"Tea Or Coffee, Sir?"

If you travel too far into the past, you will have to do without coffee. When Manse Everard camps in A.D. 49, he plays host to Time Patrol colleague, Jens Ulstrup, who has been in place for twelve years:

"'Want some coffee? You can smell it's fresh.'
"'Coffee,' Ulstrup crooned. 'I often drink it in my dreams.'"
-Poul Anderson, Time Patrol (New York, 2006), p. 563.

When Time Patrol agent, Wanda Tamberly, is a guest in 1146 A.D., she is served:

"...the usual meager, coffeeless breakfast."
-Poul Anderson, The Shield Of Time (New York, 1991), p. 419.

In the 1250 B.C. of a different timeline:

"One of the watch handed Alston a cup of coffee; that was something she was going to miss when they ran out."
-SM Stirling, Island In The Sea Of Time (New York, 1998), pp. 82-83)

Alston asks Arnstein:

"'Is there anywhere we could expect to get coffee, here and now?'
"...it comes from Ethiopia, originally. Kaffa province, fairly far inland. It went from there to the Yemen, and from the Yemen to everywhere. The Arabs spread it.'
"'I don't suppose...'
"'Well, Captain, there's no mention of it for more than two thousand years after this date. Tea, maybe...'"
(Island..., p. 83)

Brits, Buddhists and Merseians (and here) drink tea. Brit or no Brit, the only place I drink tea now is in our meditation group. Buddhists find it keeps them awake. The Buddhist story is that Dogen, zealous to meditate, tore off his eyelids and threw them onto the ground where they grew into the first tea shrub. (One of our monks said, "I hope that's not true...") Anderson's Technic History somewhere tells us (later: Young Flandry, p. 295) that tea spread from the Terran Empire into the Merseian Roidhunate where it grows on many planets. And who better to adjudicate between tea and coffee than James Bond?

"'I don't drink tea. I hate it. It's mud. Moreover it's one of the main reasons for the downfall of the British Empire. Be a good girl and make me some coffee.'"
-Ian Fleming, Goldfinger (London, 1975), p. 42.

We have not had a food post for a while although I look forward to some Bronze Age feasts...

We have been told that:

"'Whale steak [is] sort of like beef, only fishy.'" (Island..., p. 65)

Tea Or Coffee Again

I have finished rereading Poul Anderson's Three Worlds To Conquer so, before turning in, I want to (re)read something different, a contemporary thriller instead of sf although I think that there is only a thin line between them. A novel set now assumes satellite and computer technology that was sf until late in the twentieth century. I also need to stop blogging a short while before trying to sleep so here is a parting shot. Characters in a Swedish novel are always switching on their coffee machines. We discussed the choice between tea and coffee here.

For blog references to coffee, see here (scroll down) and for tea, see here (again, scroll down). There should be more references to coffee than to tea although I am not about to count.

Coya, Coffee And Comfort Outside The Commonwealth

"Lodestar."

"The coffeemaker chimed. Coya rose, tapped a cup, sat back down, and sipped. The warmth and fragrance were a point of comfort in infinite space." (p. 650)

Coya is in a spaceship surrounded by infinite space. We vicariously enjoy the comfort of the coffee - especially, for me, since it is coffee, not tea. I drink the latter only in our meditation group. Tea is strongly associated with Buddhism which even has a myth of its origin. Later in this future history series, Terrestrial tea will spread through the Merseian Roidhunate.

Fiction reflects life. Coya's condition is ours. We are on a planet surrounded by infinite space and, in the midst of the cosmos, appreciate any comfort that we can find. Coya's momentous conversation with van Rijn is punctuated by coffee, tobacco haze and gulps of beer. Real people go the stars.

Four Or Five Hot Drinks

Coffee, tea, rax (?), jaine, kave.

Poul Anderson's Time Patrol agents and SM Stirling's temporal exiles miss coffee in the past (see "Tea Or Coffee, Sir?") although Julian May's temporal exiles serve it (see Coffee And Creativity). Rax and jaine are served in futures imagined by James Blish and Poul Anderson, respectively. See Corridors Of Power.

SM Stirling's and David Drake's Raj Whitehall thinks:

"If the Azanians ever cut off our supply of kave beans, the Army high command is doomed."
-The Hammer, CHAPTER EIGHT, p. 451.

But we don't really need hot drinks, do we? My grandmother said, "Have you ever been in someone's house in the afternoon and you've wanted them to offer you tea and they haven't? Ooh, It's awful!" but would have been horrified if you had told her that she was a drug addict.

Coffee And Rifles

"The House of Sorrows."

The first person narrator travels on horseback through a dusty Middle Eastern countryside where kaftan-wearing men emerge from brick houses and speak Aramaic or Edomite. He eats pitta and cheese and drinks water although:

"It's hard for a Marklander to be without his morning coffee..." (p. 71)

See previous blog discussions of tea and coffee here.

At the gate of Mirzabad, Persian soldiers:

"...bore old-time muzzle-loading rifles and curved short-swords." (p. 72)

The narrator himself bears "...pistol and broadsword." (ibid.)

