Alternative Realities

Samuel R. Delany wrote somewhere that every work of fiction is set in an alternative reality but that the difference is usually too small for us to notice. For example, we assume first that Poul Anderson's Manson Everard lives in New York and secondly that Everard's New York is indistinguishable from ours. However, it is distinguishable in at least one respect. Our New York has no Manson Everard living in it. The differences proliferate as the fiction is elaborated. Thus, our New York also had no couple called Farness living in an apartment overlooking Central Park in the 1930s. If an author were to base his characters entirely on real people and to describe only actions that those people had performed and events that they had experienced, then he would not be writing fiction! To be fiction, a narrative has to be alternative.

Although we can imagine that our real world coexists with worlds that we regard as fictional, the real world cannot be incorporated into any fictional multiverse. As soon as, e.g., Everard travels between universes and converses with Poul Anderson, then that Poul Anderson is a fictional/alternative one and not the one that is writing the story about Everard meeting Anderson. Alan Moore describes seeing his own fictional character, John Constantine, but the simplest explanation is that that was someone who resembled Constantine and who nodded knowingly at the author when he saw the latter staring at him. If I had been in Alan's position, then I would have chased after the guy to make sure...

We have referred to Delany, Anderson, Everard, the Farnesses, Moore and Constantine. These observations about the differences between fiction and reality could have been made with reference to any authors or characters, of course. However, these guys are particularly appropriate for such imaginative speculations. Is Anderson the first person narrator of his two Old Phoenix short stories? I think that there was some reason why not but I can't remember.

Multiverses

Nicholas van Rijn is the major character in the Polesotechnic League sub-series of Poul Anderson's Technic History.

The Technic History is one of several important future history series by Anderson and other sf writers.

Such series, like all other works of fiction, can be incorporated into fictional multiverses.

Finally, van Rijn shows up in one such multiverse created by his creator, Anderson.

When we read about van Rijn in the Old Phoenix, we have come a long way from the original "Margin of Profit," which was a one-off story not yet part of any series.

We should occasionally contemplate the implication that all works of fiction can be incorporated into a multiverse. Thus, I have just begun to read To Kill The President by Sam Bourne/Jonathan Freedland. Set either in an alternative present or very soon after the next US Presidential election, this novel gives us a fictional President, although we think that we recognize him. This is yet another fictional timeline that can easily be conceptualized as existing in parallel with many other alternative histories although this story, as is usually the case, does not involve any travel between timelines.

Physics And Premises

In several works by Poul Anderson, there is interstellar travel but slower than light. Is this because faster than light travel is impossible or only because a means of FTL travel has not been discovered/invented? When reading such a work, we assume that the impossibility of FTL is one of its premises and, indeed, the invention of an FTL drive near the end of the Harvest of Stars Tetralogy or of Genesis would be discordant and would seem inconsistent. So the laws of physics differ in different fictional universes. Of course. There are fictional universes where magic works. And when multiple universes are found to coexist in a single multiverse, their physical laws continue to differ. Thus, both Valeria Matuchek, daughter of a werewolf and a witch, and Nicholas van Rijn, from a relativistic universe where FTL is possible but only by many rapid quantum jumps, visit the inter-universal inn, the Old Phoenix. Thus also, mythical beings and ordinary people from a universe just like ours visit Neil Gaiman's Inn of the Worlds' End. We want to read long series set in both of these inns but we can't have everything.

Giving A Series Body

A future history series needs, ideally, a lot of individual short stories with one-off characters. Such stories give the series body and illuminate multiple aspects of a many-faceted future society or civilization. Robert Heinlein began this process with the ten stories collected in the Future History, Volume II, The Green Hills of Earth. None of these stories advances the historical process. They have no common characters and all are set about the year 2000 in space, on the Moon, on Earth or on Venus with references to Mars and other parts of the Solar System. At least two stories directly overlap. Harriman, "The Man Who Sold The Moon," is alive and is mentioned but does not appear just as a character in Poul Anderson's "A Little Knowledge" has seen Nicholas van Rijn on their equivalent of television.

