"Another Stapledon"

"As for visions, we writers have never matched the transcendence of what some scientists have beheld. Nor do I expect we ever shall. We can only hope for another Stapledon to put it into fictional terms, as he did the cosmology of his period. That will be no minor success."
-Poul Anderson, "Wellsprings of Dream" IN Anderson, All One Universe (New York, 1997), pp. 235-247, AT p. 238.

I have read this article before but had not remembered this passage. Much earlier on this blog (here), I described Anderson as the modern Stapledon.

In Olaf Stapledon's Star Maker, telepathically linked organic intelligences originating throughout the universe form a Cosmic Mind. In Anderson's Genesis, electromagnetically linked post-organic intelligences emanating from Earth evolve towards a Cosmic Mind. Thus, Anderson effectively updates Stapledon but, of course, he does so by writing with creativity and originality, as both Wells and Stapledon had done, not by merely imitating his predecessors. (Also compare Wells' The Time Machine with Anderson's time travel series, novels and short stories.)

I know that several sf writers since Anderson have addressed cosmological themes and that I have not kept abreast of this more recent sf but my question is whether any more recent writer has yet addressed such themes with the level of literary skill, historical knowledge and sociological understanding displayed by Anderson.

Referencing Stapledon Or Tolkien

Poul Anderson does not often refer to other authors in his fiction, certainly not by name. There is an understated reference to HG Wells, not by name, in There Will Be Time. Arthur Conan Doyle's most famous character is mentioned several times, and even appears once, but not Doyle himself. When Anderson says that "...we can only hope for another Stapledon...," (see here) this is in a work of non-fiction.

Two other sf authors do explicitly refer to Stapledon:

"The notion of modifying the human stock genetically to live on the planets as they were found, had been old with Olaf Stapledon; it had been touched upon by many later writers; it went back, in essence, as far as Proteus, and as deep into the human mind as the werewolf, the vampire, the fairy changeling, the transmigrated soul."
-James Blish, The Seedling Stars (London, 1972), Book One, 3, p. 50.

Blish covers a lot of territory, going way beyond his immediate theme of "pantropy," artificial adaptation of human beings to other planets. He mentions:

Stapledon;
later writers;
Proteus;
werewolves;
vampires;
changelings;
transmigration.

Which of these additional themes does Anderson address and in which works?

Early in the opening volume of her future history about psychic powers, Julian May summarizes the plot of Stapledon's Odd John when young Rogi, trying to understand his own ESP, reads that novel. That is one way to do it. May's Galactic Milieu and Anderson's Genesis are two successors of Stapledon's future history but one difference is that Genesis does not say so.

In SM Stirling's Emberverse alternative future history, some characters base themselves directly on Tolkien's Middle Earth, even speaking Elvish. Literature resembles one long series whether or not later texts explicitly acknowledge earlier ones.

Looking Back

Does anyone reread this stuff? I forget what I have posted. Searching the blog for references to Olaf Stapledon, I have found:

"Another Stapledon," which explains why I think that Poul Anderson is a modern Olaf Stapledon;

Cosmic Histories, which lists and describes Stapledon's works, then summarizes the cosmic history of Anderson's "Pride" and Tau Zero;

Stapledon To Stirling, which locates Anderson at a stage intermediate between the classic Stapledon and the contemporary Stirling.

That third item also links to its immediately preceding post which discusses the bases of humanity and morality.

The blog could become endlessly self-referential although not vacuously circular like a cartoon that was circulated at work: woman seated at PC, man standing behind PC, both speaking into mobile phones. Man asks, "Did you receive my email?" Woman asks, "Would that have been the one about your text message?" In that case, the message has got lost among all the media whereas, in the case of the blog, I refer to very substantial works by Anderson, his predecessors and one current successor.

The Anthropic Cosmological Principle

Poul Anderson, "Wellspring of Dreams," see here.

Anderson discusses The Anthropic Cosmological Principle (1986) by John D Barrow and Frank J Tipler.

Barrow and Tipler ask whether the important quantities in physics are arbitrary. The quantities listed by Anderson are:

the gravitational constant
the fine-structure constant
Planck's constant
the charges of elementary particles
the masses of those particles
the present size of the universe
its present age

This reminds me why I am a philosopher, not a physicist. Like Socrates, I cannot handle all these technical details. But, without them, we would have neither science nor technology. The scientists (natural philosophers) have got it right.