Poul Anderson conveys the sense of an ancient past but with some elements of a more recent past. History has diverged at some point. Will the narrator encounter a displaced time traveller? Not in this narrative but we must read on to learn the score.

Coffee In Gaian And In Lancaster

"Lodestar."

Nicholas van Rijn offers his granddaughter, Coya Conyon, an impressive range of drinks, which we have already listed no less than three times, but she makes the same choice as I would have done, coffee. Tea is not mentioned.

I never tire of reading about the generational clash between van Rijn and Coya but we have probably said as much about that here as we can. I was on a different wavelength from my parents but not from my daughter.

I am drinking coffee at home and will have to dash through rain to get a bus to visit Andrea above the Old Pier Bookshop in Morecambe because I stopped driving a car a while back but we have free pensioners' bus passes.

Van Rijn tells Coya that maybe Falkayn has:

"'...got somewhere a daughter old as you.'" (p. 345)

Recently I campaigned alongside a woman who, I realized, was five years younger than my granddaughter. Fiction and life run in parallel.

Captain Hirharouk, leaving van Rijn's cabin, signs off with:

"'Freelady Conyon, hail and fare you well.'" (ibid.)

Coffee, World War II And Romances

 

Poul Anderson, Three Hearts And Three Lions (London, 1977).

"Holger consumed the meal with appetite and afterward thought wistfully of coffee and a smoke. But wartime shortages had somewhat weaned him from those pleasant vices." (CHAPTER THREE, pp. 23-24)

We have noticed the absence of coffee in other times and realms here but have not previously mentioned wartime shortages. Holger is not the only fictional character to depart for another world during World War II. See also CS Lewis':

The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe

Perelandra

The Great Divorce

The Lion... mentions the Blitz. Perelandra mentions blackout restrictions. The Great Divorce ends with an air raid siren. Lewis' The Screwtape Letters is also set during WWII.

Poul Anderson's Time Patrolman, Manse Everard, visits London during the Blitz.

Holger:

"...had never gone in for reading romances, scientific or otherwise..." (CHAPTER TWO, p. 20)

Scientific romances are what Lewis knew as "scientifiction" and what we call science fiction.

In an early edition of a novel by HG Wells, the list of other titles by the same author included not the heading "Science Fiction" but the sentence, "Mr. Wells has also written the following fantastic and imaginative romances."

John Buchan wrote not "The King liked my books" but "He did me the honour to be amused by my romances."

Three Hearts... is a romance, scientific or otherwise...

Coffee And Creativity

Time travelers entering Pliocene Exile receive welcoming hospitality:

"The cold drink tasted of citrus, and the steaming pitcher turned out to contain hot coffee. Agnostic though he was, Bryan sent up a prayer of thanks for the latter."
-Julian May, The Many-Colored Land (London, 2013), Part II, CHAPTER ONE, p. 149.

See "Tea Or Coffee, Sir?"

May's text acknowledges the Connecticut Yankee and Narnia.

After discussing the creative process here, I then reflected on its progression from the abstract to the concrete. In Hegelian terms, abstract being and nothing interact as becoming which results in determinate being which is necessarily one thing and not any other thing. A creator must decide what to create, whether to write an epic, novel or film script etc, then which particular novel etc. Creative energy focuses on and condenses into some concrete form.

Fictional time travelers, e.g., in Wells' The Time Machine or in Poul Anderson's "Flight to Forever," set out to travel into the (abstract) future but must then arrive in a particular future with concrete features that might have been otherwise. The Time Traveler does not enter the future described in The Shape Of Things To Come and Anderson's Martin Saunders does not travel through the History of Technic Civilization. One good reason is that their authors had not created those futures yet! However, the main point is that they must enter some particular future, not "the future" in general. Authors make momentous choices and decisions.

Gerard, Demons And Coffee

Three Hearts And Three Lions, CHAPTERs SEVEN-EIGHT.

In the Faerie castle, Hugi remarks:

"'Here's a tricksy bigging.'" (p. 47)

Alfric recites three lines of a chanson about one of the Emperor Napoleon's heroes:

"'Gerard li vaillant, brigadier magnes,
"'tres ans tut pleins ad este an Espagne
"'combattant contre le Grande-Bretagne.'" (p. 47)

"Gerard the valiant, great brigadier,
"three full years he was in Spain
"fighting Great Britain."

Hugi reports:

"'Great flashes o' lightning from the topmost tower, a demon figure departing in smoke, and the stench o' warlockry so rank it night curdled ma banes.'" (p. 48)

For the fourth time, I quote a particular line from James Blish for comparison:

"The room stank of demons."
-see here.

For breakfast at Mother Gerd's, Holger consumes porridge, bread, cheese, ale and bacon and thinks:

"...wistfully of coffee and a smoke." (p. 24)

He shares such thoughts with time travelers. See here.