Anderson's Technic History incorporates two major character-driven series but is also well provided with such body-giving short stories:

"The Saturn Game"

"Wings of Victory"

"The Problem of Pain"

"How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson," about James Ching

"The Season of Forgiveness"

"A Little Knowledge"

"Lodestar," insofar as it focuses on Coya rather than on the familiar characters

"Wingless"

"Rescue on Avalon"

The Polesotechnic League sub-series, together with its antecedents and aftermath, would have been much poorer without the cumulative impact of these additional stories.

What Now For The Future?

Larry Niven's Known Space future history series begins with four stories about the exploration of the Solar System in the last quarter of the twentieth century. Thus, although most of Known Space was written after most of Poul Anderson's Technic History, the beginning of Known Space is "earlier" than the beginning of the Technic History because the latter places interplanetary exploration in the first half of the twenty first century. Ever since Wells and Stapledon wrote in the 1930s, future histories, like other futuristic speculations, have always reflected the time in which they were written so what would a future history be like if its author began to write it in 2023?

It has been pointed out in the combox on this blog that the way to avoid a future history becoming outdated too quickly is to set its opening instalments or chapters in a further future as Anderson had done with the Technic History before he added "The Saturn Game." Anderson's culminating single-volume future history, Genesis, hurries past the near future to present longer term technological speculations. But why should a future historian want to avoid becoming outdated? As Heinlein wrote, future history is not prophecy but acknowledged fiction. Anderson made a late addition to his Psychotechnic History.

But what would a near future history series look like now? Surely the imminent ecological catastrophe would have to be incorporated? Can we even assume a resumption of space travel? I cannot get excited by the prospect of four people circumnavigating the Moon at the end of next year.

Should people keep writing novels and making films in the present climate? Novels were written during World War II, including CS Lewis' reply to Wells' and Stapledon's future histories. 

Introductions And Beginnings

What is the best way to introduce and begin a future history series? Right now, I am considering only four such series that I consider important:

The Future History by Robert Heinlein

Cities In Flight by James Blish

The Psychotechnic History by Poul Anderson

The Technic History by Poul Anderson

Heinlein's Future History, Volume I, The Man Who Sold The Moon, has both a Preface by its author and an Introduction by the magazine editor of the stories, John W. Campbell, Jr. Although Heinlein in his Preface states that the Future History is not prophecy, Campbell ends his Introduction as follows:

"The important thing is that these, sirs, are high adventure. The high adventure of the years to come - the years we, unfortunately, may not live to see. These are a window on tomorrow; a television set tuned to the future. But we lack the key to the door that would let us walk through into that future; we must only watch and listen to the highest of all adventures - the conquest of the stars!"

-John W. Campbell, INTRODUCTION in Robert Heinlein, The Man Who Sold The Moon (London, 1963), pp. 11-14 AT p. 14.

This collection was first published in 1953, seventy years ago. 

Campbell seems:

to assume that his audience is entirely male;

to regard the future as a place where we cannot go rather than as the time that we are always living into;

to forget that this volume at least does not feature interstellar travel.

In fact, in the Future History, the first Moon landing occurs off-stage in the fifth instalment and regular faster than light interstellar travel is about to begin only at the end of Volume IV, the effective end of the history.

Blish's Cities In Flight, Volume I, They Shall Have Stars, set within the Solar System, is about the discoveries that will lead to interstellar travel.

The opening instalment of Anderson's Psychotechnic History is set among the ruins of World War III although, from the second instalment onward, there is a rebuilt high tech Earth and interplanetary travel.

Anderson's Technic History originally began with Trader To The Stars and interstellar travel already under way as proclaimed in the fictional Introduction signed "Le Matelot." The later written earliest story, "The Saturn Game," describes interplanetary exploration during the rebuilding of Earth in the twenty first century.

We have come a long way both in real history and in fictional future histories since The Man Who Sold The Moon but this is all a single literary tradition.

