Three Shakespeare Timelines

(i) Shakespeare was the Great Historian.
(Poul Anderson's A Midsummer Tempest.)

(ii) Shakespeare was the Great Dramatist.
(Neil Gaiman's The Sandman.)

(iii) Shakespeare did not write the plays.
(Clifford Simak's The Goblin Reservation.)

Are we living in (ii) or (iii)?

See:

Shakespeare authorship question
The Shakespearean Authorship Coalition
to be or not to be
"Is Shakespeare Dead?" 

Any other fantasy or sf versions of Shakespeare?

Asimov has a story where Shakespeare time travels to the present and fails an exam in his plays.

Someone else wrote a story where future explorers of Earth were cursed because they dug up his grave.

Literary References To Time Machines

HG Wells' The Time Machine has made everyone familiar with the idea of a "time machine," and has even added the phrase, "time machine," to the language. We no longer say "flying machine" but do say "time machine" because of Wells. Thus, the idea is used in science fiction and the phrase can be used more generally.

"...you couldn't get anything more like an old-fashioned saloon unless you had a time machine.'"
-Murder Bound, xii, p. 108.

In this case, as in Perish By The Sword (see Bilocation And Time Travel, here), we know that the author, Poul Anderson, is also, indeed primarily, an sf writer.

However:

"The key to the mystery was what it was that Harriet had seen in Hedestad. He would never find that out unless he could invent a time machine and stand behind her, looking over her shoulder."
-Stieg Larsson, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (London, 2008), CHAPTER 16, p. 277.

So does anyone know of other such literary references to time machines?

Squawking

Murder Bound, xi.

Just one quick breakfast post before going out.

Yamamura says:

"'You can squawk as much as you want about witch hunts, but the fact remains that some Communists do engage in espionage.'" (p. 105)

Hold on there, Yamamura. The word "squawk" expresses open hostility and contempt towards people who might have reason to believe that they are being "witch hunted" and the word "some" is also significant. "Some" is usually left out when "Communists" are being demonized!

There are two issues here. It is the job of the security services to apprehend spies. It is the job of society as a whole to avoid even the appearance of a which hunt. People with radically different ideas should be welcomed. They broaden the parameters of discussion and contribute to possible future developments. The unthinkable can and sometimes does become thinkable within a single generation. Sf writers and readers in particular face the fact of change.

We do not know what future we will (hopefully) build. Theory is grey; life is green.

Two Chapters And Three Phone Calls

Murder Bound, xi-xii.

Chapter xi ends as the gangster, Hugo Heiss, phones Yamamura and Chapter xii begins as Lauring's phone wakens him. A bit annoying.

Lauring is rung first by Judith Mendel, then by Oddvar Finsen who advises him to take Judith to:

Marin County
Mount Tamalpais (see image)
Stinson Beach
Sausalito (which he compares to Copenhagen)

Yesterday, unwell, I published four posts. Today, much better, I have published thirteen. Now, I want to read something without, I hope, finding anything to post about. Tomorrow, I will drive Nygel to a plant center and somewhere for lunch so there are unlikely to be as many as thirteen posts.

I really had no idea that there was so much to be found in Murder Bound. Never dismiss a book by Poul Anderson.

Yamamura's Deduction That Torvald Is A Communist

Murder Bound, xi.

(i) "'...Communism was popular among sailors in the twenties, when young Arne Torvald first shipped out.'" (p. 103)

(ii) "'...he was here in the Depression, when San Francisco was another fertile ground for the left wing.'" (ibid.)

(iii) Question: Did his wife's death push him into the Party?
Answer from Lauring: Yes, she was malnourished when pregnant and had pneumonia when giving birth.

An aside: Arne swore that the conditions causing his wife's death "'...would have been impossible in Russia.'" (ibid.) Yamamura replies by referring to the Ukrainian famine, Stalin's labor camps and the massacre in Budapest. My opinion: Arne is right that the conditions that killed his wife can be prevented and Yamamura is right that such conditions were not prevented in Stalin's Russia.

(iv) Torvald is an environmentalist in a particular sense of that word.

(v) His half empty bookshelves suggest that he hides Communist books when Stateside.

Lauring's defense of Torvald:

the crew know but do not care because he is a good officer and they do not want him debarred from US ports;

very few West European Communists are dangerous;

Arne is a Norwegian patriot who thinks, wrongly, that his country should be allied with the Soviet Union.

Yamamura recognizes the type of leftist that Lauring claims Arne is.