The size and age of the universe are closely related, almost identical, since the universe is expanding. To say that the universe is big is to say that it is old. Or, at least, to say that it has reached a certain size is also to say that it has reached the corresponding age. It is sometimes argued that there must be life elsewhere because the universe is big. However, if the universe needed to reach a certain age before it could contain any life, then maybe we are the first? Elements necessary for life had to be synthesized in a first generation of stars, then had to condense into a second generation of stars and planets - and that took time.

Why are the size and age of the universe listed with the other quantities? They just happen to be the current size and age when we are asking the question. The universe had to reach a certain size and age before anyone could exist in it to ask anything. However, the size and age will continue to increase whereas the other listed quantities will not.

The Weak Anthropic Principle: the universe is the way we perceive it because, if it were otherwise, then we would not exist to perceive it.

If there are universes with physical quantities that are incompatible with life, then no one is perceiving those universes.

The Strong Anthropic Principle: the universe must have properties that allow life to develop.

Anderson tells us that the reasoning involves quantum mechanics and the observer-observed relationship. Philosophically, I believe that there is an objective world that existed before it was observed and that exists independently of being observed. However, I have yet to read Barrow's and Tipler's book.

The Final Anthropic Principle: intelligence must come into existence and will never die out.

Anderson says that this "...is admittedly a non sequitur..." (p. 244) So why is it asserted? The human race could be killed by a comet or a nuclear war and we might be the only intelligent life... But, again, I have yet to read the book.

Anderson writes that: "We can only hope for another Stapledon..." (p. 238) to fictionalize current cosmology "...as he did the cosmology of his period." (ibid.) And, again referring to Stapledon by name, Anderson writes:

"What we now have offered us is an eschatology for today. What we need is a genius who will make a story of it." (p. 245)

Since Anderson's later novels fictionalized all of the cosmological and eschatological speculations summarized in this article, it is clear that Anderson himself was this genius and this new Stapledon.

Dyson imagines intelligence surviving heat-death as "...changeable configurations of leptons." (p. 246) Barrow and Dyson argue that, in the finite time before a cosmic collapse, an infinite number of experiences and thoughts would be possible. How? I need to read their book.

...And Lewis

I am still juggling with three Wells-Stapledon-Anderson parallels:

interplanetary invasion;
time travel;
future history.

Another relevant author is CS Lewis whose unique brand of theological sf is polemically anti-Wellsian and anti-Stapledonian whereas Poul Anderson, although he addresses some theological issues, primarily continues and extends the tradition of Wells and Stapledon. (A full list of other writers compared with Anderson on the blog is here.)

Interplanetary Invasion
Lewis inverts the interplanetary invasion idea. In his Trilogy, any extraterrestrial incursions are entirely benign. Planetary angels descend to empower the revived Merlinus Ambrosius who then inflicts demonically possessed scientists with the curse of Babel. An earlier benign incursion had been the birth of Maleldil as a hnau in Thulcandra - but I leave it to readers of the Trilogy to understand words in the Solar language. A space-faring scientist is the demonically possessed instrument of a literally diabolical assault on the Paradisal oceanic planet Venus. And here is another parallel because, in Anderson's "Sister Planet," an Earthman kills the peaceful inhabitants of an oceanic Venus.

Time Travel
Lewis' "The Dark Tower" is modeled on Wells' The Time Machine. Both works begin with a group of characters discussing the concept of time travel. On the basis of what I regard as a fallacious argument, Lewis' characters conclude that physical time travel is impossible. However, Lewis then introduces parallel Earths which tie in with Wells' Men Like Gods, with several works by Anderson and with major contributions by Harry Turtledove and SM Stirling.

Future History
Lewis did not write a future history but did ask: what kind of future do we want? In Wells' and Stapledon's future histories, mankind remakes itself with science. The concluding volume of Lewis' Trilogy expresses the antithetical view that any such project would in fact mean some men controlling others with science. Anderson mainly follows Wells and Stapledon by presenting anthropocentric futures although his character, Fr Axor, pursues a Lewisian program by seeking evidence for the Universal Incarnation. Anderson's later future histories go further by presenting Artificial Intelligences as displacing or even replacing mankind. I suspect that Lewis would have regarded AI as either impossible or diabolical.