Conclusions And Beginnings

We recently considered "The Master Key" as in a sense a conclusion in that it is the last, and very comprehensive, Polesotechnic League instalment before the long drawn out decline of the League begins:

in Satan's World, the League is vulnerable to an external threat disguised as an internal information service;

in "A Little Knowledge," human merchants cause harm to others and thus also to themselves;

in "Lodestar," the conflicts are entirely internal to the League;

in Mirkheim, what looks like another external threat has been manufactured by one of the League cartels - leading to civil war and the effective end of the League.

We also considered "Starfog" as the last Technic History instalment. This future history series is full of beginning and endings which we need not enumerate again. Even this last instalment is a new beginning because immense wealth is about to be extracted from the newly discovered Cloud Universe.

New sources of wealth are a consistent theme! They take two forms:

new markets for Nicholas van Rijn;

new sources of heavy metals - Satan, Mirkheim, Wayland, the Cloud Universe.

Instincts And Culture

The science in science fiction, like the history in historical fiction, or in historical time travel fiction like Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series, can be wrong but might be the best that the author knew at the time of writing. In fiction, that suffices. The First Men In The Moon and The War Of The Worlds are classics. As indeed are Homer with his gods and Hamlet with its ghost. Works of literature are not superseded like scientific theories - and even discarded theories remain stepping stones in the history of science.

See Kirkasanters And Civilizations and its combox. SM Stirling argues that human beings have not a reproduction instinct but three other instincts, for sex, pair-bonding and care of children, which together perform the same role that a single reproduction instinct would have done. This fits my experience. My concern for my daughter's well-being started at her birth, not earlier. (Although we pair-bond, I do not think that human beings are naturally monogamous.)

It follows that the Kirkasanters need not have evolved a reproduction instinct. They could have survived on existing instincts and have built a pronatal culture. Daven Laure thinks:

"Culture... That's mutable. Bu t you don't change your instincts; they're built into your chromosomes. Her people must have their children" (p. 744)

So our current thinking is that the Kirkasanters' drive to reproduce cannot be instinctual and can only be cultural. However, culture, although mutable, can be overwhelming for individuals and for entire generations so this story can still wind up with Laure and Graydal unable to marry.

Interstellar Civilization In "Starfog" II

"A carnivore screamed, somewhere off in the dark."

-Poul Anderson, Starfarers (New York, 1999), 48, p. 461.

"Somewhere a hunter beast screamed."

-"The Master Key," p. 311.

An echo between different planets in different timelines, both times appropriate. See here.

In "Starfog," the action is on the frontier planet, Serieve, then in the Cloud Universe. We are given only hints of interstellar civilization:

there are quadrillionaires, foundations, governments and consortia;

the Commonalty is "'...a private, voluntary, mutual-benefit society...'" (p. 770);

planetary governments hire Commonalty services, including space rescue;

there is contact with xenosophonts;

Daven Laure, a Ranger of the Commonalty, is from the Fireland mountains on New Vixen and was trained at Starborough near Irontower City on Aladir;

when shipwrecked in the Cloud Universe, he remembers "...a funny little tavern he'd once visited..." (p. 785).

Taverns are frequent way stations in Anderson's works. This reference to a "little tavern" provides a sharp contrast to the uninhabitable environments of the Cloud Universe. We remember the Old Phoenix tavern visited by travellers from different timelines, including this Technic History.

In The Post-Imperial Age

The post-Imperial instalments of Poul Anderson's Technic History systematically address human linguistic, biological, psychological and genetic divergences after the fall of Technic civilization. This explains why none of these four instalments features any non-human intelligences. But there were plenty of those earlier in the Technic History, many in single short stories but several becoming part of the history alongside humanity. We get an Ythrian perspective in The Earth Book of Stormgate and a Merseian perspective in The Game of Empire. A novel about Aycharaych could have given us a Chereionite perspective.

What must be happening elsewhere in the galaxy? The Dispersal of Ymir extends far beyond human space and the Ymirites must know of other spacefaring oxygen-breathers. A sub-series could have been set in another volume of space with little or no direct contact with Terrans, Merseians etc.