I dislike Yamamura's account of the McCarthy era. He grudgingly acknowledges that some people did get hurt and that overzealous bureaucrats "'...could make things a bit unpleasant...'" (p. 104) but at the same time, of course, he denigrates "'...a lot of intellectuals screaming from the housetops...'" (ibid.)

If people were being hurt and if bureaucrats were making things (just a little bit?) unpleasant, then there was indeed something to "scream" about.

Yamamura's Buddhism

Murder Bound, xi.

Yamamura explains:

"'...half the discipline of the modern Buddhist sects is nothing but an attempt to see things in their right proportions and act accordingly.'" (p. 100)

I would say that that is all of their discipline. It is amazing that so much tradition and organization have to be focused on that straightforward task. Has all of humanity gone badly wrong or were greed, hate and delusion an inevitable stage of our development?

Yamamura adds:

"'Not that we've any monopoly on that attitude. You'll find much the same thing in St. Francis, for instance, I'm told.'" (ibid.)

An arhat realizes his enlightenment by practicing the Buddha Dharma whereas a pratyekabuddha realizes it by his own unguided practice and insight. In this sense, the Buddha must have been a pratyekabuddha.

When Lauring describes American police as "'...ignorant flatfeet...,'" (p. 101) Yamamura asks him:

"'What pulp magazines have you been reading?'" (ibid.)

This is a hint of irony because Anderson wrote for pulp magazines but also transcended pulp writing.

More Place Names

Murder Bound, ix-x.

Twin Peaks
Coit Tower
Seal Rocks
Cliff House
Bergen (Lauring's childhood memories)

Poul Anderson packs in every local, colorful detail that he can as he did with Copenhagen. I am summarizing not the story but everything else in the text as I did with Avalon.

Lauring In San Francisco

Murder Bound, x.

"Lauring was grateful to see people around a drugstore, a movie theater, a newsstand. But why did they look so glum and alone? The people in Oslo had happier mouths. Didn't they?" (p. 92)

Two levels of meaning here:

we notice social and cultural differences when we travel, especially between continents (hopefully, later, between planets);

however, Lauring might instead be projecting his own, very disturbed, state of mind onto passersby.

"A pasteboard Santa Claus in a display window clutched a carton of cigarettes." (ibid.)

Not nowadays, he wouldn't. At least, not in Britain. "The past is another country." See here.

"Bring your children to see Santa..." (p. 93)

When my sister and I were very small, we were in a big department store just before Christmas. A guy playing the part of Santa and really looking the part, briefly entered the room where we were standing, waved at us and went back out. We really thought that we had seen the real guy, like glimpsing the Queen, the Prime Minister or Superman. (Again, imagine the current Superman actor in costume, glimpsed by very young children.)

Infinity II

See Infinity.

I think that the argument in the linked article amounts to this:

put 1,2, 3 etc in a left hand column, then 0.5, 1.00, 1.5 etc in a right hand column;

there is now a one-to-one correspondence between the items in two infinite lists;

however, it is possible to add intermediate numbers (0.75, 1.25 etc) in the right hand list but not in the left hand list;

in fact, it is possible to add an infinity of numbers between any two numbers in the right hand list;

therefore, one infinity is greater than the other - and that is just within the uni-dimensional number line.

I welcome comments from mathematicians. I am a philosopher, not a mathematician. Mathematics is important to physics which is important to hard sf where we get, e.g., Poul Anderson's rationales for FTL. For maths and physics, see here.

Infinity

Murder Bound, ix.

Yamamura:

"'Math isn't a science, it's the most mystical of the arts. When they start telling me that some kinds of infinity are bigger than others, I get off the boat.'" (p. 81)

See:

Infinity Comes In Different Sizes

Mathematics is not a science because it is not empirical.

I lack mathematical aptitude so I had to work at understanding the proof that there is no highest prime number but then I got it unlike someone I knew on Facebook who dismissed the proof as "gobbledegook" because he did not understand it.

I have not followed the argument in the above linked article but then I have not worked at trying to understand it yet. But surely it is straightforward that an infinite straight line is smaller than an infinite plane which is smaller than an infinite volume?

Isaac Asimov recounted an incident when he proved that not only mathematicians but everyone uses "mystical" language. He asked someone who had accused mathematicians of "mysticism" because they talked about unreal numbers to hand him half a stick of chalk. When the guy broke his stick of chalk in two and handed one of the pieces to Asimov, the latter pointed out that he had been given one piece of chalk.