An Alternative Vision

In the combox for The (Prevented) Veleda Timeline, there is reference to an earlier comment that "Zoroastrian Persia" was becoming Christianized. That earlier comment was in the combox for The Veledan Alternative.

"The Veledan Alternative" also refers to my speculation about the possibility of a world religion differing as much from Christianity and Buddhism as they do from each other. Veleda's vision, if developed fully, might have realized that possibility:

first, feminine instead of masculine;

secondly, neither pure monotheism nor pure atheism but popular polytheism merging into a mystical monism.

Philosophers would have been able to say that the Goddess was a personification of the sea which is the source of life.

Although this religion is prevented in the Time Patrol timeline, it might exist in one of the alternative histories visited in "Eutopia" or having access to the Old Phoenix.

Making Stories

"Star of the Sea," 13.

Edh is able to make stories:

"Ofttimes Niaerdh came into them, a counsellor or rescuer." (p. 581)

Some of these stories will make their way into the mythology of the goddess, Nerthus/Niaerdh. Every myth that we hear or read must have begun as a story made by some individual.

Later, we are shown how Edh does it. Seeing a fine cloak on a merchant sailor, she murmurs:

"'How beautiful that garment...I think Niaerdh wears the like when she visits the other gods." (p. 588)

Everything that she sees becomes part of the story. She sees Niaerdh in the waves:

"Niaerdh was in them with dread and blessing. Hers were the kelp and upcast amber, hers the fish, fowl, seals, great whales, and ships. Hers were the quickening in the land when she came ashore to her Frae, for her sea embraced it, warded it, mourned for its winter death and called it back to life in spring. Very small amidst these things, hers was the child she had kept in this world." (pp. 583-584)

Sea embraces and wards land. The sea deity is paramount. Niaerdh is everywhere, omnipresent, one goddess. A potential peaceful world religion.

Sherlock Holmes And Nicholas Van Rijn

"'You are both wrong.'"

-Poul Anderson, "The Master Key" IN Anderson, David Falkayn: Star Trader (Riverdale, NY, January 2009), pp. 195-233 AT p. 229.

"'You are all wrong.'"

-Arthur Conan Doyle, "The Adventure of the Engineer's Thumb" IN Conan Doyle, The Adventures Of Sherlock Holmes IN Arthur Conan Doyle: 3 Books In 1 (Mumbai, 2007), pp. 229-254 AT p. 225.

Holmes and van Rijn are right, of course!

A perfect parallel. In the latter case, a man was taken on a twelve mile journey by night in a coach but did they go north, east, west or south? All wrong. Six miles out and six miles back to the starting point, but to give the impression of a twelve mile journey. Holmesian villains are devious.

In the next Holmes story, a character is cut to the quick. Quiz time: where does van Rijn say that he is cut to the quiche? (Someone please help me with this one. I can't remember.)

I think that van Rijn is a bit like Poirot but here he is a bit like Holmes.

OK. I am still rereading "Star of the Sea" but also Holmes.

All-Mother

"Star of the Sea."

Odin was Allfather. Veleda addresses Floris as:

"'Niaerdh... All-Mother...'" (14, A.D. 43, p. 592)

This, more than anything else, demonstrates that this prophetess is promoting her goddess to the highest position.

Ulstrup says:

"'...she is making her goddess into a being at least as powerful, as...cosmic...as any.'" (11, A.D. 49, p. 561)

Floris says that Veleda's new religion:

"'...would not become monotheistic or anything like that. But this goddess would be the supreme figure, around whom everything gathered.'" (p. 568)

But that is one kind of monotheism. There are two routes from polytheism to monotheism -

the Hebrew route: there is only one god;

the Hindu route: all gods are one.

If Niaerdh becomes supreme and if everything else gathers around her, then other gods become her aspects or her subordinates, demoted to angelic/messenger roles: a feminine monotheism, which can be found in Hinduism.

Experience And Interpretation

To describe an experience is to interpret it. Thus, if I say that I saw a man in front of a house, then I interpret some coloured shapes as a man and a house with a spatial relationship between them. Indeed, to give this description, I have to recognize some immediate visual impressions as colours and shapes. However, we habitually perceive objects like men and houses as totalities without having to analyze them. And there are finer layers of interpretation, as when I interpret the man's facial expression and body language as benign, neutral or hostile etc. In assessing another person's account of an event, we must distinguish between his perceptions and his interpretations of them. One observer "sees" police harassing demonstrators. Another "sees" demonstrators provoking police. Observers flatly contradict each other. Each of us has to find his or her own way through a maze. Do not just read one account and believe that. I learned to read different newspapers and then to go and see for myself.

Experience

In "Star of the Sea," 13-14, men from a Roman ship tie up Heidhin and rape Edh while Heidhin swears perpetual war against Rome. A woman flies down, kills the men and consoles Edh.

Joint Interpretation By Edh And Heidhin

The woman was the goddess. Edh has been chosen for a mission which can only be to preach war against Rome. To them, with their world-view, this seems obvious. Much later, Edh/Veleda begins to distinguish between the experience and the interpretation:

"'It is not truly what the goddess bade me say, it is what I have told myself she wants me to say.'" (3, p. 500)

Veleda learns wisdom. Heidhin clings to hate.