Future And Past

HG Wells, Olaf Stapledon and Poul Anderson each wrote a fictitious history of the future and each also wrote about past history although in different ways.

Wells
The Time Machine (1895) summarizes the future of life on Earth as perceived by a time traveler from the nineteenth century.

The Shape Of Things To Come (1933) is, fictitiously, a dreamed future historical text book.

The Outline Of History (1920) is a world history.

Stapledon
Last And First Men (1930) is a future historical text book transmitted by a mentally time traveling Last Man into the brain of its twentieth century author who distorts most of what he receives and thinks that he is writing fiction.

Last Men In London (1932) is an assessment of past history from the perspective of Stapledon's future history.

Anderson
The History of Technic Civilization (1951-1985) is a future history series in the tradition not of Wells or Stapledon but Heinlein.

The Time Patrol series (1955-1995) describes physical time travel to historical and prehistorical periods in the context of a fictitious future history different from the one in the Technic History or in any other future historical works by Anderson.

Thus, The Outline Of History, Last Men In London and the Time Patrol series are different kinds of works about the past.

Another Comparison
Wells describes a Martian invasion of Earth in an independent novel (1897).
Stapledon incorporates Martian invasions of Earth into his future history.
Anderson describes the economic conquest of Earth by militarily superior extrasolar humanoid aliens in an independent short story (1955).

Speculations

Future histories enhance one another. Although Olaf Stapledon's Last And First Men and Poul Anderson's Technic History present two mutually incompatible fictional futures, both works occupy different regions of that vast intellectual and imaginative space encompassing all futuristic speculations. When sf readers encounter either of Anderson's two intelligent flying species, the Diomedeans or the Ythrians, some might remember Stapledon's equally winged Venerians - or his devolved, then re-evolved, Neptunians. Stepping just outside the realm of future histories as such, HG Wells' two extra-terrestrial races, the Selenites and the Martians, stand up well against any of the (many) intelligent species imagined by Wells' many successors. Martians, Merseians (of the Roidhunate) and kzinti are all threats to humanity. 

In time travel fiction, Anderson's Time Patrol timecycles read like higher tech - and mass-produced - Time Machines whereas his ultimately evolved Danellians contrast sharply with Wells' devolved Morlocks and Eloi. I suggest that the Danellians encountered by Manse Everard during the twentieth century can be described as "extra-temporals," the time travel equivalents of extra-terrestrials. They originate from a later era (our descendants) rather than from another planet (no relations). And these "Danellians" - their name never explained - also contrast sharply with Stapledon's mentally time travelling Neptunians who, when exploring their past, are surprised to learn that their ancestors had migrated from Venus and, before that, from Earth. Comparisons of alternative speculations generate a sense of comprehensiveness.

Googling for images of Last And First Men, I was surprised to learn that this novel has recently been filmed.

Wellsian Template

Recent posts have shown that Poul Anderson holds up well when considered in parallel with other big name future historians like Wells, Stapledon, Heinlein and Asimov. Wells provides a template for comparing sf writers -

time travel: The Time Machine

space travel: The First Men In The Moon

interplanetary invasion: The War Of The Worlds

future history: The Shape Of Things To Come

Works by Stapledon, Lewis, Heinlein, Blish and Anderson can fit into this template. Briefly and partially:

Stapledon combines the four themes in one volume, Last And First Men;

CS Lewis' four Ransom works, the Trilogy and a fragment, address each of these themes (That Hideous Strength is not a future history but is about how society should be organized in future and is a reply to Wells and Stapledon);

we know of Heinlein's and Anderson's contributions.

Space travel permeates a lot of sf and might become difficult to differentiate as a distinct theme. However -

Wells: see above

Lewis: Out Of The Silent Planet

Heinlein: three "first men on the Moon" stories

Blish: Welcome To Mars

A Wellsian "space travel" story must describe both the journey through space and what is discovered on another planet. In Anderson's works:

"The Saturn Game" describes how to cope, psychologically, with space travel;

"Wings of Victory" describes what is discovered on one other planet;

Tau Zero describes an ultimate space journey.

