including Raor.
c.5 BC - 30 AD.	The Patrol must know what happened but we are not told. However, Carl later reflects that he cannot in honesty argue either for heathenism or for Christ. On the other hand, it is possible that Koch is a sincere Catholic.
22-37 AD.	Patrol Specialist Janne Floris lives for fifteen years with the Frisii, marries and bears two children.
43 AD.	Patrol intervention accidentally initiates a Goddess movement that, without further Patrol intervention, would prevent Northern Europeans from converting to Christianity. Everard visits Carl and Laurie Farness at the Patrol's Polynesian resort.
49 AD.	Patrol ethnographer Jens Ulstrup has spent twelve years as Domar among the Langobardi.
70-95 AD.	After Everardus the Goth has initiated peace negotiations between Civilis and Cerialis, Janne Floris, appearing as the goddess, helps the pagan prophetess Veleda to re-conceive her deity as peaceful.
Early 100's AD.	Time travelling sociologists studying Rome find a copy of Tacitus' Histories that differs from the standard version.
300-372 AD.	Carl visits four generations of his Gothic descendants.
372 AD.	Wodan appears and betrays his followers as described in the Volsungasaga.
458-461 AD.	Stane from 2987 tries to re-organise post-Roman Britain. Killed by unknowns, he is buried with his belongings in a barrow.
900's.	Jean-Louis Broussard from the 24th century is a Patrol observer in France.
985 or 986 AD.	Everard accompanies Bjarni Herjulfsson to Vinland.
The Middle Ages.	Stalemate in church-state conflict prevents either theocracy or autocracy, allowing the growth of freedom and science.
1137 AD.	Patrol milieu headquarters for the Holy Roman Empire are in Mainz. The director is Otto Koch whose "servant"/assistant is Karel Novak.
1137AD (and 1137alpha AD).	Space-time-energy fluctuates as Guion feared. (Events occurring in divergent timelines would have to be listed separately. Also, although they were visited, very little is known about the divergent timelines.)
(1137alpha AD.)	(King Roger of Sicily dies in battle. Emil Volstrup, Patrolman in Palermo, knows that Roger should live for nearly twenty years...)
1140 AD.	The Patrol base in Palermo is expanded from a one-man operation when Norman Sicily gains importance.
1146 AD.	The Patrol kills a knight who interacts with so many important figures that small changes in his career have major effects on medieval politics.
c.1160/65-1225 AD.	Ma Yuan, Chinese painter. The exact objects depicted on one of his scrolls are another of Guion's instabilities.
1196 AD.	Stefan Nemanya, Grand Zhupan of Serbia, abdicates. Another of Guion's instabilities.
1198 AD.	Patrol milieu headquarters move from Mainz to Rome.
1200's AD.	Amerindian Patrol Specialist John Sandoval traces Native American history, including Athabascan migrations.
1280 AD.	Mongol expedition to North America.
1287-1307 AD.	Boniface Reynaud establishes himself as Reinault Bodel, wool dealer in Harfleur, chief seaport of Northern France, where he directs Patrol operations headquarters. Timecycles arrive in a locked dockside shed.
1295-1307 AD.	Patrolman Hugh Marlow rises in the Knights Templar.
1307 AD.	The Templars are suppressed but their fleet escapes.
1524 AD.	Exaltationists try to prevent the civil war that made it easy for Pizarro to conquer the Incas.
1533 AD.	Exaltationists try to steal Atahualpa's ransom but instead kidnap Conquistador Luis Castelar and Patrolman Stephen Tamberly.
1536 AD.	Time vehicles are glimpsed above the siege of Cuzco.
1589-1613 AD.	Everard and Cynthia Cunningham go to the theatre in London.
1610 AD.	At Machu Picchu, Castelar and Tamberly escape from Exaltationists on a timecycle. The Patrol attacks the Exaltationists.
1638-1715 AD.	Reign of Louis XIV. An agent recruited from this period is assigned to the same milieu. The Patrol has few recruits from before the First Industrial Revolution.
1731 AD.	On Good Friday, a time traveller records Bach's St Mark's Passion in Leipzig Cathedral.
1800's.	Everard and Cynthia Cunningham waltz in Vienna.
1826 AD.	Simon Bolivar receives bad advice - from an Exaltationist. Everard's first meeting with the Exaltationist leader Merau Varagan who escapes in a causal loop.
1843 AD.	Everard and the Farnesses see Lola Montez in Paris.
