The Nest III

Poul Anderson, "The Nest" IN Anderson, Past Times (New York, 1984), pp. 71-111.

We begin to get some discussion of time travel on the fourteenth page of "The Nest." Asked whether the Duke is away, Don Miguel replies:

"'He is. Off to survey the Danelaw. I fear me the poor English will be missing more than the Vikings ever took.'" (p. 84)

On first reading, I took this to mean that the Nest rules an outlying region named after the Danelaw and inhabited by a group of English time travelers or their descendants. No, Don Miguel means the real Danelaw, as becomes evident when Trebuen advocates a full expedition:

"'...there ought to be good pickings in Saxon England; the Romano-Britons certainly had some fine things.'" (ibid.)

Trebuen, Cro-Magnon though he is, understands that the Duke does not have to be "away" to visit the Danelaw:

"The Normans...could have brought the Rover back within a second of its leaving the Nest, no matter how long they stayed in the Danelaw but no, they were too superstitious for that, they had to be gone all day." (ibid.)

And that is why Don Miguel says that the Duke and his party should be back for dinner because they took Rover, the time machine, out that morning. Trebuen adds, to himself and to us, not to Don Miguel, that the Normans have used the Rover only for transport and not for any of the other things that they could have done with it. No doubt, if their superstition compels them to match a day elapsed in the Danelaw with a day elapsed in the Nest, then it will forbid them to experiment: to return before their departure or to attempt any alteration of known events.

We may start to guess that they have stolen the machine from its inventors or owners, because how else could they have acquired it? If they use the machine only to enrich themselves, then it makes sense that they do not draw attention to themselves. They base themselves, build their Nest, in the prehuman past and enter history only to loot in periods when looting is the norm. As in There Will Be Time, wealth can safely be extracted from buildings that are about to be destroyed in any case. Thus, the civilization that produced the Rover might want to recover it but might also be unable to locate the needle of a single temporal vehicle in the haystack of past and future history.

In Anderson's History of Technic Civilization, some barbarians acquire faster than light spaceships and nuclear weapons. Normans with the Rover are time traveling equivalents of those barbarians.

Yotl's Nest And The Wind

If there are intelligent beings on extra-solar planets, are they similar enough to humanity to drink in bars? Sometimes, although not always, Poul Anderson assumes so.

On Avalon, the Nest is a tavern for ornithoids.

"...the bluefaced skipper had growled to Flandry in the tavern on Orma." (Scroll down.)

-"The Plague of Masters," II, p. 8.

 

"'The day Yael Blum came back from Yotl's Nest and told v'at she had heard, a song being sung by a spaceman from another cluster...'"

-Poul Anderson, After Doomsday (Frogmore, St Albans, Herts, 1975), CHAPTER FOURTEEN, p. 140.

 

Anderson describes the ornithoids, the Nest and the blue-skinned Alfzarians but not the tavern on Orma or Yotl's Nest. Film-makers would have to invent. The singing space-hand in Yotl's Nest would have to be able to pronounce "Kandemir" and "Earth" correctly in order to sing the ballad, The Battle of Brandobar, the first important work of art composed in the inter-cluster language, Uru.

Yet again in a work by Anderson, the wind punctuates or comments on the dialogue. After mentioning Yotl's Nest, Sigrid Holmen refers to two special days in her life. The first was when she knew from the ballad that other human beings were alive. The second will be:

"'V'en my first-born is laid in my arms.'

"For a while only the wind blew, loud in the trees." (ibid.)

Multilocation In Five Timelines

Soon to come on this blog: Nygel's review of "Time Patrol."

And on another blog: his review of the James Bond novels.

"Multilocation" is derived from "bilocation," which means being in two places at one time. The five timelines of the post title comprise:

3 Poul Anderson (prose);
1 Doctor Who (TV);
1 Alan Moore/Marvel Universe (graphic).

Poul Anderson, "The Nest"
"We stuck together, running out and firing. Twenty minutes later, each time we finished, we'd dart back to the Rover, jump it into the future, and return within one second and some feet of our last departure point. There were a good three hundred of us, all brought to the same time, approximately. And in a group like that, we had fire power. It was too much for the enemy...
"...twenty minutes after the last trip, our messed-up timelines straightened out, and the four of us were all there - victors."
-Poul Anderson, "The Nest" IN Anderson, Past Times (New York, 1984), pp. 71-111 AT pp. 109-110.

Poul Anderson, There Will Be Time
"The sportsmen [complained], after they jumped John Havig. They blubbered that he'd called an army to his aid. And beyond doubt, they had taken a systematic drubbing."
-Poul Anderson, There Will Be Time (New York, 1973), I, p. 15.

("...sportsmen..." is a euphemism for bullies.)

Poul Anderson, The Shield Of Time
"'[Everard] has repeatedly come to this lodge for rest and recreation, at various points of its existence, both downtime and uptime of the present moment. Why should we not call on these Everards also?...
"'...We will not do so. If we did, that would change reality again and again, hopelessly, beyond any possibility of comprehension, let alone control.'"
-Poul Anderson, The Shield Of Time (New York, 1991), 18,244 B. C., II, p. 301.

The timelines of "The Nest" and of There Will Be Time are immutable whereas the timeline of The Shield Of Time is mutable. "'...these Everards...'" were not called on. Therefore, to call on them would be to change events which the Time Patrol must not do, especially not on such an incomprehensible and uncontrollable scale.