Further Visions

Wells' Time Traveler sees the end of life on Earth.
Stapledon shows us the Last Men on Neptune.
Stapledon's Cosmic Mind witnesses the creation of many universes.
A Poul Anderson time traveler circumnavigates time.
An Anderson spaceship crew survive this universe and colonizes the next.
Another Anderson crew traverses space and time and sees a monobloc.
Anderson shows us inorganic intelligence re-creating extinct humanity in a geological future.

I have not kept up with more recent cosmological sf. However, this brief list shows us Poul Anderson fulfilling and enhancing the legacies of both Wells and Stapledon.

Ultimates

When Brian Aldiss called Olaf Stapledon the ultimate science fiction writer, I agreed. In fact, I think that I had independently applied that phrase to Stapledon.

When James Blish described Poul Anderson's Tau Zero as an ultimate work of hard sf, he probably meant something like this:

first, the novel is based on the ingenious, although on reflection also obvious, hard sf premise of an uncontrollably accelerating relativistic spaceship;

secondly, the author reasons from this premise to a logical but also ultimate conclusion - the ship survives the universe.

If this is what Blish meant, then he was right. However, the book must also work as a novel. And it does, which is why, in the previous post (here), I described it as an ultimate narrative of human endurance.

It is good to connect Anderson to Stapledon with the appropriate term, "ultimate," as applied by Blish and Aldiss, respectively.

And now let me plug another blog by linking to an alternative meaning of the word, "Ultimates." Also, here and here.

Evolution In Aldiss, Anderson, Lewis And Stapledon

Since we concluded the previous post with a quotation from Brian Aldiss, we should additionally mention that Aldiss wrote both a time travel novel and a Frankenstein novel and also that, like Poul Anderson, he followed Robert Heinlein not only by writing a future history but also by linking a generation ship story to the future history. Furthermore, Aldiss' single-volume future history, Galaxies Like Grains Of Sand, has a culminating instalment based on the completely non-Darwinian idea that animal evolution culminated with humanity in this galaxy and will begin with humanity in the next. Not an amoeba but a complete human organism will somehow form.

CS Lewis' Perelandra presents the Christian Fundamentalist idea of (as yet) sinless First Parents created on another planet.

In what I remember of Olaf Stapledon's Last And First Man, a recognizably different human species just began to be born among the population when its time had come. Natural selection was not involved. However, Stapledon did show Darwinian processes operating later in the novel when human colonists of Neptune degenerated into animality and intelligence eventually re-evolved.

Anderson applies fully Darwinian principles when recounting the evolution of Diomedeans, Ythrians and Didonians. See Speculution. Anderson was a hard sf writer who respected religion but who did not lose sight of physics or biology.

SF Dialogues

Science Fiction is a sequence of dialogues.

Interplanetary Exploration
The earlier concept: a few explorers in a single spaceship spend a short time on the surface of another planet before returning to Earth;

Poul Anderson's "The Saturn Game": many scientists and their families spend several years cruising the outer Solar System in a fleet of solar-powered spaceships while small teams descend to planetary surfaces.

A Multi-Generation Interstellar Spaceship
Heinlein: after mutiny and mutations, most of the crew forgets about the outside universe;

Simak: religious enthusiasm keeps the crew performing necessary tasks in their enclosed environment;

Aldiss: life inside a "generation ship" is much more complicated than Heinlein allowed for;

Anderson: an Asimovian science of society might prevent social breakdown in a Heinleinian generation ship.

Time Travel
Authors speculated about the consequences of time travel;
one imagined response was time travelers changing history;
Anderson replied with the Time Patrol, then imagined a deeper cosmic purpose for the Patrol.

Robots
Authors asked whether artificial human beings or robots would destroy their creators;

Asimov replied with the Laws of Robotics, then devised ways round the Laws;

David Brin, one of the continuers of Asimov's Foundation series (see here), had some robots creating Asimov's humans only galaxy by exterminating aliens;

Anderson argued that specialized machines, e.g., self-driving vehicles, make general purpose robots redundant so that the first experimental robot joins the ranks of the unemployed but, unlike the rest of them, cannot escape into drunkenness.

