Trebuen

"The Nest."

Trebuen is a Cro-Magnon but understands historical periods and time travel paradoxes. I read of a baby left behind by her tribe in the Amazon who, adopted by a French family, became a University graduate, an anthropologist and a practicing Catholic. All that untapped human potential... And what would we be capable of if we were transported several centuries into the future?

I am not sure how much more we will get out of "The Nest," which is heavy on action and has been discussed before. See the link here. However, I will continue to reread, probably tomorrow.

A Multi-Temporal Meeting Place

Poul Anderson, "The Nest" IN Anderson, Past Times (New York, 1984), pp. 71-111. 

Ironically, this volume refers to the possibility of a future Orwellian dictatorship and was published in 1984. Year dates that were science fictional settings have become publication dates. We refer to some works that are recognized as literature and to others that are genre sf but find a continuity of ideas.

"The Nest" is set in a single linear timeline although the initial impression is of multiple timelines:

a sabretooth has threatened the cattle;

there is a river called the Styx;

the narrator, Trebuen, is a quarter Neanderthal, rides an iguandon instead of a horse and wields a flintlock instead of a mere sword;

the hidalgo, Don Miguel Pedro Estaban Francisco de Utrillo y Gutierrez, is known from Lagash to London;

there are slaves, Nazis, Huns, Normans and a woman from the Martian Soviet.

Trebuen is not racially prejudiced but does not like those "...greasy little devils...," (p. 76) the Huns.

This will all be straightened out but first we must read through several pages of Andersonian action.

(Think "Martian" and "Soviet" and then combine them. What can be done with words.)

Fictions And Futures

Fictional futures are diverse but also kind of parallel, at least in our imaginations. We can find similarities despite the vast differences between HG Wells' AD 802,701 and Poul Anderson's AD 2497. I could write a long list of futuristic speculations but so could any sf reader. And we imagine further works of fiction to link the existing ones despite their diversity. But, of course, sf writers have already done this. There are different ways to do it. Sometimes two originally independent series have been fitted into a single timeline, e.g.:

van Rijn and Flandry;

Robots and Foundation;

Lucas Garner and Beowulf Shaeffer;

Sherlock Holmes and the Time Patrol.

 

Usually, works of fiction by different authors remain fictions to each other, e.g.:

 

Anderson's Tom Barlow is relieved not to have emerged in an Orwellian dictatorship;

 

Wells' Star-Begotten refers to his The War Of The Worlds as a work of fiction - written by someone like Olaf Stapledon;

 

Stapledon's Last Men In London manages to be a work of fiction within itself because its author among the First Men, who imagines that he is writing fiction, distorts most of the information that he mentally receives from his Neptunian observer;

 

Anderson's Maurai future history is fiction within his There Will Be Time, again based on information received from a time traveler - while another such time traveler had given Wells the time travel idea.

Wells

When Holmes denigrates Dupin, Doyle acknowledges Poe. When Manse Everard meets a Victorian private investigator, Poul Anderson acknowledges Doyle. When a mutant time traveler gives the time travel idea to an English writer, Anderson acknowledges Wells.

This blog has referred to:

The Time Machine

The First Men In The Moon

The War Of The Worlds

The War In The Air

"The Land Ironclads"

The Shape Of Things To Come

Men Like Gods

The Invisible Man

"In The Abyss"

"The Plattner Story"

"The Remarkable Case of Davidson's Eyes"

The Island Of Doctor Moreau

The World Set Free

Food Of The Gods

A Modern Utopia

In The Days Of The Comet

"A Story of the Stone Age"

"A Story of the Days to Come"

"A Dream of Armageddon"

"The Crystal Egg"

"The Star"

Star-Begotten

The Autocracy Of Mr Parham

"The New Accelerator"

 

Wells and Anderson each present a modern man surveying a future world and describing it in familiar terms. 

 

Looking down from a hill at the pastoral landscape of AD 802,701, the Time Traveler reflects:

"'Communism,' said I to myself."

-HG Wells, The Time Machine (London, 1973), 6, p. 35.

He means common possession of land and buildings.

 

Looking down from an aircar at the urban landscape of AD 2497, Barlow thinks:

 

"Obviously capitalism such as Barlow's America had known, with its inherent need to innovate, was extinct."

-"Welcome," p. 66.

Wells' 802,701 and Anderson's 2497 are very different but have something in common.

Controversial Issues

I do not deliberately raise controversial issues on this blog! I follow Poul Anderson's texts and they raise every issue, including the controversial ones. The contentious word, "capitalism," recurred in the previous post but only because I was quoting Anderson. I linked to a post with the even more contentious term, "fascism," but only because Blish and Knight had used it.

In "Welcome," Barlow reflects that:

"...in the total context of history, hereditary government was the norm, elective government the deviation. Given proper training...modern genetics also, no doubt, and medicine, so there were no defectives...the same family might provide wise rulers for hundreds of years." (p. 69)

But how wise and by what set of social criteria? So the World President is a canny manipulator of chattel slaves and "coolies" who are slaughtered to feed the rich and powerful?

The point about hereditary rule being the historical default option came up in the combox recently... See here.

The United World Republics

"Welcome."

