Cosmic Beginnings

A universe begins in each of three works by Poul Anderson:

"Flight to Forever"
Tau Zero
The Avatar

(Anderson also wrote a novel called Genesis in which a post-organic planetary intelligence recreates extinct humanity.)

At the end of James Blish's Cities In Flight, nine characters, ironically called "the Survivors," each create a new universe from his or her own body and spacesuit:

"Creation began."
-James Blish, The Triumph Of Time IN Blish, Cities In Flight (London, 1981), pp. 466-596 AT p. 596.

These universes will initially be small, fifty light years across, but will be added to by "'...continuous creation...'" (p. 594)

The word "creation" implies a creator. One theological meaning of "creation" is "from nothing." However, Blish's "Survivors" create, although not from nothing, and continuous creation is from nothing but without a creator.

In Tau Zero, when Captain Telander of the relativistic spaceship, the Leonora Christine, sees:

"'The germ of the monobloc...The new beginning.'"
-Poul Anderson, Tau Zero (London, 1973), Chapter 21, p. 181 -

- he kneels in tears and says:

"'Father, I thank Thee...'" (ibid.)

- although what he sees is a cyclical new beginning, arguably not needing a creator.

(The Bible also is cyclical: from the separation of the waters to the Flood is one universe; from the re-emergence of dry land to the Apocalypse is a second universe; at the end of Apocalypse is a new heaven and earth, a third universe.)

We sometimes speak mythologically, knowing that we are doing so. Thus, if I say that the only original thinker was Adam and that everyone else has modified received ideas, I do not mean that I am a Biblical fundamentalist. I think that Blish uses language in this way when he describes the metagalactic center as:

"...that place where the Will had given birth to the Idea, and there had been light."
-Blish, op. cit., p. 577.

(This mixes Hebrew and Platonic ideas.)

Anderson matches Blish's "Creation began...":

"The universe was dead!"
-Poul Anderson, "Flight to Forever" IN Anderson, Past Times (New York, 1984), pp. 207-288 AT p. 284.

"The universe was reforming."
-ibid, p. 285.

"The monobloc had exploded. Creation had begun."
-Tau Zero, p. 183.

Two ultimate sf writers.

Gap

Although I have both editions of Poul Anderson's The Broken Sword, I have not been reading them in parallel. However, I wanted to check whether that anachronistic term, "dimensions," had been in the original text so here goes:

"Skafloc thought that the lands of the ice giants, like those of gods and demons, must not lie on earth at all, but in strange dimensions reached only by spells, out near the edge of all things where creation plunged into primal chaos."

-Poul Anderson, The Broken Sword (London, 2014), 22, p. 167.

"...strange dimensions..." is there but the rest of the sentence has changed. 

"...the edge of all things where creation plunged into primal chaos..." became "..the edge of everything, where creation plunged back into the Gap whence it had arisen."

"...primal chaos..." (my emphasis) must be the chaos which preceded creation, thus by implication the chaos from which "creation," an ordered cosmos, arose. In the revised text, creation arose from a (capitalized) "Gap." A gap between what? Anderson refers to the Ginnungagap of Norse mythology which was a gap between extremes of heat and cold. Somewhere in that Gap, ice melted and moistened and life began. Of course, in a mythological narrative, the first life was not single cells but giants and gods! Nevertheless, this is a materialist account. Consciousness is not primary but emergent. The creation of a world with earth, sky and sea came later when gods killed a giant and made the world from his body - 

flesh: earth; 

skull: sky; 

brain: clouds;

hair: trees;

bones: mountains;

eyebrows: Midgard;

blood: sea; 

teeth: stones;

eyes: sun and moon;

maggots: dwarves.

Older Than Creation

Poul Anderson, Operation Chaos (New York, 1995), pp. 1-3.

Steve Matuchek's unnumbered and unentitled opening three-page passage is potent and might generate several posts. To begin at its end:

"Where to begin? I suppose where the affair really began for me, during World War II, though of course the roots run much deeper and further back; the strife is older than creation..." (p. 3)

We like to contemplate anything really old, a tradition or a conflict that goes back to Adam or earlier and what can be older than something that began before creation?

Lord Arux: There are alliances and obligations between my vassal lords that go back to the darkness before light.
-Mike Carey, Lucifer: Inferno (New York, 2004), p. 8, panel 5.

