Two Intersecting Literary Traditions

Classical and Post-Classical
Prometheus Bound by Aeschylus
Prometheus Unbound by Percy Shelley
Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley
Frankenstein Unbound by Brian Aldiss

That sequence forms a neat tetralogy. Aldiss knew what he was doing with that title.

Biblical and Post-Biblical
Genesis
Paradise Lost by John Milton
Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley
Perelandra by CS Lewis
A Case Of Conscience and Black Easter/The Day After Judgment by James Blish
Genesis by Poul Anderson

In the second sequence, the theme is creation:

God creates Adam and Eve;
Frankenstein creates the monster;
Maleldil creates a new Adam and Eve on Venus;
Satan possibly creates the Lithians and becomes God;
an Artificial Intelligence re-creates extinct humanity on the future Earth.

Milton retells the theocentric Biblical narrative.
Mary Shelley, quoting Paradise Lost on her title page, initiates the anthropocentric sf tradition which is rejected by Lewis who reaffirms the Biblical-Miltonic tradition.
However, the sf tradition continues:

Blish responds to Lewis;
Anderson is arguably a culmination of this tradition.

The question is: was, or would it be, right to (re)create humanity?

Four Themes And Four Authors

In recent posts, we have compared HG Wells, CS Lewis, SM Stirling and Poul Anderson on the themes of space travel, time travel, social organization and theology. That is quite a lot. All four authors cover all four themes to different extents:

Lewis addresses time travel in "The Dark Tower";
Stirling addresses space travel in his Lords of Creation series;
Wells wrote theology in God, The Invisible King (non-fiction);
Anderson, of course, addresses everything!

Lewis was an unlikely guy to get himself onto a list with Wells etc but he did this by writing a single trilogy against the philosophies of Wells and Stapledon. Whereas American hard sf writers are Wellsian as well as Heinleinian, Lewis, a British academic, was anti-Wellsian but wrote well enough to put himself on the map.

James Blish explicitly responded to Lewis in two volumes of After Such Knowledge. Poul Anderson addressed "The Problem of Pain" and the question of a second Incarnation without referring to Lewis. This leads to a discussion of two intersecting literary traditions and another post.

Social Organization

How society was organized in the past and might be in the future is a big issue in sf, e.g., HG Wells' The Shape Of Things To Come. CS Lewis warns against scientific dictatorship in That Hideous Strength.

Poul Anderson shows us:

moots, city-states and feudalisms in the past;
a theocracy in an alternative present;
extra-solar colonial governments in the future, e.g.:

Avalon has both a Parliament of Man and a Great Khruath of all the choths;

Dennitza has a tricameral Parliament with two Houses for human beings (Lords and Folk) and one for the Zmayi;

Freehold outbackers leave the cities without reverting to savagery.

Whether intentionally or not, SM Stirling in the first two paragraphs of p. 425 of Island In The Sea Of Time (New York, 1998) presents an amusing contrast between two very different historical ways of organizing society. The double space between the paragraphs presents a change of scene:

"Daurthunnicar signaled the waiting women to bring in the food and drink. 'Come, feast with us, be guests and peace-holy,' he said. 'We will speak more of this.'"


"The session of the Constitutional Committee's core group was fairly informal, a dozen people sitting around a table with notepads and plates of cookies, and Swindapa at the foot taking shorthand notes..."

Religion In Space And Time

For this big topic and major issue, we confine ourselves in this post to one work by CS Lewis, one by SM Stirling and three by Poul Anderson. See also here and here.

Lewis' Elwin Ransom wonders whether he should begin the religious instruction of the Martians, then they start to tell him that:

Maleldil the Young made and still rules the world;
Maleldil is with the Old One;
it is not the Old One's nature to be in any place...

The Martians owe their remarkable religious knowledge to the fact that their author is CS Lewis.

Stirling's Christian Nantuckers discuss the quandary that they are now living before the Incarnation! They decide to federate and evangelize. They comprise:

Episcopalians
Baptists
Congregationalists
Methodists
Unitarians
Quakers
Catholics -

- and there are a few Jews.

Anderson's Jerusalem Catholic Church baptizes aliens and one of them, Fr Axor, seeks evidence for another Incarnation. Anderson's time traveler, Jack Havig, was in Jerusalem on the presumed day of the Crucifixion but we are not told whether he saw Jesus. One Time Patrolman asks, "...how could I in honesty have argued for Christ?" (Time Patrol, p. 404)

I suggest that all times and planets are equidistant from eternity. A Buddhist could meditate as well if transposed a million years into the future or into the past and an extraterrestrial can also meditate if s/he sees any value in it.

Simple Or Complicated

Fiction about space travel can describe a single journey to another planet (HG Well's The First Men In The Moon, CS Lewis' Out Of The Silent Planet etc) or extensive travel throughout the galaxy (Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization etc). Fiction about time travel can describe, e.g., a single round trip to the future (Wells' The Time Machine), a single one way trip to the past (SM Stirling's Island In The Sea Of Time) or extensive travel throughout history (Anderson's Time Patrol series).

