In 50,000 AD:
Must dash.
Memorable passages from the concluding section:
"Entropy had reached a maximum, the energy sources were used up, the universe was dead." (p. 235)
"The universe was mortal, but it was a phoenix which would never really die." (p. 236)
"...the continuum was spherical in all four dimensions. In any case - if you travelled long enough, through space of time, you got back to your starting point." (p. 238)
(That should probably read "...space or time..." I will check the text in Past Times.)
"Grayness was outside - for the last time." (ibid.)
"The hill seemed strangely unreal, after all that he had seen from it, the whole enormous tomorrow of the cosmos. He would never quite fit into the little round of days that lay ahead." (p. 239)
That recalls Olaf Stapledon's narrator returning home at the end of Star Maker.
"...he thought he heard [Taury's] voice whisper in the cool wet wind..." (ibid.)
There has to be wind. For this peaceful conclusion, the wind is cool, not cold, as it had been/was to be in 50,000 AD, and it does not roar or shout but whispers.
"It was enough for a mortal man." (p. 220)
"'I guess I must be a little early.'" (ibid.)
- the concluding sentence.
See also Cosmic Beginnings.
Some Andersonian wars are fought not in space but through time. See Three Wars Through Time.
And, like a prescient Hegelian synthesis, a space battle had been combined with time travel in Anderson's earlier "Flight to Forever." See Time Wars and Space-Time Battle.
As several times before, there is a sense of completeness, of an author who explores every possible answer to several major questions. Can time travellers change the past? Yes, in Time Patrol. No, in There Will Be Time. Etc.
The alien general, Hunda:
"'By the gods, if we had decent weapons!'" (p. 217)
Saunders:
"...thought how beautiful [Taury] was - by all the gods, how beautiful!" (p. 218)
Does a new polytheism seem appropriate for a multi-species, interstellar civilization? It does to me but, in any case, we have already addressed this question in more detail than I would have felt able to do at present. See here.
James Blish's phrase, "gods of all stars," common to his Okie and pantropy series, seems especially pertinent.
See also The National Anthem.
Although James Blish's fictional futures feature an ultrawave/ultraphone, this is clearly different from the one in the Andersonian futures.
Sf jargon like "hyperdrive," "warp drive," "Terra," "Terran" etc can generate a spurious sense of continuity between diverse narratives. My father, having heard "warp drive" mentioned in Star Trek, remarked to me that it was also referenced in Lost In Space whereas to me, of course, this was just familiar sf terminology. We need sf that breaks out of genre cliches. The future will be different from anything that has been imagined so let's imagine something that has not yet been imagined. I started this post just with the word, "ultrawave," and did not know where I was going with it. Now I must watch some TV news and get back to rereading Stieg Larsson.
We have not yet exhausted the temporal epic, "Flight to Forever."
Hunda says that:
Maurco the Doomer was the last properly anointed Galactic Emperor even though he held only three planetary systems five thousand years ago;
Taury is his direct descendant;
therefore, she, and not any of the 100+ human or nonhuman barbarian pretenders, has the only real Imperial claim even though she is now holed up in a single fortress in the galactic periphery.
How strong a case is that? In 50,000 AD, on a Galactic scale and across five millennia, formal anointment and hereditary rule? Someone with superior firepower could sweep it aside and then a new de facto would become a new de jure as happened here: British monarchs are "...since the Conquest." (My emphasis.)
In any case, the two time travellers will secure Taury's claim. The Empire will be restored - and Saunders will be compelled to leave it behind in his "Flight Without End." The narrative is both temporal and cosmic.
