Hamlet's Father's Ghost

We do not include Shakespeare in our list of literary hereafters. However, Hamlet's father's ghost delivers a fragmentary account of Purgatory. Further, in Poul Anderson's A Midsummer Tempest, the Shakespearean Hamlet really existed so this version of Purgatory must have been real as well. However, the Shakespearean timeline is only one of many and the others can have different hereafters - an idea that could never before have been imagined!

Fritz Leiber wrote a neat ghost story: the actor who is supposed to play the Ghost in Hamlet is drunk back stage while the Ghost appears on stage... But I did not like the resolution.

I am currently lost in a fictional account of a bizarre multi-dimensional hereafter. For this and for my thoughts on the idea of a hereafter, see here.

The Hereafter In Poul Anderson's Works

There is an ancient and venerable tradition of literary hereafters from Homer and Plato through Virgil and Dante to Arthur Conan Doyle, CS Lewis and others.

These literary works are both imaginative exercises and reflections on how to live here and now.

Many of Poul Anderson's characters believe that there is a literal hereafter.

However, such a hereafter does not appear often in Anderson's works.

When it does, it is clearly a fantasy premise, not part of a belief system accepted or advocated by the author.

I am currently reading "Mansoul" (and here) by Alan Moore and am unsure of its status.

Between Blogs And Dimensions

Dimensions are a theme common to several of these inter-linked blogs:

to Logic of Time Travel because The Time Machine and many successor works treat time as a fourth dimension;

to Poul Anderson Appreciation because Anderson wrote a lot about time travel, in the course of this referring to world lines and even, in one work, to corridors that have been rotated onto the temporal axis;

to James Blish Appreciation because, in The Quincunx Of Time, messages are received from every part of the four dimensional continuum and there is also "time-projection" and "world line cruising";

to Personal and Literary Reflections because Alan Moore's Jerusalem presents a multi-dimensional cosmology. See here.

Anderson, Blish And Moore

Demons In Horror And Humor is relevant to Poul Anderson Appreciation and to James Blish Appreciation but was posted on Personal and Literary Reflections as part of the current reading of Alan Moore's Jerusalem.

How often does Poul Anderson's fantasy feature demons in the Biblical sense? Not often. Pagan gods predominate. How often does Anderson treat demons seriously? Perhaps even less often? The "Devil" in The Devil's Game is most parsimoniously accounted for as a delusion afflicting just one human character.

Of course, Anderson wrote many uncollected short stories. Fresh information about any such works is always welcome.

Conceptual Issues

I have copied this post from Personal and Literary Reflections. It was published there in connection with Alan Moore's Jerusalem but is copied here because it is equally relevant to Poul Anderson's Time Patrol.

Conceptual confusion is generated when:

time is spatialized;
statics is reduced to dynamics;
the single temporal dimension is reconceptualized as a fourth spatial dimension

- and yet:

dynamic/temporal processes are assumed to occur within this otherwise static four dimensional space;
thus, a second temporal dimension is tacitly introduced;
in discussion, it becomes unclear which of the two temporal dimensions is being referred to - the first, which has been reduced to space, or the second, which is not clearly acknowledged.

The next post will apply these remarks to recent discussions.

World Lines

Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series refers many times to "world lines," e.g.:

"'...think of the countless world lines intermeshed throughout the continuum as a spiderweb.'"
-Poul Anderson, The Shield Of Time (New York, 1991), Part Three, p. 135.

If time is a dimension at right angles to the three spatial dimensions, then your world line is you extending, not moving, along that fourth dimension from your conception and birth to your death. The world lines of your atoms are longer and are intermeshed within you.

Wanda Tamberly says:

"'"World lines, our tracks through space-time.'"
-Part Two, p. 31.

That is incorrect. If a three dimensional body were able to move along the fourth dimension, then it might, or might not, leave a track. However, your world line is not such a track but is you, extending, not moving, in that direction.

Anderson nowhere says that immaterial minds move along the fourth dimension. See:

Wells, Blish And Moore
Time And Minds

Currently...

I am surprised by how many pageviews this blog continues to receive even though there are currently less posts appearing here! The reason for this is I am currently posting about one book here and another here but this will not continue indefinitely. I am also watching two TV series that are sometimes discussed here.

Poul Anderson Appreciation remains the place where I will continue to discuss not only works by Poul Anderson but also Anderson-related works like other future histories and SM Stirling's Emberverse series on which I recently embarked.

Meanwhile, I hope that Anderson fans will also be interested in discussions of time and science on other blogs.

Happy New Year

The purpose of the two previous posts was to show readers of this blog what has been posted on other blogs. More recent posts on other blogs have been:

Centuries Dominated By Monotheism
Greek Philosophical Schools
Monoliths, Beamed Down
Endings
"Embedded In The Future"
Reflections On Earlier Reading

Of these six posts, the first two are directly relevant to issues previously discussed on Poul Anderson Appreciation. However, I am now also posting elsewhere about:

Jerusalem by Alan Moore;
Reality Is Not What It Seems by Carlo Rovelli.

The nature of time and possibly other themes are common to Anderson, Stirling, Moore and Rovelli so there should continue to be links and cross-references. We have ceased to be monoblogular and have begun to expand the blogverse. However, Poul Anderson Appreciation remains the principle timeline of the blogverse in terms both of numbers of posts and of numbers of pageviews. The New Year and the further future are an open book.

Thank you and Happy New Year.

The Blogverse II

See here. Also:

Science Fiction
Ghosts And Time Travelers

Logic Of Time Travel
Further Digging

Religion And Philosophy
"It was still there..."
"Time Does Not Exist"

Comics Appreciation
Justice And Truthfulness
The Blogverse

Personal And Literary Reflections
Novels About Cities
New Worlds And Angel Language
Synchronicities
Layers Of Language
Multiple Viewpoints
An Historical Edifice
Abandoned Supermarket Trolleys
A Painter, A Prostitute And A Published Poet

The Blogverse

Copied from here.

I signed off for 2016 from Poul Anderson Appreciation here. However, since then, I have posted on six other blogs:

Science Fiction
Kinds Of Sequels (comparing Poul Anderson and SM Stirling; citing Larry Niven)
Reviews (comparing Stirling to Anderson; quoting Harry Turtledove)

James Blish Appreciation
Armageddon (comparing Blish and Stirling)

Logic of Time Travel
Back In Timeline 1 (Stirling)

Religion And Philosophy
Meanings Of A Word (gods and God)
Atman And Anatta (non-theistic religion)
Doctrinal Disagreements About What Exists (non-theistic religions and physics)
Preliminary Thoughts On "Eternalism" (responding to the Awesome Mage of Northampton)

Comics Appreciation
The Name And The Man (possibly of more general interest)
Jerusalem (the Awesome Mage)
Green Arrow: A Mini-History (comics stuff)
Green Arrow: A Mini-History II
DC Screen Continuities
Different Versions
Shado And The Huntress
Hell Or Hern (Hern the Hunter)
Christmas Presents
Changes In Comics (Hern)
Rupert Bear

Personal And Literary Reflections
Archery, Wicca, Kipling And Tyre (Stirling)
Introducing Michael Havel... (Stirling)
Another Transtemporal Inn (the Mage)
The Blogverse (which you are reading)