The Future
HG Wells wrote an anthropocentric history of the next two hundred years;

Olaf Stapledon wrote an anthropocentric history of the entire human future, then added a cosmic history;

CS Lewis replied to Wells and Stapledon with a Biblically-based theocentric trilogy;

American future historians continue the tradition of Wells and Stapledon but display different levels of appreciation of religious issues;

one American future historian, James Blish, also wrote a post-Lewis theological trilogy (see here);

regular blog readers will know where Poul Anderson fits in this sequence.

Three Major American Future Histories
Heinlein: a series with some contemporaneous and some successive installments.
Anderson: a series directly modeled on Heinlein's.
Anderson (later): a much longer series comprising not only individual installments but also two lengthy sub-series.

The moral of the story: Anderson is always in there with the best of them.

Histories

 

Fictional histories are past, alternative or future. Reading even a small amount of real history demonstrates - which should already be obvious - that a fictional historian would have to devote an entire long career to a single series to even begin to reflect the detail and complexity of reality. Maybe the only serious contender in this respect is Tolkien.

When I finished school in 1967, I knew of only three American future historians, Heinlein, Asimov and Blish, although I rated them in the order: Blish; Heinlein; Asimov. I knew of Anderson as an sf writer but did not yet realize that van Rijn and Flandry would combine into a future history series, still less that I would come to regard that Technic History as the pinnacle of American future historiography.

Heinlein and Blish are too different to be fully comparable. Blish is better at providing background information in Wellsian historical passages: three introductions and excerpts from two educational lectures.

Both Stapledon and Blish chronicle the last days of mankind:

"...we shall make after all a fair conclusion to this brief music that is man."

-Olaf Stapledon, Last And First Men IN Stapledon, Last And First Men/Last Men In London (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1972), pp. 5-327 AT XVI, 3. Epilogue, p. 327.

 

"...we must note, with more than a little awe, the sudden and critical reappearance of Earthmen in this timeless moment of chaos and creation, and the drastic and fruitful exeunt which they wrote for themselves into the universal drama."

-Acreff-Monales: The Milky Way; Five Cultural Portraits IN James Blish, The Triumph Of Time IN Blish, Cities In Flight (London, 1981), pp. 467-596 AT Prologue, p. 471.

 

But Poul Anderson wrote in another work:

 

"The last man on Earth knew not that he was."

-Poul Anderson, "In Memoriam" IN Anderson, All One Universe (New York, 1997), pp. 57-67 AT p. 59.

 

Multiple futures, good, bad and indifferent.

Religion in Poul Anderson

On my James Blish Appreciation blog, there is an article on "CS Lewis and James Blish" which has a section on the treatment of religion by sf writers including Poul Anderson. I have copied an extract below. The theme of the article is not only religion but also "anthropocentricism," i.e., the way in which secular sf writers show mankind controlling future history by contrast with the Biblical account of God controlling past history. In secular sf, men for example become creators of robots, extend their own lifespans and try to find a science of society. It is for this reason that the first paragraph in the following extract refers to robots, immortality, psychotechnics and sociodynamics.

Poul Anderson’s “hard,” scientifically and technologically based, sf contrasts with Lewis’ theological sf and with both Lewis’ and Tolkien’s Christian fantasies although Anderson’s Viking and medieval fantasies compete with those writers on their own terms. In his “Psychotechnic” future history, the first robot is, ironically, unemployed. Organisms can be made immortal only by shielding them, underground, from all radiation and the application of science to society is incomplete because “psychotechnicians” can prevent mutiny in a spaceship but not revolution on Earth whereas, in the expanding intergalactic society of Anderson’s World Without Stars, all human lives are prolonged indefinitely and “sociodynamicists” apply science to economics as effectively as physicists apply it to matter.

Also in World Without Stars, originally published as The Ancient Gods, an ancient race on an extragalactic planet, having bred another species as intelligent slaves, believes that its own members in earlier incarnations created everything else. Escaped slaves, regarding the dominant race as devils, worship our galaxy which dominates their otherwise empty night sky. An Earthman claiming to have come from the galaxy seems to claim to be an emissary of God. He gains local support against the dominant race by using a scientific instrument to show that God is still with us/the galaxy is still overhead even when concealed by sunlight.