Ancient Elemental Forces

A passage in a Sherlock Holmes story reminds us of a passage in a Dominic Flandry novel. In Conan Doyle's "The Five Orange Pips," wind screams and rain beats windows in London to such an extent that Watson is forced to:

"...recognize the presence of those great elemental forces which shriek at mankind through the bars of his civilization, like untamed beasts in a cage."

-Arthur Conan Doyle, "The Five Orange Pips" IN The Adventures Of Sherlock Holmes IN Arthur Conan Doyle: 3 Books In 1 (Mumbai, 2007), pp. 103-124 AT p. 104.

And when we read that:

"...the wind cried and sobbed like a child in the chimney." (ibid.)

- we remember how often the wind plays such a role in Poul Anderson's works.

However, the passage in a Flandry novel is one in which the Pacific Ocean conveys the sense of ancient forces biding their time. We find that we have quoted this passage more than once, here. Indeed, we have also compared it with similar passages in works by several other authors including even another Conan Doyle passage, the one that incidentally mentions the contents of a British barrow - which I first encountered in "Time Patrol."

Now maybe I can get back to rereading Sherlock Holmes?

Joy And Awe

"Star of the Sea," 13.

What young Edh feels when a wagon passes bearing the image of the goddess:

joy;

renewal;

awe;

"...an unspoken underlying fear...." (p. 582)

"Joy" and "renewal" could be Easter.

Rudolf Otto argued that holiness was a synthesis of awesomeness and righteousness. Awe - apprehension of the mysterious, uncanny, "awful" and transcendent - is a kind of fear. As CS Lewis argued, we fear the proximity of a man-eating tiger, a ghost and a "great spirit" in different ways. In the third case, there is a sense of our unworthiness, not of any physical threat or danger. Edh's strong religious sense influences her personal development and also has social, and even historical, consequences in appropriate circumstances. There are potential timelines in which Edh:

dies young;

preaches endless war,

preaches war, then peace.

Search Through The Past

"Star of the Sea."

In 70 AD, Heidhin tells Manse Everard of the Time Patrol that Veleda and he are of the Alvarings but nothing more.

In 60 AD, Gundicar tells Everard and his fellow agent, Janne Floris, that Veleda had come to where she now was from among the Cherusci and, before that, had been among the Langobardi. The Patrol agents hear Veleda speak.

In 49 AD, Jens Ulstrup tells Everard and Floris that Veleda had arrived by ship among the Rugii on the Baltic littoral five or six earlier.

In 43 AD, the captain of the ship on which Veleda and her companion, Heidhin, have just arrived tells Everard that the ship has come from an island held by the Alvarings off the Geatish coast and this enables Floris to identify the island as Oland.

Earlier in 43 AD, Floris intervenes when Veleda is raped by Roman merchants on Oland. This is the event that the agents have sought. Without Floris' intervention, Veleda and Heidhin would have been dead. Was that the original timeline?

Anglii And Edh

"Star of the Sea," 12, A.D. 43.

The Anglii hold a great annual market (p. 572) but we must remember that the Anglii are not yet in England. Earlier in his Time Patrol career, Everard had been in Britain:

"...when the English were moving in."

-Poul Anderson, "Time Patrol" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, December 2010), pp. 1-53 AT 4, p. 29.

That was in 464 AD.

Edh who will be Veleda already seems to be part of her goddess's sea environment:

"Edh was a dwindled bit of fluttering darkness, half lost in the sea mist, into which she drifted onward. Wrapped in her dreams or nightmares, or whatever they were..." (p. 578)

Dreams and nightmares. A potential religious foundress unknown to history. How many are there?

The Literary Ghetto

Why did a book like Dinosaur Beach receive such extravagant but clearly undeserved praise? See DINOSAUR BEACH. Sf became a literary ghetto where it was thought that ordinary literary criteria did not apply. Panels at sf cons used to debate whether a story could be good as sf even it wasn't good as anything else. Maybe they still do? Christopher Priest argued that it was pointless to claim that EE Smith could not write good prose because he was writing in the Stone Age. Priest pointed out that Jane Austen knew how to write a novel. I was told that a particular sf mag (I forget which) did not publish literary criticism. 

Can a text be badly written with poor descriptions and characterization yet still develop interesting and entertaining sf ideas? Maybe. Any examples? In any case, a writer of any kind of fiction should still know how to write fiction. The point of this blog is that Poul Anderson's texts are well written with good descriptions and characterization and also present original and entertaining sf ideas and I cannot help thinking that there is a connection between good writing and good ideas. Wells and Anderson do not just tell us that a character has travelled to another time, past or future. They describe that other time with the same wealth of detail as in a historical novel.

In any case, other criteria apart, Dinosaur Beach makes a text book hash of presenting time travel paradoxes. It is a pleasure to turn back to Anderson's "Star of the Sea" where locations are described in multisensory detail and paradoxicality is nothing if not subtle:

"They dared not charge blind into what might well be the source of the instability..."

-see here. (Scroll down.)