These two quotations are mutually relevant:

"'Well, if I 'member my hist'ry right, you had many sep'rate countries in the twentieth century. That was before the Atomic Wars, no? All one country now, the United World Republics. How else could fifteen billion people survive?'" (p. 63)

"Obviously capitalism such as Barlow's America had known, with its inherent need to innovate, was extinct. But he didn't mind. So much so-called progress had been sheer hokum anyhow. Let the world take a thousand years to digest the authentic advances of the Industrial Revolution; give the simple graces of living a chance to catch up." (p. 66)

Competition caused the "...inherent need to innovate..." We are not told enough about the economy in the United World Republics. However, if the single global state controls the economy, then it is no longer any kind of capitalism because it has no external competitor. Instead, it is a return to ancient Asiatic despotism as Barlow realizes when his moronic domestic servants address him as their owner.

"How else could fifteen billion people survive?" Barlow reflects that:

"...when fifteen billion people are jammed together on one impoverished planet, they are bound to become a cheap commodity." (p. 70)

Not bound but maybe likely to. James Blish and Norman L. Knight suggested a, to me, implausible alternative. See here. 

An Increased Rate Of Existence

Poul Anderson, "Welcome" IN Anderson, Past Times (New York, 1984), pp. 58-70. 

Poul Anderson excels at formulating new scientific rationales for sf cliches like telepathy, time travel, FTL etc. In From Time Patrol To Past Times, I described "Welcome" as dealing not with time travel but with temporal stasis. However, when Barlow arrives in 2497:

"...he had departed [the twentieth century] less than half an hour ago, as far as his conscious mind knew." (p. 61)

This is not stasis but dilation although it is achieved not by relativistic space travel but by "'...a jolt of energy...'" (p. 60)

The rationale occupies a single phrase and a single sentence and serves no narrative purpose other than to establish the premise of a modern man thrust into a future society. Suspended animation would have served the same purpose. HG Wells had time travel in The Time Machine and suspended animation in The Sleeper Wakes. Robert Heinlein had both in The Door Into Summer.

Barlow has been in a "...superenergy state." (p. 58) We are not told whether he has been enclosed in some kind of visible chamber or device or whether he has been invisible and intangible as Wells' Time Traveler and his Time Machine and Anderson's Jack Havig unaccountably are.

Barlow's explanation is entirely for the reader's benefit, not for that of his reception committee:

"'Travel into the past, an obvious absurdity. All I did was give myself a jolt of energy, a vector along the time axis rather than through space, and so increased my rate of existence several millionfold....But you know all about that.'" (p. 60)

I do not know about it! If he increased the rate of his psychophysical processes several millionfold, then surely he would age and die almost instantly, not experience less than half an hour between 1997 and 2497? Wells' describes such acceleration in "The New Accelerator." Wells also contradicts himself, in The Time Machine, by stating first that everything and everyone does not move but extends along the temporal dimension but secondly that the Time Traveler accelerates in that direction whereas in fact he does the opposite of accelerating. He slows down his bodily and mental processes in comparison with the external universe. See Time Travel And Poul Anderson.

A further difficulty with Barlow's rationale is that his reference to a temporal rather than a spatial vector seems to have no connection with his acceleration.

Winding Up On "Wildcat," Maybe

"Wildcat."

Four Miscellaneous Points

 

(i) "Hell take it, thought Herries, we may be damned but why must we be fools into the bargain?

"Somewhere a brontosaur hooted, witlessly plowing through a night swamp.

"Well, I'd better - No!" (p. 46)

 

We recognize two Andersonianisms here. First, the witless brontosaur parallels the foolish human beings. This time, we are reflected in a swamp-dwelling animal rather than in a hooting wind. Secondly, Herries has a moment of realization. His "No!" is really a "Yes," as he suddenly realizes what he can do next.

 

(ii) There is an epic battle between a tyrannosaur and men in jeeps with guns and grenades. Sometimes I summarize such scenes here. Instead, I merely commend this one to other readers.

(iii) Senator Wien who works quietly behind the scenes to ensure that mankind survives in the Jurassic Period reminds us, or at least me, of Senator Bliss Wagonner in James Blish's They Shall Have Stars who works quietly behind the scenes to ensure that mankind escapes from the Solar System. Both are Cold War scenarios. Wien knows of an imminent nuclear war. Wagonner anticipates an encroaching Bureaucratic State.

 

(iv) We learn why the sky is hidden in the opening sentence. There are permanent layers of fog and frequent rain clouds. Subsequent generations will know of but never see sun, moon and stars.

Some Utopias And Dystopias

In one kind of time travel story, the protagonist merely visits a future period and learns what is happening then:

News From Nowhere by William Morris I have yet to read but I definitely know that it is utopian;

The Time Machine by HG Wells seems utopian but turns out to be dystopian;

"Welcome" by Poul Anderson, which I will shortly reread, is ambiguous until its very last word which shockingly reveals it to be dystopian.

In both The Time Machine and "Welcome," the shock is the realization that the future society has revived cannibalism.

As far as I remember, "Welcome" is not about time travel properly so called because there is no possibility of a return journey. This qualification also applies to Anderson's "Time Heals" and The Long Way Home. Otherwise, The Long Way Home is like The Time Machine. Modern men arrive in, and must try to understand, a future society.

Time Travel And Survival

 

If you have time travel and your future is about to become uninhabitable, then you can survive by traveling far enough into the past, as in Poul Anderson's "Wildcat" and also in a Star Trek episode, whereas, if there is time travel in a mutable timeline, then maybe you need a temporal police force, as in Anderson's Time Patrol series: two examples of time travel as a means to survival, the first covered by Anderson in a single short story, the second in a long series of stories and novels, and, since this a late night post, we will leave it there till the morning when I expect to finish rereading and posting about "Wildcat" - tempus fugit.