Of the works cited, we might classify Wells, Lewis and Stirling as presenting "simple" scenarios and Anderson as presenting "complicated" scenarios. However, it would be a serious error to relegate the "simple" scenarios to any sort of secondary, more simplistic, status. Wells' Moon and Lewis' Mars are as well realized as any of the numerous planets in Anderson's Technic History. Wells speculates about the future of life on Earth and Stirling informs us about the Americas, Eurasia and Africa in 1250 A.D. as well as Anderson informs about his many past periods. There are consequences of the transposition of several thousand people and their dwellings from 1998 A.D. to 1250 B.C. and Stirling makes good use of hundreds of pages to spell out those consequences. Thus, Island... is a substantial work on time travel, comparable to Time Patrol.

Attitudes

Manse Everard tells Janne Floris:

"'Get off that guilt trip. What are you, some kind of liberal or something? Let's put sentiment on the shelf and think about the matter from a Patrol point of view.'"
-Poul Anderson, Time Patrol (New York, 2006), p. 597.

Come off it, Everard. Liberals aren't all that bad. It is a pity that "liberal" seems to have become a political swear word in the US. There has to be some label for the many respectable people who are neither to the left nor to the right. In fact, "liberals" can receive abuse from both directions! Apart from that one word, I agree with what Everard says. Guilt is sometimes appropriate but never "guilt trips" and sentiment needs to be put on the shelf. But what is the Patrol point of view? How many human moral systems exist in the period guarded by the Patrol and does the Patrol as such really endorse any of them? Might there be periods when Patrol agents simply assassinate those whose existence is undesirable from a "Patrol point of view?" Even within the twentieth century, Everard and Wanda differ on the issue of hunting animals.

Although the views of a character are not necessarily those of the author, I think that there is a good match between the views of Anderson and Everard. Shalten says:

"'The next stage that we contemplate is likely to be still more dangerous and taxing.' He sketched a smile. 'Or, on the basis of what I have heard about your political views, perhaps I should say 'dangerous and demanding.'" (The Shield Of Time, pp. 67-68)

Everard says:

"'They've got rent control there in these decades, you know. Always guarantees slums...'" (p. 180)

Thus, when Everard did not disapprove of homosexuality (see here), I took this also to reflect Anderson's view and maybe to express a change from an earlier story. Meanwhile, SM Stirling presents a very positive portrayal of a black lesbian. See, in particular, Island In The Sea Of Time, p. 391.

Christmas Dinner 1250 B.C.

Poul Anderson has space travelers celebrating Christmas light years from Earth and SM Stirling has time travelers celebrating it millennia in the past. Festivals mean what we make them mean.

Stirling's Nantucketers consume:

turkey
mashed potatoes
peas
squash
carrots
pumpkin pie sweetened with honey
no cream (milk too expensive)
dried-cranberry muffins
cookies
drinks

After the dinner, a marriage is announced. A woman who was married in the twentieth century needs no divorce to remarry in 1250 B.C. Her first husband is not dead. He has not been born yet.

Endless Villains

As long as action-adventure fiction endures, endless new villains must be created but who writes the best villains? Moriarty is a classic although he was created only to kill Holmes and die with him but failed in the first part. Ian Fleming had to create a new villain for each novel and co-created Blofeld very late in the series. (These examples are relevant here because Poul Anderson was a Holmesian and Flandry is kind of an sf Bond.) I identify two successors of Blofeld here.

Poul Anderson did not write only the kind of fiction that requires a villain in every novel. However, when appropriate, he created perfect villains, in particular Aycharaych and Merau Varagan.

SM Stirling excels at villains. William Walker has made John Martins, who reminds me of Ralph Barnes, work for him. Martins reflects:

"'Oh, man, that guy is, like, an orc...'" (Island In The Sea Of Time, p. 392) -

- and:

"This is, like, totally Mordor here. That dude's head is in a truly fucked-up place." (p. 394)

Escaped slaves brought back by hounds are flogged or crucified. As I remarked about the Draka theoretician here, I would like to put such a character in a society where she is free to flourish and prosper as an individual but not at anyone else's expense.

Time Patrol And Terran Intelligence

(i) Two vast organizations.

(ii) Both "conservative": designed to preserve a status quo.

(iii) Speaking not English but Temporal and Anglic, respectively.

(iv) The Patrol protects a million years of Terrestrial history whereas Intelligence protects an interstellar empire with a four hundred light year diameter.

(v) Both impart intensive mental and physical training.

(vi) Intelligence is run by human beings; the Patrol is not.

(vii) The Patrol is staffed by human beings; Intelligence also employs other species.

Plunder And Burn Policy

"'First plunder, then burn!' Everard recalled."
-Poul Anderson, The Shield Of Time (New York, 1991), p. 35.

"First plunder, then burn."
-SM Stirling, Island In The Sea Of Time (New York, 1998), p. 385.

Has that "joke" got a wide circulation or is one author quoting the other - or both? The punctuation is identical except for the exclamation mark. The entire phrase is italicized except for the single word "then" which means that that word is emphasized.

The difference is that Everard merely anticipates the plunder of a city by invaders whereas Stirling's character, William Walker, a time traveler from the twentieth century, uses future weaponry to lead plundering and burning. Walker is a serious villain and antagonist, far more so than the crazed pastor who had instigated attempted arson in Nantucket. Will Walker be defeated in Island... or will he become the continuing villain of the trilogy? Only further reading will tell. Spoilers are not solicited.