Anderson’s “Technic” future history evokes imperial decline more convincingly than Asimov’s series and also addresses religious issues with greater insight. Barbarians, acquiring spaceships and nuclear weapons from unscrupulous traders, worship idols while conquering planets to enslave their inhabitants. Other aliens convert to Buddhism or Christianity. One, ordained as a Jerusalem Catholic priest, seeks evidence of an extraterrestrial Incarnation.

(In Lewis’ theologized cosmology, a second Incarnation or other divine manifestation would have occurred on Venus if the Venerian first parents had sinned. Anderson’s many aliens are as morally flawed as humanity and his later future histories do not contain many aliens: life is uncommon; sapience rare; humanoid extraterrestrials nonexistent. This view, based on current scientific extrapolations, contrasts with Lewis’ idea that God, having become a man, will no longer embody intelligence in any other form.)

Also in the Technic History, an intelligent winged carnivore, believing that the best way to die is to give God the Hunter a good fight, withholds pain-killers from a dying Earthwoman, thus challenging her husband’s Christian faith. The carnivore, when asked whether he believes that the spirit outlives the body, snaps:

“ ‘How could it?…Why should it?’ ”⁹

Despite its uncompassionate practice, the New Faith of God the Hunter contrasts with the bloody rites of a pagan Old Faith. This story, “The Problem of Pain,” shares its title with a work of apologetics by Lewis. Elsewhere in the Technic History, both Judaism and Christianity influence the planet Ivanhoe. First, a Jewish merchant overthrows a theocracy by introducing the Kabbalah. Later, human traders, by celebrating Christmas as a season of peace, help to prevent a war. 

Elsewhere, a uniformly hostile planetary environment lacking seasonal variations prevents its inhabitants from conceiving of any benevolent or sympathetic controllers of the environment. On yet another planet, with extreme annual climatic variations, one intelligent race hibernates whereas another estivates at sea. They rarely meet and one regards the other as supernatural.

The imperialist Merseians’ deity, favoring their Race above others, is described impersonally as “the God,” implying transcendence without immanence, unapproachable remoteness. A human-ruled Merseian, classed as “pagan” by his Orthochristian employers, invokes not “the God” but potentially harmful elemental beings. Among human faiths, the Jerusalem Catholic Church is either the Roman Catholic Church with its headquarters moved to Jerusalem or a new denomination. For story purposes, it doesn’t matter which.

Aycharaych, a Chereionite telepath serving Merseia, tries to split humanity by cynically fomenting jihad. However, the new belief focuses not on supernaturalism but on the pseudo-scientific hope that an ancient race, whose ruins are found on many planets, went beyond and will return. A shoe maker is telepathically induced to teach that some Ancients oppose entropy whereas others accept it. Thus, conflict is built into the new belief.

The Technic History, originally two independent series, has two main continuing characters: van Rijn, the space merchant, invokes St. Dismas; Flandry, the intelligence officer, prays to his murdered fiancee in the Cathedral where they would have been married but does not receive an answer although her fellow Orthochristians canonise her.

Anderson’s last two future histories transcend anthropocentric futures because they present self-replicating artificial intelligences (AI’s) as superseding humanity. Technology, originally extending hands and brains, now replaces them. In the Harvest Of Stars tetralogy, harmonious AI conflicts with chaotic and arguably redundant mankind and aims to survive the cosmos indefinitely by utilizing the energy of particle decay. Thus, Anderson updated Stapledonian speculation about the ultimate fates of consciousness and the cosmos.

Stapledon’s cosmic mind, which glimpses the Star Maker, is a telepathic linkage between many organic intelligences originating throughout the universe whereas Anderson’s potentially cosmos-surviving mind is an electromagnetic linkage between inorganic intelligences emanating from Earth. Also in this tetralogy, downloaded human personalities preside like gods as the governing intelligences of terraformed extrasolar ecologies.