Doctor Who
The Doctor periodically "regenerates"/changes actor and, for convenience, is referred to as successive "Doctors." The first five Doctors met. Thus, the Doctor quin-located. Mike, my daughter Aileen's partner, asked why the five Doctors could not travel together to the far future and remain then, never to return. My reply: if Doctor One does not return to the time at which he regenerated into Doctor Two, then there is no Doctor Two or any subsequent Doctor. That assumes a single continuous timeline, of course, but, anyone wanting to suggest alternative premises needs to state them clearly and consistently.

Alan Moore's Captain Britain
When a character multilocates, one of his multiple selves dies. The others know that that will be their death. (Subjectively: will be; objectively: was.)

When quoting from "The Nest," above, I skipped over these sentences:

"I hate to think about seventy-five of myself acting as targets at the same time, though. It would only have needed one bullet." (p. 110)

If there were seventy-five, then seventy-four had not been shot but the seventy-fifth might be.

Others
Robert Heinlein's Bob Wilson trilocates (see Circular Causality I) and there are other examples, of course.

The Nest In History

Poul Anderson, "The Nest" IN Anderson, Past Times (New York, 1984), pp. 71-111.

Despite their low profile, the time traveling brigands of the Nest are part of our history:

"When we took Knossos - yes, we were the ones that did that..." (p. 87).

The Nest:

have fought in many wars;

looted a Prussian city ahead of Soviet troops;

hijacked during Prohibition;

recruit whenever there are pirates, warriors or an underworld at least as far as the 22nd Century but probably no further for fear of meeting the Builders of the Rover;

never use anachronistic weapons or leave any possible record of their appearances;

are led by an illegitimate son of Duke Roger of Sicily.

Thus, they move among us in their particular timeline just as Time Patrollers, warring Wardens and Rangers, mutant time travelers or meddling aliens do in other fictitious timelines.

And I have just reached the point of sudden realization when Trebuen realizes how he and his three companions can defeat the thousand fighting men of the Nest:

"Slaves!
"I sat bolt upright, spilling Inini to the grass." (p. 99)

The Nest has endured for ten years in the American Oligocene but it may be nearing its end.

The Nine And The Nest

Searching for something, we find other things of the same name. Searching this blog discloses that there are two groups called the Nine and two places called the Nest, three of the latter if we include Yotl's Nest (scroll down), a multi-species bar in another civilization-cluster in After Doomsday. This in turn displays the breadth of Poul Anderson's imagination. The two Nines and three Nests are scattered across:

"Time Patrol," the opening story of the Time Patrol series;

the King Of Ys Tetralogy, historical fiction with an element of fantasy, co-written by Karen Anderson;

"The Nest," a time travel short story;

The People Of The Wind, one volume of the History of Technic Civilization;

After Doomsday, an sf novel.

In The People Of The Wind:

The Nest, a tavern for ornithoids, is the tallest building in Centauri with a gravshaft to its rooftop for humans who have not brought flying gear. It is unwalled, protected from rain by a vitryl canopy. Insectoids circle fluoroglobes and a service robot serves New African beer.

-copied from here. (See: In The People Of The Wind, Chapter Six.)

The Nest

Poul Anderson, "The Nest" IN Anderson, Past Times (New York, 1984), pp. 71-111.

Before we start reading a story, we do not know where or when it is set, whether on Earth or elsewhere. Usually, some early words focus on a particular place and time although there may be initial confusion or even deliberate misdirection. Let us engage with the text of "The Nest."

The first person narrator had been hunting near the Styx. Is the story set in the Greek mythological hereafter? He has spent "...years in the Nest..." (p. 71), as yet unexplained. He shot at a sabretooth so we are in a place where such animals still exist, maybe like Conan Doyle's Lost World? He is armed with a powderhorn and two flints and is:

"...thinking bitterly of the cave and The Men and a wet cold wind blowing off the glaciers of home..." (pp. 71-72)

- so he sounds like a displaced caveman. But "...you got rich, working out of the Nest, if you lived..." (p. 72), so he has learned a lot since leaving home, not only how to hunt with a rifle but the mere concept of getting "rich."

He rides an animal called Iggy which he soon tells us is an iguandon although he lives in a community where others use horses. Where and when are they? He passes wheat fields and orchards worked by slaves whose overseers greet him. Next there are rose gardens, houses, a castle and a reference to a local ruler called "...Duke Hugo..." (p. 72). Are they in an alternate world that combines aspects of different periods of ours? The narrator apprehends a badly bruised runaway slave who pleads in an unknown language, then he sees that her pursuing owner is a swatika'ed Nazi wielding a Boer sjambok.

OK. We have completed the first three pages of the text and are increasingly confused about the when and the where so all we can do is read on...

Some Time Travel Issues

"The Nest."

Sicilian Normans stole the Rover, a time machine, from its owners, sometimes referred to as "the Builders":

"'I wonder if the Builders ever will find us,' mused Don Miguel.

"'Hardly,' said Olga. 'Or they'd have been here before now.'" (p. 97)

 

There are two possibilities. If the Builders had any way to ascertain that the Normans had traveled to a particular time, call it t1, in the American Oligocene (intending to build at that time and place a base from which to plunder other times and places) then surely they, the Builders, would also have traveled to t1 and immediately apprehended the thieves and retrieved the Rover. If that line of reasoning is valid, then the mere fact that the Oligocene base, "the Nest," has endured for ten years is sufficient proof that the Builders have no way to know where or when it is and are not going to find it. A lesser possibility is that the Builders have some way to search randomly through time, that by this means they will find the Nest when it is more than ten years old and will intervene at that stage. In any case, before anything like that can happen, the Nest is terminated by its own internal conflicts.

See:

The Nest Is History

A Trick With A Time Machine

 

And for similar reflections on time travel issues, see:

 

How Time Travelers Pass The Time 

The Nest II

Poul Anderson, "The Nest" IN Anderson, Past Times (New York, 1984), pp. 71-111.