Did conscious beings capable of making alliances preexist "light," which here means creation? Impossible but we imagine it.

Some More Comparisons

Starting from Poul Anderson's eight (or nine) future histories, we have moved sideways in fictional time, finding interesting parallels with future history series by several other sf writers. Much of this discussion stays here on the Poul Anderson Appreciation blog because this is where it starts and because this is where page viewers come to. However, for further discussion of other future histories, please see the James Blish Appreciation and Science Fiction blogs, both linked to this one.

Here is another set of comparisons:

(i) In James Blish's Cities In Flight, Volume I, They Shall Have Stars, state security and secrecy stifle science whereas Jerry Pournelle's CoDominium goes even further by suppressing technologies with military applications, thus killing most research.

(ii) In Cities..., the USSR takes over the US whereas the CoDominium is a US-USSR alliance. I wondered where all the nationalism came from. It is a reaction against CD world domination. Blish's Bureaucratic State and its thought police go on to ban even fictional references to spaceflight as Unearthly Activities.

(iii) The CoDominium is succeeded by two interstellar Empires of Man. The Bureaucratic State is succeeded by some interstellar empires but mainly by the interstellar economy of the flying cities.

(iv) The CoDominium History culminates in First Contact with aliens whereas Cities... culminates in the mutual annihilation of two universes and the creation of several more:

"Creation began."
-James Blish, Cities In Flight (London, 1981), p. 596.

(v) Returning to our main man, Anderson shows cosmic beginnings in "Flight to Forever," Tau Zero and The Avatar whereas Pournelle concentrates on militarism - not an inherently science fictional theme.

The Technic History And Cities In Flight II

In James Blish's Cities In Flight, Earth Colonials meet and defeat the Vegan Tyranny but the Earthman culture is later superseded by the Web of Hercules whereas, in Poul Anderson's Technic History, a Grand Survey ship makes first contact with Merseia and the Polesotechnic League saves Merseia from supernova radiation but the Terran Empire must later contend with a resentful and aggressive Merseian Roidhunate. The Merseians, originating as standard space opera villains, are green, scaled and tailed whereas we are told that an atypical man could pass as a Vegan. However, the Vegans, like the few other alien races mentioned in Cities In Flight, remain off-stage whereas, in the Technic History, human beings interact with many intelligent species, usually described in detail.

The Technic History is admirably consistent whereas, in Cities In Flight, the inconsistencies:

"...are too numerous and too prominent to be regarded as anything other than an essential feature of the overall story."

-Richard D. Mullen, AFTERWORD: THE EARTHMANIST CULTURE: CITIES IN FLIGHT as a Spenglerian History IN James Blish, Cities In Flight (London, 1981), pp. 597-607 AT p. 599.

Since Blish rigidly controls point of view, each statement can be attributed to a particular character so Mullen concludes that the tetralogy is not a consistent history but "...a historical narrative with a large admixture of myth..." (ibid.)

The Technic History ends at the edge of another spiral arm of the Milky Way galaxy whereas Cities In Flight goes further to the Greater Magellanic Cloud, then to the Metagalactic Center and the creation of new universes:

 

"Creation began."

-James Blish, The Triumph Of Time IN Cities In Flight, pp. 466-596 AT CHAPTER EIGHT, p. 596.

 

If you read Anderson, read Blish.

Endings

We have discussed future histories and Latin in the works of Poul Anderson so which future history ends with a three-word phrase in Latin? No, it is not one of Anderson's. In fact, what is the appropriate way to end a future history?

"The laughter was somewhat of a victory."
-Poul Anderson, "Starfog" IN Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (Riverdale, NY, 2012), pp. 709-794 AT p. 794.

"...an aggressive order of religiously devoted men and women who will try out and establish and impose a new pattern of living upon our race.
"THE END."
-HG Wells, The Shape Of Things To Come (London, 1974), p. 493.

"For 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 p. 327.

"'...the blind recollection of past light.'"
-Stapledon, Last Men In London IN op. cit., pp. 329-605 AT p. 605.

"...this brief effort of animalcules striving to win for their race some increase of lucidity before the ultimate darkness."
-Olaf Stapledon, Star Maker (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1972), p. 262.

"'...here's one monkey that's going to keep on climbing, and looking around him to see what he can see, as long as the tree holds out.'"
-Robert Heinlein, Methuselah's Children (London, 1966), p. 191.