1850-2000 AD.	The period covered by Patrol headquarters 1890-1910 with smaller offices in other decades.
1850 AD.	Charles Whitcomb, formerly of the RAF and the Time Patrol, and his wife Mary settle down in Victorian England.
1856 AD.	Helen Tamberly born in Cambridge.
1858 AD.	At the Friedrick Wilhelm University in Berlin, Carl, reporting to Patrol agent Professor Herbert Ganz, displays a 3D recording of his meeting with Ulfilas, the Arian Apostle to the Goths.
1864 AD.	Emil Volstrup born in Copenhagen.
1873 AD.	Helen Tamberly orphaned, studies classics, later recruited by the Patrol.
1875 AD.	Cowboy Jack Hall recruited by the Patrol.
1880's AD.	Because Helen Tamberly would not like Stephen's birthtime, they live on York Place (crossing Baker St) in Victorian London, Stephen as an American employee of Dalhousie and Roberts. Helen studies the Ionic colonies in the seventh and sixth centuries BC, interpreting reports from Patrol observers. Next, they might live as Spanish colonials while he directs other researchers for several decades.
1885 AD.	Everard, investigating the disappearance of Stephen Tamberly in 1533, visits Dalhousie and Roberts for a second time.
1890's AD.	Everard knows a New York saloon that sets out a magnificent free lunch.
1890-1910 AD.	Patrol milieu headquarters in London, Moscow and Peiping.
1891 AD.	Otto Koch born in Germany.
1894 AD.	Time shuttle fuel chest discovered in an ancient British barrow. Dalhousie and Roberts, Importers (the Patrol's London base) must prevent assassination of Queen Victoria. Mainwethering of the Patrol would like to engage a private inquiry agent but the only worthwhile one is too clever and might detect time travel.
1895 AD.	Ralph Corwin born.
1908 AD.	Agop Mikelian recruited by the Patrol after the massacre at Van.
1910 AD.	Will Rogers teaches Everard lassoing.
1912 AD.	The Irish-American Altamont penetrates a German spy ring but might also uncover the Patrol military studies group and must be diverted.
1914 AD.	Otto Koch, studying medieval history, is called into the German army.
1917 AD.	German steals time machine and goes to 1894 to murder Queen Victoria.
1918 or 1919 AD.	Otto Koch, adrift after the war, recruited by the Patrol.
1920's-1930's AD.	Corwin studies American Indian anthropology before joining the Patrol.
1924 AD.	Everard born in the US Midwest.
1925 AD.	Wanda and Manse have dinner in Paris and a drink in the Deux Magots two tables away from two of Wanda's literary idols.
1927 AD.	Keith Denison born.
1930's AD.	After Carl is recruited to the Patrol, he and his wife opt to live in 1930's New York. Carl's visits to 300-372 are supervised by Everard from 1980.
1930 AD.	John Sandoval born.
1936-1945 AD.	Patrollers studying the earliest stages of spacefaring work their way into Peenemunde.
1936 AD.	Stephen Tamberly born.
1941-1982 AD.	Patrollers monitoring early spacefaring work their way into White Sands.
1942-1945 AD.	Everard is a lieutenant in the US Army Engineers.
1943 AD.	Everard knows a girl in Streatham who later marries someone else.
1944 AD.	Everard defies the Patrol and the Danellians by helping Whitcomb who has gone to London in a recovered Ing time shuttle to prevent his fiancee, Mary Nelson, from being killed in an air raid. A Danellian intervenes and Everard is promoted to Unattached status in the Patrol.
1945-1954 AD.	Everard, a mechanical engineer, has design and production experience in America, Sweden and Arabia before responding to a job ad for "Engineering Studies Co."
1947 AD.	Tom Nomura born.
c.1950's-1960's.	Everard and Cynthia Cunningham visit bars in "Tom Lehrer's New York."
1950's AD.	John Sandoval fights in Korea, goes through college on the GI bill and joins the Patrol.
1950 AD.	Denison completes his PhD in Anthropology after taking a collegiate boxing championship and crossing the Atlantic in a thirty-foot ketch. Drafted to Korea. Karel Novak, on the run from the Czechoslovakian government, is hidden by an acquaintance who persuades him to take curious tests and recruits him to the Patrol. A young black woman recruited in Jamaica will be part of the team that rescued Everard from Exaltationists at a temple outside Bactria, 209 BC. Janne Floris born.