Continued from previous post:

The confusion continues. The Nazi speaks Norman French. Some readers might by now be getting impatient with the persistent, unexplained anachronisms.
A familiar Anderson fight scene leaves the Nazi dead but the rescued runaway slave does not respond to the narrator's questions in French, English, Latin, Greek or The Men's language.

So far, then, it seems that human beings speaking many languages and originating in different periods have come to an environment where there are sabretooths and dinosaurs; in other words, they have time traveled into the far past. If we can make deductions while reading action scenes, then we might formulate this hypothesis and, as we continue to read, we will find that it is confirmed.

The narrator is attacked by the Nazi's Hunnish friends, then helped by his friend, Don Miguel with a long Spanish name, until the fight is interrupted by Olga Rakitin of the Martian Soviet who clearly has some authority in the Nest. Here we have a character from a future with interplanetary travel. Readers of Anderson's Time Patrol series are used to characters from historical periods rubbing shoulders with future colonists of Mars or Venus.

Meanwhile, we have learned that the narrator is part Neanderthal but identifies as a Man and is called Trebuen. Next on the scene are "...the cops..." (p. 79), marching in helmets and armor, carrying short swords and shields and led by a centurion. Getting the history right, Trebuen (and Anderson) informs us that they are not Romans but barbarians though with military discipline.

The Nest is a town with every kind of inhabitant and building and even a muezzin calling Moslems to prayer. We have reached the twelfth page of the story but as yet have neither encountered the ruler, Duke Hugo, nor read any explanation of the time travel - assuming that that is indeed what is going down. However, we remain interested enough to continue reading.

Who Knows of Avalon?

In "The Problem of Pain"

"...intermediate in size between Earth and Ythri, surface gravity 0.8 terrestrial;
"slightly more irradiation, from a somewhat yellower sun, than Earth gets, which simply makes it a little warmer;
"axial tilt, therefore seasonal variations, a bit less than terrestrial;
"length of year about three quarters of ours, length of day a bit under half;
"one small, close in, bright moon;
"biochemistry similar to ours - we could eat most native things, though we'd require imported crops and livestock to supplement the diet.
"All in all, seemingly well-nigh perfect." (1)

South of the largest continent, a great gulf swarms with life. A strong eastward current is deflected north by an archipelago. Monstrous marine creatures graze on floating islands of densely interwoven "atlantis weed" probably also supporting lesser plants and animals. Higher solar energy input and rapid rotation make storms more violent than would be possible on Earth.

On an island in the gulf:

"A mat of mossy, intensely green plants squeezed out any possibility of forest." (2)

Surgeon trees' thin leaf-fringed bows, sharp enough to cut a wing from a swooping Ythrian, whip insanely in the wind which blows gorgeous blossoms torn from vines. Widespread low, russet-leaved, rankly odorous hell shrubs clutch at feet with raking twigs and emit vapours scarcely harming Ythrians but slowly poisoning human beings. Waterfowl fly through a rose, gold and silver-blue sunrise.

In "Wingless"

Ythrians and human beings settle different territories in the Hesperian Islands before jointly colonising the Coronan continent. Nat Falkayn, seventeen Avalonian (twelve Terran) years of age when visiting the Ythrian extended household of Weathermaker Choth:

"...stood on a balcony of that tall stone tower which housed the core families. Below were a paved courtyard and rambling wooden buildings. Meadows where meat animals grazed sloped downhill in Terrestrial grass and clover, Ythrian starbell and rye, Terrestrial oak and pine, Ythrian braidbark and copperwood, until cultivation gave way to the reddish mat of native susin, the scattered intense green of native chasuble bush and delicate blue of janie. The sun Laura stood big and golden-colored at morning, above a distantly glimpsed mercury line of ocean. Elsewhere wandered a few cottony clouds and the pale, sinking ghost of Morgana. A flock of Avalonian draculas passed across view, their leathery wings awkward beside the plumed splendor of Keshchyi's." (3)

Morgana is the moon, brighter and faster than Luna. Keshchyi is a young Ythrian.

Whirlpools around the dark coraloid reefs at a lagoon entrance hold "...thick brown nets of atlantis weed torn loose from a greater mass far out to sea..." (4)

In "Rescue on Avalon"

The highest Avalonian mountains are called the Andromeda Range by human beings and the Weathermother by Ythrians. (Hloch of the Stormgate Choth wrote The Earthbook of Stormgate on the peak of Mount Anrovil in the Weathermother.) Ironleaf trees draw metal from the soil and concentrate pure particles in shining purple leaves which attract pollinating bugs and also absorb radio waves. A hospital window opens on Avalonian king's-crown, Ythrian windnest and Earthly oak.

The Parliament of Man and the Great Khruath of the Ythrians divided continental territory between the species. Human beings need prairies for crops whereas Ythrian hunters occupy the Weathermother.

In The People of the Wind, Chapter One

The city of Gray on Falkayn Bay is surrounded by human-owned grain-fields, Ythrian-owned pastures for maukh and mayaw, forests of oak, pine, windnest or hammerbranch and treeless areas of native susin where some barysauroids survive. Even in Gray, humans, with ample room on Avalon, build low. Highrises are for ornithoids (Ythrians).