"'...always Good Eating.'"
-Robert Heinlein, Orphans Of The Sky (London, 1965), p. 111.

"Creation began."
-James Blish, The Triumph Of Time IN Blish, Cities In Flight (London, 1981), pp. 467-596 AT p. 596.

"We who have already superseded you record these scenes now in your honour, as you once honoured man. REQUIESCAS IN PACE."
-Brian Aldiss, Galaxies Like Grains Of Sand (London, 1979), p. 188.

So which of these do we prefer?

Beyond The End

Although a future history series cannot avoid having a last installment, it is possible to conclude a text in such a way that:

"...even after the last line the feeling remains of the story still rushing on into the magic distance of the universe."

- as A.E. van Vogt commented on Larry Niven's other future history, A World Out Of Time (New York, 1977).

Sandra Miesel performs this task for Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History:

"To Earth there's no returning. She vanished with the childhood of our race. Yet a poet once said, 'No matter how far we range, the salt and rhythm of her tides will always be in our blood.'  One chapter has ended. Humankind's saga flows on."

-Sandra Miesel IN Poul Anderson, The Complete Psychotechnic League, Volume 3 (Riverdale, NY, 2018), p. 216.

 

Blog readers can think of other examples. Three from Blish:

Chronology Of The Beep

"Creation began."

 

"...some quiet voice whispered a judgment:

"'It is decided. We abandon the Hegemony of Malis. The men of Earth, the dolphins of Earth, the beadmungen of the twin radioceles, the coming children of the Aaa, and those others of which we know, or which we can foresee - those are the races that will rule with us. This has been written where what is willed must be.'

"Jack Loftus never heard that whisper, nor even dreamed of it. Nor did his great-great-grandchildren. But he already had more than enough reasons for joy."

-James Blish, Mission To The Heart Stars (London, 1980), CHAPTER ELEVEN, p. 127.

 

"A great future!"

-Robert Heinlein, "By His Bootstraps" IN Heinlein, The Menace From Earth (London, 1983), pp. 40-87 AT p. 87.

 

OK. This is not just about Poul Anderson's "The Chapter Ends." Don't read just one or a few future histories. Read them all.  

Ends And Beginnings

The previous post about change in Poul Anderson's Technic History ended with a new beginning at the end of the Technic History and therefore connected with a new beginning at the end of Volume I of James Blish's future history, Cities in Flight. Any change is an end and a beginning. Cities in Flight, Volume IV, ends with the ultimate new beginning:

"Creation began."

-James Blish, The Triumph of Time IN Blish, Cities in Flight (London, 1981), pp. 467-596 AT CHAPTER EIGHT, p. 596.

Returning to that conclusion of Volume I, when Wagoner wonders whether to sign his name, he reflects:

"There was writing enough in the stars that he could see, because he had written it there. There was a constellation called Wagoner, and every star in the sky belonged to it. That was surely enough." (p. 129)

What an inspiring introduction to a future history series. Wagoner has been responsible for the discovery of the antigravity and the antiagathics that make interstellar flight possible. Blish, more than any other future historian, devoted early instalments of a series to the invention of the necessary technology. Anderson devotes the first instalment of his Flying Mountains series to the discovery of gravity control, thus paralleling Blish.

Blish's canon is smaller. In Cities in Flight, the interstellar traders and empires exist only in Volumes II and III. We blog more about Anderson partly because of his larger output.

Cosmology And SF

See Significant Dates.

Verne and Wells began writing long before it was known that there were other galaxies, let alone that galaxies recede.

In the 1960s, when Poul Anderson wrote Tau Zero, there were two main rival theories:

Big Bang, either oscillating or expanding forever;

 

steady state, with "continuous creation" counteracting the effect of cosmic expansion and also with the possible addition of a theory of electron-proton imbalance that would counteract gravity and thus explain the cosmic expansion.

Now the consensus is Big Bang expanding indefinitely but with the addition of much previously unanticipated data. Continuous creation of hydrogen atoms does not sound so implausible when there is continuous creation and mutual annihilation of virtual particles.

Sf paralleled and reflected twentieth century cosmology. Poul Anderson contributed continually for over half a century.

Eating And Ending

(Genghis Khan, the Ancestor.)

Two authors whom we compare with Poul Anderson we now briefly compare with each other, with a guest appearance by CS Lewis.