Anderson’s last future history, Genesis, a single novel with several fictitious historical chapters on Stapledonian time scales, synthesizes the British and American future history models. AI incorporates the recorded memories and identities of dead human beings into a greater consciousness. Solar AI, “Gaia,” “emulates” historical periods and alternative histories inside conscious computer systems. (“Simulates” would imply unconsciousness.) AI might eventually be able to emulate the universe. 

Gaia also re-creates extinct flesh and blood human beings, guides their early development in the form of a deity and hopes that they will build a free, technologically based civilization. However, galactic AI may disapprove of Gaia’s re-introduction of conflict and suffering both in emulations and on Earth. Thus, the creator’s responsibility for suffering, formerly a religious issue, recurs in the scientific-secular contexts both of Frankenstein and of Anderson’s Genesis.

Two quotations demonstrate the difference between the Biblical Genesis and Anderson’s:

“…he made the stars also.” (Genesis 1. 16)

“The stars were also evolving.”¹⁰

Anderson’s Genesis also contains a perfect haiku:

“ ‘The shadows, like life,
moved beneath summer daylight.
Evening reclaims them.’ ”¹¹

The Old Testament incorporates reflections on transience but such reflections are antithetical to the New Testament message of resurrection and immortality. The only immortality in Anderson’s Genesis is technological.

Anderson’s fictitious histories are past as well as future. Medieval Christians in stolen spacecraft conquer and convert aliens in The High Crusade but this is a joke. Odin appears in historical fantasies; the original of Odin appears in historical fiction; a Time Patrolman is mistaken for Odin in historical sf. Time Patrollers, impersonating gods in order to influence decisions at historical turning points, prevent the murder in infancy of the Biblical Cyrus and ensure that Northern Europeans accept Christianity. A Time Patroller disguised as an angel ensures that neither the Popes nor the Emperors decisively win the medieval church-state conflict. The prevention of absolute theocracy or autocracy allows the growth of science and freedom in the familiar history guarded by the Patrol.

In The Corridors Of Time, a time travel faction exploits Goddess-worship to gain support in prehistoric periods. In There Will Be Time, Jerusalem on the supposed day of the Crucifixion is a convenient meeting place for mutant time travelers seeking their own kind. In The Boat Of A Million Years, a fictitious history of past, present and future, mutant immortals, concealing their longevity, become Christians when expedient but outlast all gods in an indefinite future. This novel, like the earlier Brain Wave, shows humanity remaking itself and transcending religion. It also returns us from the past to the future.

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.

Evolution And Devolution II

The previous post also omitted these comparisons:

Poul Anderson presents mankind evolving into physically time traveling Danellians;

earlier, Olaf Stapledon had presented mankind evolving into mentally time traveling Last Men;

earlier again, HG Wells had presented mankind devolving into Time Traveler-visited Morlocks and Eloi.

Beautiful contrasts! Wells and Stapledon are universally recognized as major science fiction writers. Anderson should be similarly recognized. His Danellians are literary successors and conceptual sequels to the Morlocks and Eloi and to the Last Men.

And now I must return to other tasks, possibly also meditation group this evening since there will be a visit by a monk. And Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy deserves a post on another blog.

For something on Millennium, see here. 

"As Remote As Ever"

Poul Anderson, Starfarers (New York, 1999).

Fictional space travel is often interplanetary or interstellar but rarely intergalactic. The inaccessibility of other galaxies is usually a given:

"Neighbor galaxies glimmered as remote as ever." (p. 153)

Which authors do give us intergalactic travel? E.E. Smith does but there is no discernible difference between the Milky Way and the Second Galaxy visited by his Lensmen. (According to the theory of planetary formation assumed by Smith, two galaxies that have recently interpenetrated and passed through each other should each be full of planets because the gravitational fields of stars passing close by each other will have pulled out stellar matter which will then have condensed and gone into orbit.)

Like most sf readers, I remember reading a few works years ago without remembering either titles or authors' names. There was one novel with an empire spanning more than one galaxy. The Ring Of Ritornel by Charles Harness? In another novel, The Paradox Men, Harness has a spaceship gaining so much mass from relativistic acceleration that it pulls several galaxies after it. Olaf Stapledon has the collective telepathic mind of our galaxy launching a star cluster across intergalactic space in order to communicate with the civilizations in another galaxy.