"Laura, a G5 star, has only 72 per cent the luminosity of Sol and less ultraviolet light in proportion; but Avalon, orbiting at a mean distance of 0.81 astronomical unit in a period of 0.724 Terran, gets 10 percent more total irradiation than man evolved under." (5)

Christopher Holm, thirty years Avalonian old, has joined Stormgate Choth as Arinninan. The Stormgate compound:

"...stood on a plateau of Mount Fairview. At the middle lifted the old stone tower which housed the senior members of the family and their children. Lower wooden structures, on whose sod roofs bloomed amberdragon and starbells, were for the unwed and retainers and their kin. Further down a slope lay sheds, barns, and mews. The whole could not be seen at once from the ground, because Ythrian trees grew among the buildings: braidbark, copperwood, gaunt lightningrod, jewelleaf which sheened beneath the moon and by day would shimmer iridescent. The flowerbeds held natives, more highly evolved than anything from offplanet - sweet small janie, pungent livewell, graceful trefoil and Buddha's cup, a harp vine which the breeze brought ever so faintly to singing. Otherwise the night was quiet and, at this, altitude, cold." (6)

Avalonian constellations include Wheel, Swords, Zirraukh, Ship and Maukh.

Chapter Two

"Avalon rotates in 11 hours, 22 minutes, 12 seconds, on an axis tilted 21 degrees from the normal to the orbital plane. Thus Gray, at about 43 degrees N., knows short nights always; in summer the darkness seems scarcely a blink." (7)

Human fluid balance and kinesthesia have had to readjust to a gravity field only 80 percent Terran. Ythrians shifting their breeding cycle to Avalonian conditions had low fertility in early generations.

Humans who join choths "go bird." Ythrians who leave choths to become atomic individuals within the global community become "Walkers." Mistwood Choth, like the home world Ythri, has successfully adapted Terran technology.

Chapter Three

Equatorial diameter: 11,308 kilometers. Highest Andromedan peak: 4500 meters. Corona, the north polar continent extending past the Tropic of Swords: eight million square kilometers, comparable to Australia. In the Southern hemisphere, Equatoria, New Africa and New Gaiila are small continents or large islands.

2000 kilometres west of Gray, the Oronesian archipelago crosses the Tropic of Spears, separating the Middle Ocean to the West from the Hesperian Sea in the northern hemisphere and the South Ocean beyond the equator. Oronesia supports a distinct ecology. Eccentrics flee there to settle islands and found choths of only a single household. However, the more numerous Highsky Choth occupies much of the archipelago and controls the fisheries around latitude 30 degrees North. Tabitha Falkayn, Hrill of Highsky, is a third generation human member of her choth and was brought up by Ythrians. Western Corona and northern Oronesia must defend the Hesperian Sea against Terrans.

Upper slopes have susin and a few shrubs. Lower, cultivated ground has red Ythrian clustergrain to feed shuas and Terrestrial fruit trees to feed Highsky humans. A herder and his uhoth control flapping shuas while an Ythrian sailor scouts for piscoids and native pteropleuron lumber around.

Chapter Four is about Terrans preparing to attack Avalon from Esperance.

Chapter Five

The main Ythrian language is Planha, the equivalent of Terran Anglic. Khruaths, gatherings open to all free adults in a given territory, have judicial and limited legislative authority. Wyvans, the presiding officers, explain the law and try suits but cannot compel. If non-compliance is deemed sufficiently serious, then the Wyvans cry Oherran, calling on everyone in the territory to attack the offenders. Rejection of the call would be a deathpride matter, with suicide the Wyvans' only option.

Addendum, Sun 23 Nov 2015: I was too brief about the Khruaths -

an ancient Khruath was a periodic gathering open to all free adults in a territory;
later, regional Khruaths elected delegates to Year-Khruaths covering larger territories;
Year-Khruaths send delegates to the High Khruath of the planet, meeting every six years or on extraordinary occasions;
Wyvans are chosen at each level;
however, any free adult can attend a Khruath at any level.

Chapter Six

The only other Avalonian city is Centauri at the mouth of the Sagittarius in the Gulf of Centaurs. In the Phoenix House, Tabitha/Hrill orders a catflower cocktail. She and Chris/Arinnian eat piscoid-and-tomato chowder, beef-and-shua pie, salad of clustergrain leaf and pears and drink coffee spiced with witchroot and a bottle of vintage dago. The Nest, a tavern for ornithoids, is the tallest building in Centauri with a gravshaft to its rooftop for humans who have not brought flying gear. It is unwalled, protected from rain by a vitryl canopy. Insectoids circle fluoroglobes and a service robot serves New African beer.

Most of Highsky keeps to the Old Faith, using drugs in sacred revels. Other planets in the Lauran System are Elysium, Camelot, Phaeacia and Utgard.

Chapters Seven and Eight describe a battle in space.

Chapter Nine

Morgana is smaller than Luna but, being close, raises twice the tides. The Avalonian vertebrate design is hexapodal. Winged creatures have four legs. The dense mat of low-growing vegetation prevents native forests and helps to explain why animals remain reptiloid, unable to compete with mammals or birds. Trees are low and thick or slim and supple to survive high winds caused by rapid rotation. Imported domestic animals had to be revamped genetically because local food lacks some vitamins.

In Chapter Ten, the Terran Admiral parleys with Avalonian leaders and a fallen Avalonian, the First Marchwarden, is laid to rest.

Chapter Eleven

High Wyvan Liaw of the Tarns addresses the Great Khruath of Avalon from outside David Falkayn's house on First Island in the Hesperian Sea. On a North Coronan prairie, a flapping youth leads a herd of quadrupedal burden-bearing zirraukhs. South-East from Oronesia are the Brendan's, Fiery and Shielding Islands. Atlantis weed patches are entire ecologies grazed by peaceful but huge kraken. David Falkayn's granddaughter named Avalon. Equatorian centaurs use tools of stone and bone.

Chapters Twelve and Thirteen are mainly about the consequences of the war in space.