"I just saw the Ancestor's emissaries devour a man's soul."
-SM Stirling, The Sky-Blue Wolves (New York, 2018), CHAPTER TWENTY, p. 332.

"'The thing that called itself Screwtape let slip to Lewis that demons do eat souls.'"
-James Blish, The Day After Judgement IN Blish, After Such Knowledge (London, 1991), pp. 427-522 AT p. 432.

At the end of The Sky-Blue Wolves, Orlaith says that the ending is a beginning whereas Reiko replies that both are illusions and that there is only life, unchanged by the Change.

"'Every end,' Wagoner wrote on the wall of his cell on the last day, 'is a new beginning.'"
-James Blish, They Shall Have Stars IN Blish, Cities In Flight (London, 1981), pp. 7-129 AT CODA, p. 129.

"Creation began."
-James Blish, The Triumph Of Time IN Cities In Flight, pp. 467-596 AT CHAPTER EIGHT, p. 596.

For a Lewis-Stirling comparison, see Visions Of Heaven.

Two Deaths

Both Dominic Flandry's fiancee, Kossara Vymezal, and Fenn's fiancee, Kinna Ronay, are shot dead during exchanges of gunfire. Kossara's death was devastating and I thought that Chives' immediately ensuing flippant dialogue:

"'I say...you chaps might pitch in a bit, don't you know.'"

-Poul Anderson, A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows IN Anderson, Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight Of Terra (Riverdale, NY, 2012), pp. 339-606 AT XVII, p. 562 -

- was highly discordant and inappropriate.

By contrast, I had forgotten about Kinna's death and was surprised by it on rereading The Fleet Of Stars although I had remembered that Fenn would not wind up happily married. How does he wind up? Glancing ahead to the last page of the novel, we find that the concluding chapter, 32, comprises two words:

"FENN WOKE." (p. 403)

And thus ends this tetralogy. To quote the Coda of James Blish's Tetralogy, Volume I:

"'Every end,' Wagoner wrote on the wall of his cell on the last day, 'is a new beginning.'"

-James Blish, They Shall Have Stars IN Blish, Cities In Flight (London, 1981), pp. 7-129 AT CODA, p. 129.

 

(Volume IV of that Tetralogy ends: "Creation began." (p. 596))

The universe continues:

"The hugeness, diversity, mystery of the universe through space, through time. What was coming into being as he talked, what joys, triumphs, griefs, horrors, creations - what life?"

-The Fleet Of Stars, 19, p. 230.

Poul Anderson shows us some of it.

Eka-World

"Eka" is a Sanskrit term! See here.

The short story title, "Lodestar," and the novel title, Mirkheim, refer to the same fictitious heavenly body which is called "Mirkheim," not "Lodestar," in the series. Before she knows its name, Coya Conyon in "Lodestar" gives it yet another appellation:

"...the murk and chill and weight and radiation and millionfold perils of Eka-World...."
-Poul Anderson, David Falkayn: Star Trader (New York, 2010), p. 672.

I had to google "eka" and was surprised that it was not Greek. See the above link.

The omniscient narrator of "Lodestar" informs or reminds us that the primordial element is hydrogen-1, one proton and one electron, "...with which creation presumably began..." (p. 655). But where did that come from? Maybe the word "creation" should be avoided or at least clarified? Of course, what the narrator means is something like "this observable phase of creation/the universe." Hydrogen-1, still the bulk of this universe, condenses into stars hot enough to melt atoms into heavier elements which are spread through space not only by novae and supernovae, as I already knew, but, "...more importantly...," (p. 656) by red giants. A later generation of stars starting with heavier elements generates planets with life.

Atoms with too many protons are unstable because they generate repulsive forces that overcome the attractive forces. However:

"Beyond a certain point, nuclei become more stable." (p. 657)

The first such, element 114 or eka-platinum, would be industrially useful but cannot be produced artificially even on Satan. Then the new Supermetals Company starts selling it and other supermetals in quantity...