I have previously discussed intergalactic works by Anderson, Blish and Niven. See here. (Scroll down.)

In The Future On Titan

When the Sun expands, as it does in The Time Machine, the inner planets will be destroyed but the outer satellites, including Titan, which has ice and complex chemistry, will be warmed. Poul Anderson's Twilight World, Epilogue, describes the far future terraforming of Ganymede but could there be another series set in an even further future about intelligent beings that have naturally evolved on Titan and that know nothing of any earlier periods of the Solar System?

Olaf Stapledon's Neptunians, who had re-evolved from animality, learned of earlier Venerian and Terrestrial humanities by mental time travel but let us make the conservative assumption that this means of knowledge is not accessible to our future Titanians!

Poul Anderson wrote that one of the aims of his Polesotechnic League series was to:

"...explore a few of the possible facets of this endlessly marvelous universe..."
-Poul Anderson, AFTERWORD IN Anderson, David Falkayn: Star Trader (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 679-680 AT p. 680.

Imagining unusual environments for intelligence must count as part of such a project and, indeed, Anderson imagines life on a neutron star (see the 4th Jump) and in the vacuum near a black hole.

OK: Wells, Stapledon and Anderson in one post and it is nearly midnight. I am out of here.

The Future

What will the future be like? Meaningless question. How far into the future and starting from when? To my eleven year old self in 1960, we are now living in the future and I am doing one of the things that we imagined, not traveling to the Moon but communicating through a world wide computer network.

Poul Anderson's "Flight to Forever," published in 1950, begins in the future, 1973, when the gerontology is such that adults might survive for another hundred years. The setting is a rambling old house on a hill near some forested hills and a river above a village in New York State.

Martin Saunders, having twice tested the time projector - which uses vacuum tubes, not transistors -, found the house standing but with no one home in both 1953 and 1993. Saunders is the viewpoint character until Sam Hull and he depart in the time projector at which point we are told that Eve, watching the departure, turns to MacPherson: two stock characters, inventor and Saunders' girl friend. Saunders is a familiar Anderson hero, big and homely.

After a few minutes of swirling grayness seen through their single porthole, the two time travelers arrive in 2073, in a half-filled pit, the former basement. From the long grass at the top of the pit, Saunders sees the familiar landscape but with no village. So that is what the future looks like. As in Olaf Stapledon's Last And First Men, a pedestrian beginning to a narrative that will soar through the future.

They return in ten year steps, looking for the small automatic time projectors that had failed to return:

2063 - rain in the pit;
2053 - sunlight;
2043 - rotting timbers;
2023 - charred stumps;
2013 - fire-blackened basement and tarnished automatics;
2008 - ruined basement; still no village.

They realize that, because of an unsuspected physical law similar to the light speed limitation, they will drain their batteries before they get back another ten years. Thus, wanting to travel from 2073 to 1973, they will reach say 2000 and no further.Their only hope is to seek help in the further future. Their aim changes from exploration to communication.

The Future Of Religion

Although the previous post referred only briefly to one of Poul Anderson's many series, it also addressed several relevant issues:

the Roman Empire;
early Christianity;
other imaginative fiction, including another time travel series;
the future of religion.

Olaf Stapledon, Poul Anderson and SM Stirling present several futures for religion:

familiar traditions continue;
comparable traditions begin;
society regresses and religion with it;
after a catastrophe, gifted leaders found communities based on what had been minority traditions;
society becomes entirely secularized.

Future Traditions
In Stapledon's Last And First Men, future religious figures include the Daughter of Man and the Divine Child;
in Anderson's Starfarers, the prophet Selador founds an off-shoot of Arodism.

A Theory of Religion and Its Future
Nature polytheism: primitives unable to understand or control natural forces personified and tried to placate them.
Social polytheism: when society became more complex, social forces, like war and the economy, acquired the apparent externality and inevitability of natural forces, therefore they also were personified.
Monotheism: when societies grew larger, the personified external forces were unified.
Atheism: when external forces are understood and controlled, they are no longer personified.

Different beliefs about the present generate alternative expectations for the future, e.g., the Second Coming or the end of theism.

Does anyone know what the "bonus stories" are in this edition of Starfarers?