1952 AD.	Everard visits Amsterdam. Denison, discharged from the US Army, recruited to the Patrol.
1954-1990 AD.	Everard maintains an apartment in New York for at least this long. It acquires Bronze Age spears and a helmet, also a polar bear rug given to Everard by Bjarni Herjulfsson. Cynthia Denison (nee Cunningham), John Sandoval and Guion visit the apartment.
1954 AD.	Manson Everard recruited. Just back from training at the Academy, he reads about "...the singular contents of an ancient British barrow."
1955- AD.	Patrollers studying early spacefaring work their way into Tyuratam.
1965 AD.	Wanda Tamberly, Stephen's niece, is born. Wanda Tamberly from 1990 visits Corwin in Berkeley.
1968 AD.	Stephen Tamberly takes tests and finds that he has been recruited into the Patrol.
1970 AD.	Following advice given by Shalten in 1987, Everard posing as a tourist reconnoitres the terrain in preparation for his mission to the Greek kingdom of Bactria in 209 BC.
1971 AD.	Chaim Zorach, working as an archaeologist in Israel, meets his future wife, Yael.
1972 AD.	Tom Nomura recruited to the Patrol in San Francisco. Physicist Elizabeth Gray recruited.
1975 AD.	The Zorachs are recruited into the Patrol.
1980 AD.	Carl Farness, who must play the role of Wodan, is recruited by the Patrol.
1980-'81 AD.	Keith and Cynthia Denison start new identities in Paris.
1985 AD.	Laying a trap for the Exaltationists, Shalten of the Patrol plants fake evidence about Bactria, then, later in his experience, removes the evidence so there are records of mutually inconsistent events in Afghanistan.
1986 AD.	Everard re-visits Amsterdam on a Patrol case. Willem Ten Brink manages the export-import firm that fronts for the Patrol's Amsterdam office and is chief of Patrol operations in that corner of Europe.
May, 1987 AD.	Everard rescues Wanda from Castelar and recruits her to the Patrol.
September, 1987 AD.	Castelar kidnaps Wanda Tamberly from the Galapagos.
1998 AD.	Everard lends his apartment to an operative who needs such a base.
1990 AD.	A Danellian reveals the real meaning of the Patrol to Manse Everard and Wanda Tamberly. Manse and Wanda begin a holiday, interrupted by Manse's mission to 1307.
2000's.	Mainwethering from Victorian London visits the twenty first century. Hassan, an Iraqi recruited to the Patrol, will work at the ranch in 15,926 BC.
2100's.	Andean Resurgence; Inca revival. Andean Patrol agent Julio Vasquez born.
2200's.	Insulsynth.
c.2207.	Boniface Reynaud born.
2300's.	Van Sarawak born in a pioneer society on Venus. Birth of Jean-Louis Broussard, a Patrol observer in tenth century France.
2319.	A hospital with artificial gravity on the Moon.
2800's.	New Edom on Mars; Second Asteroid War.
2900's.	Rozher Schtein (Stane) and Guillem Cisneros born. Interplanetary wars; Venus attacks Earth; blast-ray guns; synthrope; trade with the Saturnian System.
2987.	Disappearance of a trader from the Ing Empire and his time shuttle; Patrol notified.
post-2987.	Interregnum; secret of synthrope lost; Ing Empire; trader leaves for 2987 to barter raw materials for synthrope.
3100's.	Genetic engineering in the Saturnian System.
3700's.	Coordinator Stanel V, the Great Experimenter; colonies reproducing past societies.
3890.	Martian War; Guidance Corps on Earth; First Matriarchy soon.
9573.	Dard Kelm, Patrol Academy tutor, born.
11511.	The Morennian Triumph.
19352 AD, the 7841st year of the Morennian Triumph.	The Chorite Heresiarchy breaks up. Commercial and genetic rivalry on a galactic scale. The Nine discover time travel. The Danellians appear and found the Patrol.
30,000's.	Exaltationist princes, genetically engineered for adventure on the cosmic frontier, seize power, lose it and flee on stolen timecycles.
204,000's.	Neldor; an age of time bandits.
Undated:	Everard's viking Scandinavian mission. Chrysopolis on Mars. Venusian Renaissance. Scientific Renaissance. Three Technological Renaissances. Patrol suppression of the Trazon matter transmuter during the third Technological Renaissance. Three Matriarchies. Solar Commonwealth. The Cold Centuries; weather control systems. The Universarium of Halla. Home eras of Komozino, Guion and Shalten.
pre-1,000,000.	Era of Oneness.
post-1,000,000's.	Danellians, our evolutionary successors, the High Command of the Time Patrol.