The rogue planet Satan bypassing the blue giant Beta Crucis in a hyperbolic orbit becomes a base for the industrially valuable transformation of elements into heavier isotopes when its cryosphere becomes atmosphere and hydrosphere, coolants for heat waste. (Copied)


Falkayn spells out why Satan alone is ideal for producing heavier isotopes. This cannot be done:

on inhabited planets because heat and radioactive waste would make them uninhabitable;
on uninhabited planets because heat waste added to solar radiation would vaporize the rivers needed for coolants;
on uninhabited planets with orbiting albedo-raising dust clouds because these would trap home-grown heat;
in newly formed systems because factories would be bombarded by meteors and asteroids;
on airless planets because the necessary heat exchangers are expensive and put engineering limits on the size of a plant;
on Jovoid planets because free hydrogen diffuses through materials and interferes with nuclear reactions;
on ordinary rogue planets because temperatures near absolute zero affect the properties of matter and because liquid water and gaseous atmosphere are necessary coolants. (Copied)

Elementary...

I dropped science early at school and never got to grips with the periodic table. Poul Anderson gives us some information in "Lodestar" and repeats it in Mirkheim.

Creation began with the primordial element, hydrogen-1, the smallest atom, a single electron orbiting a single proton. The primordial fireball fused some hydrogen into helium which, I gather, comprises two electrons orbiting two positrons and usually also two neutrons. (See here.) Heavier elements are fused by adding protons to a nucleus. Hydrogen condensed into stars which fused elements heavier than helium. The shedding of gas by red giants and the explosion of stars as either novae or supernovae spread heavier elements through space where they condensed into a second generation of stars and of planets bearing life. Proteins use carbon; bones use calcium; animals breathe oxygen.

Although small stars fuse no element heavier than iron, supernovae fuse copper, gold and uranium. Too many protons in a nucleus generate repulsive forces counteracting attraction and destabilizing the nucleus. However, for some reason that is unexplained, nine elements with atomic numbers 114 to 122 are stable, only weakly radioactive and highly valuable as catalysts, conductors and components in strong alloys.

Observations

Since "...to this day [hydrogen-1] comprises the overwhelming bulk of matter in the universe...," ("Lodestar," p. 388) many more universes can be created from existing materials.

Empirical scientists have achieved what rationalist philosophers attempted, discovered the components of reality.

Virtual Particles And Isa Upanishad

Blogs flow together. The previous post was equally relevant to James Blish Appreciation. This post is equally relevant to Religion and Philosophy. As usual, Poul Anderson is the link.

"'Space is not a passive framework for events to happen in. It is a sea of virtual particles. They constantly go in and out of existence according to the uncertainty principle. The energy density implied is tremendous.'"
-Poul Anderson, Starfarers (New York, 1999), p. 8.
-copied from here.

Thus:

space is not mere nothingness but full of potential;
there is continual creation and annihilation and immense energy;
from this "sea" or matrix, our universe emerged.

"The Spirit filled all with his radiance. He is incorporeal and invulnerable, pure and untouched by evil. He is the supreme seer and thinker, immanent and transcendent. He placed all things in the path of Eternity."
-Isa Upanishad IN The Upanishads, trans. Juan Mascaro (Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1984), pp. 49-50 AT p. 49.

This translation of Isa Upanishad uses the English terms:

God
the Eternal
Spirit
immanent
transcendent
Eternity
immortality
god of light
Lord of creation
fire divine

- but not the untranslated Sanskrit "Brahman" or "Atman" which are common in the Upanishads as a whole. "Brahman" began as the power of ritual, came to be identified with the power of creation and was then hypostatized as transcendent reality. Atman is within. The Upanishadic rishis inherited these terms but also used them to express their yogic/meditative experience. In particular, they identified Atman with Brahman.

I suggest that energy in space:

is incorporeal, although embodied in every organism;
is indestructible because it survives every change of form;
sees and thinks through organisms, although not independently of them.

Therefore, I identify energy with Upanishadic Spirit.

Endings

How a book ends matters. If the book is a volume of a series, then its ending prepares for the beginning of the succeeding volume. A tetralogy by James Blish ends:

"Creation began."
-Cities In Flight, p. 596.

Volume I of Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization should introduce Ythrians, Nicholas van Rijn, David Falkayn and Adzel to the reader but not yet to each other. How much is being prepared in this volume. If, as I suggest, Volume I collects the first nine instalments of the History, then Adzel appears once and each of the others twice. By the time they meet, they are already well established characters.

Volume II should end, as in the Baen Books edition it does, with "Lodestar," the last time we see the trader team employed by van Rijn. The team will be reconvened much later but only once and for a different purpose. In "Lodestar," the shadow of God the Hunter is over the Polesotechnic League.

