Some Books

"Star of the Sea." 

On Janne Floris' bookshelves, Manse Everard:

"...spied stuff by Dickens, Mark Twain, Thomas Mann, Tolkien. A shame that Dutch titles conveyed nothing to him." (p. 482)

Observations

(i) No two people will have exactly the same collection of books and many will have not a single book in common. We learn a lot about someone by knowing what books they read.

(ii) In Spain, I saw books for sale with familiar sf authors' names on the spines but they were in translation. However, my only interest was in ascertaining which titles had been translated.

(iii) I have googled Thomas Mann with interest, not having known that he wrote Death In Venice. The Magic Mountain is an evocative title with what sounds to me like an uninteresting plot.

As Everard sits and accepts coffee, we feel that this is a real scene.

Similar Cases

Sherlock Holmes:

"'As a rule, when I have heard some slight indication of the course of events, I am able to guide myself by the thousands of other similar cases which occur to my memory. In the present instance I am forced to admit that the facts are, to the best of my belief, unique.'"

-Arthur Conan Doyle, "The Red-Headed League" IN Doyle, The Adventures Of Sherlock Holmes IN Doyle, 3 Books in 1 (Mumbai, 2007), pp. 28-54 AT p. 29.

What Holmes said reminded me of something that Nicholas van Rijn said:

"'I think maybe I see a pattern. When you have been swindling on so many planets like me, new captain, you will have analogues at your digits for much that is new....'"

-Poul Anderson, "The Master Key" IN Anderson, David Falkayn: Star Trader (Riverdale, NY, January 2009), pp. 195-233 AT p. 201.

"'Sweating is not so common on cold terrestroid planets,' Van Rijn remarked. 'Always you find analogs to something you met before, if you look enough. Evolution makes parallels.'"

-Anderson, op. cit., p. 203.

Van Rijn also claims that his brain:

"'...has stored away more information about the universe than maybe the universe gets credit for holding. I see now what the parallels are. Xanadu, Dunbar, Tametha, Disaster Landing...oh, the analogue is never exact and on Cain the thing I am thinking of has gone far and far...but still I see the pattern, and what happened makes sense.

"Not that we have got to have an analogue. You gave us so many clues here that I could solve the problem by logic alone. But analogues help, and also they show that my conclusion is not only correct but possible.'"

-ibid., p. 229.

(Close examination of the text has revealed a spelling inconsistency.)

Both Holmes and van Rijn rely on their vast knowledge to interpret new phenomena.

"Per fiddled with a glass of Ansan vermouth."

-ibid., 199.

We recognize "Ansan" as a Technic History background detail.

The dustcover blurb claims that Anderson's Technic History equals Heinlein's Future History, Herbert's Dune and Asimov's Foundation. It surpasses them.

Wells, Heinlein, Shelley, Doyle And Anderson

Poul Anderson leaves HG Wells and Robert Heinlein behind. Read The Time Machine, then Time Patrol and There Will Be Time. Then read Heinlein's Future History to be followed by Anderson's Technic History. The latter presents a future history not only of human beings but also of two other intelligent species, Ythrians and Merseians. To these works we may also add Anderson's Genesis, a restatement of the theme of the first science fiction novel, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. 

Although Anderson did create a detective series character, Trygve Yamamura, he did not surpass Sherlock Holmes! However, Holmesian references are an important sub-theme in Anderson's Time Patrol series. Our paperback omnibus Holmes collection disintegrated for obvious reasons but we have acquired another omnibus collecting only the Adventures, the Memoirs and the Return. I do not remember which story began with the reference to an ancient British barrow that initiated Manse Everard's first case for the Time Patrol but maybe I will find it when rereading Holmes while still laid up with a cold.

Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy, which I reread like some people reread The Lord Of The Rings, includes cultural references to Mr Spock, Miss Marple and Holmes' dog that did not bark. I am drowning in literary references. The game is afoot.

Interstellar Travel In Eight Andersonian Future Histories

Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History and Technic History each involve a different kind of hyperspace. 

In Anderson's Maurai future history:

the three short stories do not involve space travel;

Orion Shall Rise introduces interplanetary travel;

There Will Be Time introduces interstellar travel which will be either FTL or STL but, in the latter case, with time travellers travelling within interstellar spaceships.

(If time travel is mathematically equivalent to FTL, then the interstellar travel will be FTL.)

Everything after this is STL.

In Anderson's Tales Of The Flying Mountains, people in the first interstellar spacecraft discuss how to teach the history of asteroid colonization.

In his Rustum History, extrasolar planets are colonized.

In his Kith History, people living mostly in spaceships conduct interstellar trade.

In his Harvest Of Stars History, human beings and conscious AI's interact, eventually on an interstellar scale.

In his Genesis, post-organic intelligences explore the universe while the Terrestrial intelligence re-creates extinct humanity, a return to the theme of the first modern science fiction novel, Frankenstein.

Starward.

Space-Time Travel

"Space-time travel" has two meanings.