Email address: paul

Who Were And Will Be The Nine?

The Nine were the Nine Witch-Queens of Ys whose joint reigns ended as the Roman Empire declined about 400 AD. (1) The Nine will be the group who discover time travel in 19352 AD, the 7841st year of the Morennian Triumph, during the break up of the Chorite Heresiarchy. (2) Thus, a Roman/Ysan Nine and a Morennian/Chorite Nine. 

The Nines inhabit not only different periods but also different timelines. In the Ysan timeline, gods are real, magic works and miracles occur. The Olympians, the Three of Ys and Mithras retreat before the growing power of a single god whose ministers work miracles as the Nines' magic fades. In the Time Patrol timeline, time travellers sometimes pose as or are mistaken for gods and their technology seems magical. The first series is historical fantasy. The second is science fiction.

The Ysan Nine, major characters in a tetralogy, are named and individuated and each is replaced on death whereas the Chorite Nine are mentioned only once as a group to introduce the Time Patrol. One of the Ysan Nine senses interstellar space:

" 'The stars are more far away than ever we knew; the cold of those vastnesses comes seeping down over the world, through and through me.' " (3)

The Chorite Nine are part of a galactic civilisation. (4)

Because the latter are mentioned only once, I want to assess their significance. A full analysis of the Ysan Nine, as characters embodying a myth, would require a book. Because the Chorite Nine are, in the work in which they appear, the discoverers of time travel, an analysis of them becomes a discussion of time travel paradox. 

Readers of the Time Patrol probably remember that the Patrol fought Neldorians and Exaltationists but probably also forget this very first group of time criminals. The origin of the Patrol seems paradoxical. Of necessity, there is an original timeline in which time travel was discovered, as it happens by the Nine. There may be several subsequent timelines. Here, "subsequent" is a relationship not between moments in a timeline but between timelines. 

" 'Time travel was old when [the Danellians] emerged, there had been uncountable opportunities for the foolish and the greedy and the mad to go back and turn history inside out.' " (5)

We are told that the Nine would have used time travel to prevent their enemies from being born. Turning history inside out to that extent would almost certainly prevent the sequence of events that had led to the discovery of time travel, at least to its discovery at a particular time and place by the Nine. That would not prevent the Nine from arriving on time vehicles in the further past and preventing the births of their enemies but it would mean that they are no longer in the timeline in which they discovered time travel. In the new timeline, the Nines' younger selves, if they still existed, would never have known those enemies. The new timeline would present unforeseeable challenges: another group discovering time travel at a different time and place? an alternative Nine (or Eight or Ten) resisting help from their time travelling counterparts?

Does humanity evolve into the Danellians in that subsequent timeline? We are told that time travel, though not necessarily multiple divergent timelines, "...was part of the complex which had led to them..." (5) 

The Patrol protects a timeline in which the Nine discover time travel and see its possibilities but then the Danellians arrive from the further future.

" 'The Nine were prevented from carrying out their schemes. And the Patrol was set up to police the time lanes.' " (5)

Did the Danellians not only prevent historical changes caused by the foolish, greedy and mad, including the Nine, but also, as far as possible, restore the original timeline in which the Nine had discovered time travel? The Danellians' main concern is that the Patrol should guard a timeline in which humanity does evolve into the Danellians. Therefore, the guarded timeline is either the original or a composite incorporating both the discovery of time travel by the Nine from the original timeline and the evolution of humanity into Danellians from a subsequent timeline. Anderson does not elaborate because his cursory references to the Heresiarchy, the Nine and the Danellians serve only to set the scene for the Patrol's operations in past history. Like Wells in The Time Machine, Anderson raises more questions than he answers. I suggested that he could write a pre-Patrol Nine novel but that would have been a different ball game.

We do know that the Danellians sometimes order the Patrol to interfere in history, not just to conserve it. Patrolman Everard concludes:

"Don't ask if there ever was any 'original' scheme of things..." (6)

It transpires that the Patrol is necessary not only to apprehend time criminals but also to counteract random fluctuations in space-time-energy. A Danellian says:

" '...left untended, events would inevitably move toward the worse. A cosmos of random changes must be senseless, ultimately self-destructive. In it could be no freedom.' " (7)

But, when an unforeseeable change has occurred, the only solution is for Patrol members who were in the further past and therefore unaffected by the change to travel to a time before the change and prevent it. The Nine, by discovering time travel, made this possible. Their role is crucial. 

(1) Anderson, Poul and Karen, The King of Ys: Roma Mater, London, 1988.
(2) Anderson, Poul, Time Patrol, New York, 2006, pp. 6, 9.
(3) Anderson, Poul and Karen, op. cit., p. 90.
(4) Anderson, op. cit., p. 9.
(5) ibid, p. 11.
(6) ibid, p. 171.
(7) Anderson, Poul, The Shield of Time, New York, 1990, p. 435.