Volume III should end, as it does, with The People Of The Wind. Thus, the Terran Empire has been introduced but not yet Dominic Flandry. In my opinion, Volumes IV-VI should cover the entire Flandry period and should thus end with Flandry's Testament. Volume VII ends with human civilizations spread through several spiral arms of the galaxy and a period of unprecedented wealth about to begin in one of them.

Every end is a new beginning.

"The Fatal Fulfillment"

Poul Anderson, "The Fatal Fulfillment" IN Door To Anywhere, pp. 324-358.

I am having multiple problems with this story. First, the Publication History on p. 6 states that it was published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, May 1970, but it is not listed here in the contents of this issue.

Secondly, I am finding the narrative too surreal. The viewpoint character endures a sequence of simulated (?) scenarios but how can he be sure that he is back in the real world at the end?

The text is divided into:

Prologue (pp. 324-326)

Fate the Second (pp. 326-334)

Fate the Third (pp. 334-339)

Fate the Fourth (pp. 340-350)

Fate the Fifth (pp. 350-357)

O Ye of Little Fate (pp. 357-358)

 

Brief Observations (So Far)

(i) The reference to a "...a 1989 Chevrrolet..." (p. 329) places Fate the Second nineteen years in the future.

(ii) Fate the Fifth ends with "Creation began." (p. 357) - like James Blish's Cities In Flight.

 

(iii) "O Ye of Little Fate" is yet another disguised Biblical reference.(Matthew 8: 26) Should I stop mentioning these?

(iv) Maybe the few previously uncollected NESFA collection stories aren't as good?

The Goetic Timeline

I am revisiting the goetic timeline of Poul Anderson's Old Phoenix multiverse. See previous posts dated September 2012.

We note with interest that the literary lineage of magic-as-technology encompasses not only Robert Heinlein and Poul Anderson but also Harry Turtledove. See Poul Anderson, "Introduction" IN Anderson, Operation Chaos (New York, 1995), an unnumbered page facing p. 1.

Poul Anderson's werewolf, Steven Matuchek, says:

"...the strife is older than creation..." (p. 3)

Mike Carey's demon, Lord Arux, says:

"There are alliances and obligations between my vassal lords that go back to the darkness before light."
-Mike Carey, Lucifer: Inferno (New York, 2004), p. 8, panel 5.

Alan Moore's brujeria conjure the Original Darkness that was before the Creation, hoping that it will destroy Heaven. For the outcome, see here.

These are powerful mythological concepts: strife and darkness before creation and alliances that were made in that darkness. The strife as defined by Matuchek is between Law and Chaos. This is even more fundamental than any conflict between a Creator and a rebellious creature.

Matuchek calls to other time streams, not knowing whether they exist. Later, his daughter will travel between them. He cites possible examples of transference between time currents: Benjamin Bathurst and Kaspar Hauser.

Matuchek summarizes the distinctive feature of his Earth quite early in the text:

"...mankind found how to degauss the ruinous effects of cold iron, and the goetic age began..." (p. 15)

He quotes some Latin:

"Ave, Caesar, morituri te salutant..." (p. 10)

Cremation has been made illegal so that doctors can pluck St John' Wort "...from a graveyard by the light of the moon." (p. 6)

Soldiers use basilisks to petrify the enemy but transforming human carbon into silicon generates a radioactive isotope. There is no end to Anderson's logical deductions from fantastic premises. For Classical petrification in CS Lewis' fiction, see here.

GENESIS

I am back from London where I heard Jeremy Corbyn speak after his election victory. When I am away from this laptop for a few days, I think of something longer to post although it might wander away from Poul Anderson's works, then return to them.

We have noticed Anderson's many Biblical references and maybe the last of them is simply the title of his last sf novel, Genesis. 

"In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth." (Gen. 1:1)

My commentary: "God" is personified reality. Reality creates appearances. However, reality does not consciously create anything. Instead, it becomes conscious of itself by appearing to itself. It "creates" appearances which are not identical with reality but are appearances of it: different appearances for different sense organs, e.g., our five senses and a bat's echolocation differently perceive the same reality.

Gen. 1:1 does not describe the earliest moment of consciousness. That would have been the first bodily sensation in a mobile marine organism. A sufficiently complex and sensitive organism that needed sustenance began to experience hunger, to feel hungry. A need for sustenance is objective whereas experience and feelings are subjective. The emergence of consciousness is the qualitative transformation of sensitivity into sensation. Similarly, an organism that was becoming harmfully hot or cold began to feel uncomfortably hot or cold. Thus also, conscious motivations began to replace automatic responses.