Chapter Thirteen

In winter, snow falls in North Corona and in the mountains but not in Gray where "...the susin stayed green on its hills the year around." (8)

Chapter Fourteen

Zirraukhs are warm-blooded quadrupeds smaller than horses and unlike them but used for the same purpose.

Chapter Fifteen

An Ythrian swoops on a pteropleuron that had been hunting piscoids near the surface of the sea.

Chapter Sixteen

Grief causes premature ovulation in a bereaved Ythrian female. A male seeks her out. This is not against choth law and the female's human chothmate, Arinnian, has no cause to challenge so he insults the Ythrian male until the latter challenges him.

Chapter Seventeen

On the Scorpelunan plateau in Equatoria, hexapods graze under their parasol membranes. Packs of dog-sized hexapodal lycosauroids and throngs of twenty centimeter long cockroach-like kakkelaks attack Terran invaders who are being slowly poisoned by hell shrubs. Furious tropical storms caused by high irradiation and fast spin delay evacuation.

Chapter Eighteen

Smaragdine susin, chasuble bush and Buddha's cup grow on a hill above Falkayn Bay. 

Chapter Nineteen

Trefoil and sword-of-sorrow grow in the grass. Harp vines ring. Jewelleafs twinkle. Morgana is less bright because scarred by Terran bombardment.

Why Am I Doing This?

I have summarized an alternative reading. We read an Anderson novel to follow the story. We appreciate that there are rich background details but do not usually pause to savor the details. I have noted as many details as I can of the planet Avalon.

(1) Poul Anderson, "The Problem of Pain" IN Anderson, The Earth Book of Stormgate, New York, 1978, pp. 26-48, AT p. 33.
(2) ibid., p. 40.
(3) Poul Anderson, "Wingless" IN The Earth Book of Stormgate, pp. 411-420, AT pp. 413-414.
(4) ibid., p. 417.
(5) Poul Anderson, The People of the Wind, London, 1977, p. 7.
(6) ibid., p. 10.
(7) ibid., p. 18.
(8) ibid., p. 127.

Why I Am Posting About The Time Patrol

I have posted about the Time Patrol before but did not expect to do so again, certainly not in such detail. I had read or reread and posted about all of Poul Anderson's novels and series with the single exception of one volume of his detective trilogy so I looked at those of his collections that I have, first for stories not yet read, then for stories not read recently.

The collections include Past Times with its excellent time travel stories. I expected to reread and post about the entire contents of this collection. However, the time travel stories, "The Nest" and "The Little Monster," renewed an interest in Time Patrol which, after all, is another of Anderson's collections. "The Nest" describes an organization of time traveling brigands whereas the Patrol opposes such brigands. "The Little Monster" describes a technological future sending explorers into the past, as does the Patrol. "Nest" and "Monster" are good but short whereas Patrol is long and seemingly endless so it was natural to go there next.

I would like to see Past Times revised so as to include "The Man Who Came Early," another sort of pre-Patrol time travel story, and to exclude non-time travel stories and items which, of course, should be collected elsewhere. "The Light," a space travel story with good accounts of walking on the Moon, also belongs in an anthology of "First Man on the Moon" stories, e.g.:

"The Man Who Sold The Moon" by Robert Heinlein, not about the man who first landed on the Moon but about the man who financed the journey;

"Wrong Way Street" by Larry Niven - a later astronaut who lands on the Moon, then time travels, can thus become the first man on the Moon;

"Forms of Things Unknown" by CS Lewis connects a Moon landing to Greek mythology;

"The Light" by Poul Anderson connects a Moon landing to Renaissance art;

extracts from relevant novels by Wells, Burroughs, Heinlein etc.

I have not read any of Jules Verne's three interplanetary novels so I have ordered them through the Public Library. (His characters do not land on the Moon.)

The Nest Is History

Poul Anderson, "The Nest" IN Anderson, Past Times (New York, 1984), pp.71-111.

There is an excellent slave revolt with many a war cry:

"'Kill the Yankees!'"
"'...smite the Papists...'"
"'Allah akbar!'"
"'Vive le Republique!'"
"'Ho La Odin!'"
"'St. George for merrie England!'"
"'Ave, Caesar!'"(p. 103)

- the cry of the centuries!

Another that could have been used is: "Morte alla Francia Italia anela!" ("Death to the French is the cry of Italy!) (Mafia.)

Now we return to time travel issues. Trebuen and his friends capture the Rover, a hundred foot long cylindrical time machine. The Normans who, having stolen the Rover from its owners, had used it only to plunder through history from their base in the American Oligocene, had never checked their future. Superstition had prevented them from really using the Rover as a time machine. They had never doubled back on their own past, never tried to change the past and always let a day elapse at their base, the "Nest," for every day spent in another era. The intricacies of time travel were to be avoided as far as possible.

Trebuen moves the Rover forward one thousand years and looks out, whether through a window or by opening the door is not clear. The chamber of the Rover is dark, still and full of dust and has become the lair of an animal. Eerie - imagine being able to do that with the room you are sitting in now. Trebuen either deduces or checks that the Norman castle is now empty. He knows that a million years of rain, wind and glaciers will destroy it utterly so the secret of time travel to the Oligocene is safe.

Next he does play a trick with the time machine but, because it is nearly time for meditation group, that will have to wait till the next post.

In The Nest

The People Of The Wind, VI.

One of my favourite scenes in Poul Anderson's Technic History is Christopher and Tabitha in the Nest.

Centauri is the second and only other city on Avalon after Gray. The Nest is the tallest building in Centauri. We are not told what is inside the building. A transparent canopy covers the unwalled rooftop tavern. Winged Ythrians and gravbelt-wearing human beings frequent the tavern and there is also a gravshaft. Stars, invisible from the street, are seen through the canopy. There is also a view of the River Sagittarius and the Gulf of Centaurs.