(i) Poul Anderson's Time Patrollers space-time travel in the sense that they change their spatial as well as their temporal coordinates. This is time travel with space added.

(ii) A spaceship that revolves around a T machine, as in Anderson's The Avatar, space-time travels in the sense that it make an interstellar journey that can end before it begins. This is space travel with time added.

Considered separately, space travel and time travel are entirely different, e.g., The First Men In The Moon and The Time Machine. However, space travel can also involve time dilation, e.g., Anderson's Tao Zero. 

I am thinking in sound bites this morning, folks.

New SF

Robert Heinlein's Future History begins before space travel and ends before regular interstellar travel. That dates it as a future history series. Poul Anderson's Technic History began during a period of faster than light (FTL) interstellar exploration - until "The Saturn Game" was added in 1981. But how likely is interstellar travel, let alone FTL? The latter has become a genre cliche. I think that future historians should concentrate on the future of Earth and of the Solar System and should go interstellar only if this can be rationalized in completely new ways. Cliches contradict speculation. Anderson did invent a new meaning for hyperspace in his Technic History and also thought of a new rationale for FTL every time he used the concept and also wrote several works involving STL interstellar travel. He continually renewed the genre which is the only way to write sf. 

Short posts, folks.

Comparing Authors' Outputs

Compare Heinlein's and Anderson's accounts of:

interplanetary travel

Martians

Venerians

alien invaders of Earth

future history

generation ships

longevity

relativistic interstellar travel

faster than light interstellar travel

future religions

magic as technology

time travel

telepathy

extrasolar aliens

future military conflicts

interstellar civilizations

Then reflect on genres that Anderson wrote that Heinlein didn't.

This is an exercise for someone else!

(You can see that I am trying to devise easy posts for today.) 

Prequels In Heinlein And Anderson

Please excuse some random thoughts while I recuperate. I do not feel up to any intensive rereading, cross-checking of sources etc.

In Robert Heinlein's Future History, important characters appear, for the most part, once only, e.g., Rhysling, the Blind Singer of the Spaceways, and Dahlquist, hero of the Space Patrol: two potential series characters but only potential. DD Harriman, the "Man Who Sold The Moon," dies on the Moon in "Requiem" (published, 1940-'41) but then is granted a prequel, "The Man Who Sold The Moon" (published, 1950), in which we are shown how Harriman did put mankind on the Moon. Nehemiah Scudder, the First Prophet, a theocratic dictator, was so disliked by Heinlein that he remained off-stage! Zero appearances for Scudder. (Except when the revolutionary Cabal fakes his appearance on TV to foment the Second American Revolution.)

Poul Anderson's Technic History is like Heinlein's Future History writ large. It is long enough to contain sub-series, several series characters and plenty of prequels which also differ enormously. The prequel to the Captain Flandry sub-series is the Young Flandry Trilogy, three whole novels, whereas Adzel, a member of the trader team, receives for his prequel a single juvenile short story about his student days on Earth. But we appreciate such diversity and variety.

Imagine a Future History as long and detailed as the Technic History. That would have been better than a lot of the later stuff that Heinlein did write.

SF Series And Another Cold

In my misery, I have been googling some British juvenile sf writers:

Angus MacVicar

WE Johns

Hugh Walters

There was a kind of sf series that would - I am generalizing here - start with a trip into space, typically but not always to the Moon, then catalogue the Solar System, then maybe go interstellar. Robert Heinlein's Scribner Juveniles fit into this pattern which we can describe as pre-Anderson. When Poul Anderson wrote, exploring the Solar System was no longer an issue. His Technic History starts with one story about the exploration of the outer Solar System and that was tacked on very late. After that, there are two stories about interstellar exploration.

Anderson's first future history series begins, cleverly I thought, not with "first men on the Moon" but in post-World War III Europe which reads like post-World War II but worse. Mankind will soar but first will have to recover - which will happen remarkably quickly.

(Andrea has just rung to say that he has a cold and to postpone my visit for a week.)

1910

Anachronisms are appropriate in time travel fiction. Manse Everard had been in Amsterdam in 1952. Thirty-four years later, he returns to meet Janne Floris whose apartment building:

"...was one of a row on a quiet street, handsome relics from around 1910."

-Poul Anderson, "Star of the Sea" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, December 2010), pp. 467-640 AT 2, p. 481.

It is fitting that, in 1986, a time traveller should live in a "relic" of a building dating from 1910. To the rest of us, 1910 is decades ago - more now - whereas a time traveller could, if she wanted, visit that building then. Even "1910" acquires a completely new meaning. We read about time travel without fully apprehending its implications. Jack Finney was one writer of time travel fiction who did try to convey what it would feel like to be somewhere - New York - in a past decade. (Finney was entirely focused on the past, indeed specifically on the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, never on the future.) Poul Anderson writes like Finney when the reality of time travel hits Manse Everard in London in 1894 in "Time Patrol."