Long after bodily sensations, came visual perceptions. There is the appearance of a sky above and a ground below, "the heaven and the earth." Sky and ground are separated by an apparently empty space which is really full of air, electromagnetic and cosmic radiations, the gravitational field and any other forms of energy. Reality is continuous although heterogeneous and mostly invisible to itself. As an invisible subject of consciousness, it is an omnipresent "spirit," although not perennially conscious.

(In the Biblical Genesis, creation consists of separating the waters above from the waters below, then moving the waters below to one side so that the dry land appears.)

In Anderson's Genesis, the Terrestrial AI, Gaia, creates within herself "emulations," conscious simulations of past or alternative timelines. Within each such emulation, many conscious subprograms of Gaia experience themselves as individual human beings living entire lifespans in England, Greece or North America etc in particular historical periods. Gaia consciously creates appearances whereas reality unconsciously creates them.

Gaia also re-creates extinct humanity on the Terrestrial surface and communicates with them in the forms of gods. Rightly is this novel entitled Genesis although Gaia's creativity occurs billions of years in our future.

Creating Universes

I am reading about Mike Carey's characters creating universes in his graphic fiction series, Lucifer, and therefore also remembering how certain prose sf writers address the creation of the universe.

Keith Denison of the Time Patrol, when captured in ancient Persia, kicks his timecycle into time-drive:

"'It was only a few hours in this century, then it probably went clear back to the Beginning.'"

-Poul Anderson, "Brave To Be A King" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 55-112  AT 6, p. 83.

 

Reading this sentence, we might imagine that Time Patrol temporal vehicles "travel through time" by enduring either futureward or pastward time dilation. This is the kind of time travel undergone by Wells's Time Machine, by the mutant time travelers in Poul Anderson's There Will Be Time and by the "time projector" in Anderson's "Flight to Forever." However, Time Patrol vehicles jump directly from one set of spatiotemporal coordinates to another in zero subjective time. Therefore, if Denison's vehicle did go to the Beginning, then it did so without traversing all the intervening time. It follows that the Danellians and their Patrol can have instant access to the Beginning when they can directly observe the earliest events, provided that they are adequately protected from that hostile environment. But we are told nothing else about the Beginning. (In an episode of Doctor Who, the Doctor glanced into a book about the creation of the universe and said something like: "Wrong on the first page! They should have asked someone who was there!" That should have been "...someone who was then!")

 

In other works by Anderson:

 

both the time projector and a relativistic spaceship pass from the end to the beginning of the universe;

 

the Elder Race not only travels between universes but is present at the formation of a monobloc with the possibility of influencing and entering the subsequent universe;

 

time travel experiments confirm the otherwise empty philosophical speculation that the universe, complete with false memories, records, geology etc, began to exist relatively recently.

In SM Stirling's Emberverse series, consciousness, manifesting as either deities or as demons, passed from an old to a new universe.

 

In works by James Blish:

 

energy beings called "Angels" came into existence in the first twenty minutes of the universe and will last as long as it does;

New Earthmen and Hevians survive a cosmic collision long enough to become new monoblocs.

Cosmic SF

"Lodestar."

"The primordial element, with which creation presumably began, is hydrogen-1, a single proton accompanied by a single electron." (p. 350)

This paragraph proceeds to explain that:

"To this day, [hydrogen-1] comprises the overwhelming bulk of matter in the universe." (ibid.);

vast masses of hydrogen-1 condensed into increasingly hot globes, i.e., stars, where atoms combined into heavier elements;

novae and red giants spread these heavier elements through space;

later stars generated when these elements condensed produced planets with life and consciousness.

This understanding has become our modern cosmogony. Perhaps the creation myth closest to a scientific understanding was the Norse story of a void in which interaction between the extreme but opposed forces of heat and cold generated life, including the first giants and gods. Impersonal material forces preceded consciousness, then the gods fashioned the world that we know from the body of a giant: the sky from his skull; mountains from his bones; oceans from his blood etc.

I want to compare this passage with a reference to "ylem" in James Blish's Cities In Flight. However, we find not only that we have already quoted the Blish passage but also that Anderson too refers to "ylem." See here.

Two ultimate cosmic sf writers.