Dim fluoroglobes light tables and are circled by insectoids. Patrons drink from glasses or inhale from narcobraziers. Christopher and Tabitha hear a recorded steel harp. Sometimes bards perform. The human pair meet Eyath's fiance, Vodan, who is spending time with Quenna, a permanently on heat Ythrian female, before going to war in which he will be killed by the friendly fire of the Avalonian defence system - devised by the two Marchwardens who include Christopher's father - although, of course, no one can yet know whether or how Vodan is destined to die. He is just out in the Nest for some leave time like everyone else. A trundling service robot dispenses:

"...thick, strong New African beer." (p. 506)

We vicariously experience some everyday life on Avalon.

The Technic History and Potential Histories

The Technic History

Writing about a series necessitates re-reading it. Re-reading reinforces appreciation of future historical interconnectedness. To summarise again:

“The Saturn Game.”	Early exploration.
“Wings of Victory.”	Human-Ythrian first contact on Ythri under Captain Gray during the Grand Survey. (References to the planets Cynthia, Woden and Hermes.)
“The Problem of Pain.”	Early human-Ythrian interaction on a second Grand Survey planet, provisionally named Gray.
“Margin of Profit.”	Nicholas van Rijn, Master Merchant, Polesotechnic League.
“How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson.”	The Wodenite Adzel studies on Earth.
“The Three-Cornered Wheel.”	The Hermetian David Falkayn is an apprentice on the planet Ivanhoe.
“A Sun Invisible.”	Falkayn is a journeyman in van Rijn’s company.
“The Season of Forgiveness.”	Later events on Ivanhoe.
The Man Who Counts.	Van Rijn and the Hermetian ducal heiress are shipwrecked on the planet Diomedes.
“Esau.”	Van Rijn; first contact with Babur.
Trader to the Stars (three stories).	Van Rijn.
“The Trouble Twisters.”	Van Rijn’s trader team of Falkayn, Adzel and the Cynthian Chee Lan.
“Day of Burning.”	The trader team helps the Merseians to survive radiation from a nearby supernova.
Satan’s World.	Van Rijn and the trader team.
“A Little Knowledge.”	Later events on two other planets discovered during the Grand Survey.
“Lodestar.”	Secret exploitation of super-metals on Mirkheim by races that cannot afford to buy knowledge or technology from League companies. Falkayn, the discoverer of Mirkheim, has broken his oath of fealty to van Rijn but marries van Rijn’s granddaughter.
Mirkheim.	A League cartel engineers the Baburite invasion of Mirkheim and Hermes. Conflict in the League. The later lives of the major characters.
“Wingless.”	Falkayn’s grandson interacts with Ythrians on the jointly colonized planet Avalon, formerly “Gray.”
“Rescue on Avalon.”	Later human-Ythrian interaction on Avalon.
“The Star Plunderer.”	During post-League “Troubles,” Manuel Argos leads a slave revolt and founds the Terran Empire.
“Sargasso of Lost Starships.”	The early Empire.
The People of the Wind.	The Terran War on Avalon: a descendant of Falkayn meets a forerunner and possible ancestor of Flandry; “Gray” is now the name of an Avalonian city.
The Flandry period.	Dominic Flandry, active on many planets, including some introduced earlier, defends the Empire against rebels, barbarians and Merseians.
The Game of Empire.	During Flandry’s old age, his daughter, the son of an old acquaintance and a new Wodenite character foil a Merseian plot. Potentially, a new series begins…
The Long Night period (three stories and one novel, if we include the disputed “Memory”).	The Empire has fallen. In one story, Roan Tom roves the stars. Potentially, a new series begins… Later, humanity evolves.
“Starfog.”	Descendants of rebels expelled by Falkayn contact a new civilization, the Commonalty. Daven Laure is a Ranger of the Commonalty. Potentially, a new series begins…

(“Memory” is set after the fall of a human interstellar Empire but Anderson denied that this was the Terran Empire of the Technic History.)

The Imperial and post-Imperial periods, like the Polesotechnic period, could be analyzed story by story but I here resort to summarizing the later “History of Technic Civilization” in a few sentences. Nevertheless, the reader of this summary should be able to appreciate the scope of the complete series, despite its obvious pulp sf origins. The Terran Empire, introduced as a colorful backdrop for “space opera,” sf action-adventure fiction, later became the setting for novels reflecting on the process of imperial decline. If van Rijn profited from capitalist expansion but Flandry, later, resisted imperial decline, then what went wrong, or at least what happened, between their periods? The two periods were originally presented in unrelated series until Anderson, writing Flandry, suddenly thought to make him refer back to van Rijn and a new future history was born.

Aliens

Hermes is a Terrestrial colony so Falkayn is human. Ythrians are winged carnivores with gills adapted as superchargers to lift bodies massive enough for intelligence. Diomedeans also fly but with bat-like, not feathered, wings. Wodenites are large reptilian quadrupeds descended from hexapods whose forelimbs came to be freed for manipulation. Adzel played the dragon in Chinese New Year and Wagnerian opera when he was a student on Earth.

Cynthians, arboreal hunters and traders, sound like intelligent squirrels. The Cynthian Chee Lan, small, female and aggressive, is clearly written to be an antithesis to the Wodenite Adzel who is large, male and placid, even converting to Buddhism. Ivanhoans, Merseians and some other species are humanoid with relatively minor variations. Baburites are hydrogen-breathing giant centipedes. Ymirites, encountered by Flandry, inhabiting Jovian planets and also breathing hydrogen, have many legs and tendrilled heads but cannot be seen clearly through a Jovian atmosphere. Flandry’s main opponent, a Chereionite, is of avian descent but humanoid.

Thus, instead of designing new organisms from their molecules up, Anderson usually adapts terrestrial forms. His humanoids may have differently coloured skins, different numbers of fingers, thumbs or eyes and no visible ears or nose but they remain recognizably humanoid. As a hard sf writer, Anderson can defend this procedure:

“On an essentially terrestroid planet, evolution basically parallels our own because it must.” (1)

And psychologically:

“Those we encounter on a regular basis are necessarily those whose bent is akin to ours…” (2)

If there are many races, then many of them will be incomprehensible to us but we will deal with those who are not. Anderson applies this principle in other works.

Three Novels

Any story set in the future is potentially an episode of a future history. A novel written in 2000 but set in 3000 assumes a history connecting the known events of 2000 with the fictitious events of 3000. The author of a single story could add any number of sequels and prequels to it. The Star Trek series moved in this direction, becoming more than a single series set in a single period.

Tau Zero, After Doomsday and World Without Stars by Poul Anderson remained independent works - except that one short story, “Pride,” is set in the same future as Tau Zero, with Stockholm as the world capital. The earlier, shorter version of Tau Zero had not shared this political background with “Pride” but the novel does, thus potentially launching yet another future history.

Each of these three novels takes a basic sf premise and presents a comprehensive conceptual development from that premise. Tau Zero avoids alien contact because it concentrates on the human crew of a relativistic spaceship which accelerates uncontrollably. Through time dilation, the ship and its crew survive into the next universe. The central character hopes that surviving humanity can become the Elder Race of that universe but we are not shown this happening.

The premises of After Doomsday are that:

the galaxy is full of intelligent races;
“superlight” travel is possible.

It follows that:

superlight is discovered somewhere some time, once or more than once;
explorers encounter many races, some of whom are willing and able to acquire superlight from them;
superlight travel spreads like dandelion seeds;
space traveling races deal with those with whom they can converse and ignore or bypass others;
they can deal regularly only with those in their immediate vicinity;
therefore, the galaxy is full of “civilization-clusters,” between which there is no regular contact;
within a cluster, space travellers learn a common language and one such language is used in several nearby clusters;
even within a cluster, every planet is economically self-sufficient so trade is in knowledge and luxury items;
the civilized galaxy is so vast that there cannot be a single Empire or Federation and no one knows the history or current macro-status of the entire galaxy;
militaristic imperialism between nearby worlds is possible and, this being a work by Anderson, it does occur in our cluster – marine warriors on one planet and nomadic conquerors on another maintain their societies by expanding into space, engage in conflict with each other and involve other races in the hostilities.

This scenario could have been the basis of an indefinite number of novels. This one novel has two specific additional premises:

first, human spaceships re-enter the Solar System at different times to find that some other race has destroyed all life on Earth so – who murdered Earth and what can be done about it?
secondly, the American spaceship crew is all male whereas the Europeans are all female so – how can they find each other to continue the human race?

Anderson wrote detective novels and this sf novel clearly has elements of detective fiction. Deducing who murdered Earth involves realizing that whoever did it used equipment which required them to translate from a numeral system based on the power of six to a system based on the power of twelve. A six fingered race tried to frame a twelve fingered race.

The European women aim to get rich in a capitalist cluster so that they will be able to pay for a fleet of ships to search the galaxy. The American men aim to win the local interstellar war, then to devise a ballad about their victory in a multi-cluster language. One of the women hears the ballad sung in a multi-species bar, Yotl’s Nest. By the end of the novel, Terrestrial men and women have met and have changed the balance of power in two civilization-clusters.

World Without Stars has two basic premises:

antithanatics prevent death by illness or old age so that people now die only by accident or violence;
by a series of instantaneous jumps, although with time-consuming intermediate journeys, a spaceship can reach not only other stars but even other galaxies.

It follows that:

population is not a problem;
life-styles and perspectives adjust to the long view (Earthside property left in the care of robots is unchanged centuries later; a spaceman has wives in several ports and may not see any one of them for several decades but each wife also has several space traveling husbands);
some individuals live for millennia, for example three thousand year old Hugh Valland who has lived through the entire period of interstellar and intergalactic travel and who is content, every few years or decades, to revisit a certain grave on Earth.

Again, these premises could have been the basis of an indefinite number of novels. This particular novel has the specific premise that its characters, crash-landing on a planet in a system between galaxies, need to work hard and to organize native labor in order to get back home and are led by Hugh Valland. Getting back off this ancient planet where there are no heavy metals takes them four decades. For Valland, Mary O’Meara waits on Earth.

1. Anderson, Poul, “Wings of Victory,” Analog Science Fiction, April 1972, reprinted in Anderson, Poul, The Earth Book of Stormgate 1978, New York, pp. 3-22 at p. 14.
2. Anderson, Poul, The Trouble Twisters, 1966, New York, p. 56.

In The Phoenix House And The Nest

The People Of The Wind, VI.

Leaving no stone unturned in this extraordinary chapter, we find that much relevant ground has already been covered earlier on the blog.

What Arinnian and Tabitha eat and drink in the Phoenix House is listed in In The Phoenix House.

That and their dialogue in the Nest is summarized in In The Nest.

The Nest is also the setting for one of Poul Anderson's trademark pathetic fallacies. See The Pathetic Fallacy On Avalon.

Tabitha rightly says that any human being who tries to be an Ythrian is a rattlewing and also that she and Arinnian cannot communicate fully through Planha because they lack feathers. However, she also concedes:

"'Damn, sometimes it is easier to say things in Planha!'" (p. 503)

Tabitha's earlier life is summarized in Tabitha. We also learn about Arinnian's earlier life. He hid from his parents for a year "...in the surf-besieged Shielding Islands..." (ibid.) and once fought a spathodont (scroll down) on the ground with a spear when his companion was wing-broken. As with Ivar Frederiksen (see also Ivar Frederiksen's Early Life), their earlier lives could have been novelized.

A Trick With A Time Machine

Poul Anderson, "The Nest" IN Anderson, Past Times (New York, 1984), pp. 71-111.

I basically understand what Trebuen and his companions do with their time machine, the Rover, but nevertheless have some questions about it.

There are four people in the Rover:

Trebuen, the Cro-Magnon;
Don Miguel, the Spaniard;
Olga, the Martian colonist;
Inini, the Babylonian.

The first three agree on what they will do. Inini, recently rescued from slavery by Trebuen and Don Miguel, cannot yet understand time travel.

Having taken the Rover a thousand years into their future, they then return to within a second of their departure time and:

"We stepped out of the machine." (p. 109)

Does "We..." mean three or four?

As they leave the chamber, the Rover appears again beside itself and three figures get out. This time the number is stated. The Rover appears yet again several times and soon there is a crowd of people who have stepped out of it. This crowd, numbering at least three hundred, and armed, exits the chamber and the castle and joins the battle which Trebuen etc had left where liberated slaves are attacking their Norman oppressors.

The three hundred or so stick together firing at the Normans but they do this for only twenty minutes. At the end of twenty minutes, they would return to the chamber where they would re-enter the Rover, take it back into the future:

"...and return within one second and some feet of our last departure point." (p. 109)

Why go back into the future? Why not simply travel back to within one second and some feet of their last departure point? Or do they take time to rest in the future? (Anderson probably does mean this but I have only just reasoned it out while writing about it.) But doesn't he mean that they return within one second of their last arrival point? All three hundred are there simultaneously, not in threes (or fours) successively.

After twenty minutes of sustained fire from the three hundred, the enemy breaks and runs:

"...and the four of us were all there - victors." (p. 110)

So here we are told that all four were involved.

Trebuen comments:

"I hate to think about seventy-five of myself acting as targets at the same time..." (ibid.)

Seventy-five multiplied by four gives us three hundred. This confirms that all four were involved in the time traveling - except that, on at least one occasion, only three left the Rover.

If there were seventy-five coexisting Trebuens, then let us call them Trebuen-1 to Trebuen-75. If, e.g., Trebuen-20 were shot and killed, then Trebuens-21 to -75 would not exist. Therefore, the fact that there were seventy-five Trebuens at the beginning of the twenty minutes is sufficient proof that none of the Trebuens were going to be killed during the twenty minutes.

Trebuen refers to:

"...twenty minutes - or twenty-four hours, depending on how you look at it." (p. 109)

He means twenty minutes of objective time and twenty-four (?) hours of subjective time. If he experienced the same objective twenty minutes seventy-five times, then his subjective duration was twenty-five hours. But, even if it were only twenty-four, they would certainly need some rest periods in the future. However, time travel allows both these possibilities:

a time traveler co-existing with himself for, e.g., twenty minutes;
a time traveler sleeping for eight or more hours between living through a twenty minute period and again living through that same twenty minute period.

In The Nest

The only other Avalonian city is Centauri at the mouth of the Sagittarius in the Gulf of Centaurs. In the Phoenix House, Tabitha/Hrill orders a catflower cocktail. She and Chris/Arinnian eat piscoid-and-tomato chowder, beef-and-shua pie, salad of clustergrain leaf and pears and drink coffee spiced with witchroot and a bottle of vintage dago. The Nest, a tavern for ornithoids, is the tallest building in Centauri with a gravshaft to its rooftop for humans who have not brought flying gear. It is unwalled, protected from rain by a vitryl canopy. Insectoids circle fluoroglobes and a service robot serves New African beer.
-copied from here. See also The Food Thread.

If the Time Patrol series were to be filmed, then some dialogue would have to be in Temporal, Exaltationist or historical languages with subtitles. In the Technic History, some dialogue would have to be in League Latin, Eriau or Planha. Anglic would be rendered as English. In fact, Poul Anderson tells us nothing or next to nothing about the sounds or vocabularies of these languages. Here is one short piece of dialogue in the Nest:

"'Hoy-ah! Vodan, ekh-hirr.'" (Rise Of The Terran Empire, p. 505) 

We are told that Arinnian continues in Planha although the omniscient narrator translates for us:

"Good flight to you,' Arinnian greeted in Planha..." (ibid.)

- but then he resorts to Anglic:

"'I didn't expect to find you here.'" (ibid.)

"Hoy-ah" sounds as if it might be Anglic? - whereas "...ekh-hirr..." is clearly Planha.

I probably commented on this instance of pathetic fallacy before:

"[Tabitha] considered [Arinnian] for a while that grew. Lightning moved closer on heavy gusts. His rage ebbed..." (p. 509)

Some men find male-female interactions easy; some find them difficult. One kind of man can phone several women acquaintances and arrange to meet one of them for sex whereas another kind of man does not know how to initiate a sexual liaison. Many male human choth members have contrived a way to be both kinds of man simultaneously:

"'...promiscuous as kakkelaks provided they don't much respect their partners, but hardly able to touch birds of the opposite sex.'" (ibid.)

A double standard. However, human beings lived by double standards long before they migrated to Avalon: men who have sex with different women when single but insist that their own fiancees must be virgins. A guy I worked with swore regularly but commented, "F----in' foul-mouthed bitch!" when he heard a woman swearing.