However, at Alfric's castle, he is served:

ham and eggs;
toast;
buckwheat cakes;
coffee;
orange juice. (p. 48)

He thinks that they must have learned his tastes by witchcraft and we have already been told that they can conjure "...things from the air-..." (p. 45)

Doyle And Ashbless

See:

Three Other Time Travel Novels 

A Case In Point

Brendan Doyle, time traveller, knows that, on a particular day in 1810, the poet, William Ashbless, arrived in London where he entered the Jamaica Coffee House at 10:30 and then wrote his poem, "The Twelve Hours of the Night," while seated in the coffee house. Wanting to meet and befriend Ashbless, Doyle arrives in the coffee house on time. However, Ashbless does not show up so Doyle writes the poem from memory, then remains in the nineteenth century as Ashbless...

There is more to the story than that but I have summarized the paradox and am now going to bed. Life is busy here: Robin Hood (a version of) this evening; more authentic Vikings tomorrow. It is nearly midnight.

The Food Thread

A Bar With Food
Bradshaw
An Indian Meal
Good Food
Morning
Food For Thought
Harvesters' Lunch
Harvest Supper
Evening Picnic

Descriptive Passages
Curry And Naan
Lunch At Sea
Dinner At The Winged Cross And in An Airship
Van Rijn
Open Sandwiches
Bhang Lassi
The Peshawar Club

Dinner At His Desk
Another Meal And Another Adventure
Barfi And Samosas
Dinner At The French Embassy
Festival Food
This Month
Food In Khartoum
China
Draka Food

A Buffet Lunch
Burritos
A Chinese With Weak Coffee
Beautiful Scenery And Good Food 
"The Best Hamburger He'd Ever Tasted" 
Some Vivid Descriptive Passages 
Not only Times But Also Places

Spartan Food
Faith, Food And Freedom
More Food 
Yrsa's Upbringing 
Yule Eve In Leidhra
The Twilight Of The Elves
A Bird Made Of Fog
"Tea Or Coffee, Sir?"

A Bronze Age Feast
Welcome Home Feast
Another Meal 
Venison
Harvesters' Lunch II 
Clambake
Christmas Dinner 1250 B.C.
Initiation Feast 
Another World
A Civic Harvest Festival Meal 

Hospitality To Odysseus
Ivanhoe: Miscellania
Delfinburg
In The Saturn Room Of The Hotel Universe, Lunograd
In The Phoenix House
Fanciful Comparisons: Ythrians And Japanese
Palatial Privacy, Lack Of
Four Senses And Good Food
A Nasty Shock
An SF Villain

Can't Resist It! 
Bread And Venison
A Camp Meal
Yule Feast
Dinner In A Barn 
Dinner In The Aylward Household
Hash Browns And Conversations
Harvest Supper
An Understated British Resurrection? (And Another Meal) 

Engineering And Tea
Preserving Civilization
Eating And Killing (Or Vice Versa)
A Welcoming Feast
Breakfast
Dinner At The Sheaf And Sickle
Dinner In A Hunting Lodge
Caviar And Toast
The Fife And Drum Tavern
A Paxton

Meal Before Battle
Vegetarian Food In A Buddhist Monastery
Grill And Bar Food
Camp Breakfast
An Iowan Dinner
A Banquet
Feast
Winter Meal

Feast Before Seidh
Ironrede 
Two Meals
Another Camp Meal
The State Banquet
A Sheriff's Hospitality
A Cold Collation
A Conference Dinner
A Dunedain Feast 
A Meal In A Tent In A Desert
Paces II

Another Sea Battle And Another Meal
The Fifth Sense
A Meal On The Ceram Sea
Outsystem Food
From The Lavishly Stocked Terran Embassy Larder
An Altaian Banquet
Rich Texts, Drink And Food
Modjo Fruit
Two Rijstaffels

Breakfast At Biocontrol Central
Captain's Dinner
An Evening And A Morning On Vixen...
In The Hooligan 
High Living In The Future
Luxury
Dinner In A League Outpost
Warped Reality
Another Meal
Life In 209 B.C.
Fiction Set In The 21st Century
L'Etoile de Diana
Pleasures

Some Parallels
A Meal In Hiding
The Meal Before The Metapsychic Rebellion
A Meal On The Moon
Christmas Food
Satan And Food
The British Raj
Cross-Temporal Cheese Cake

Restaurants
Furniture And Food
Future Facts Of Food
Follow-Up On Food
One Breakfast And Three Alternative Histories
Milky Way, Steak And Revolutionaries
Hail And Good Night
Sacrifice And Feast
Warmth And Light In Two Timelines

Full Marks To Eric Wace
New Lemurian Food
Some Notes To Recent Posts
A Meal In The Command Tent 
Like Chicken
Avocati
Many Descriptive Details And One Old Friend
Time And Place: Eating In San Francisco
Time And Place: Steam Beer
Bowls Of New Potatoes
Time And Place: Chinatown And Pub Crawling

Russian Eggs And More About Films
A Meal And Four Senses
An Ad Libitum Breakfast
The Devil's Game: Interval Three
Breakfast
Five Senses And A Meal
Forests In Minds And A Fight At A Meal?
Shadows Of Annihilation, Chapter Four

Shadows Of Annihilation, Chapter Five, And Food
Pancakes And Cars
A Few Details
Some Observations Near The End Of A Novel
In The Nest
A Few Words
A Few More Words
Sensations And Anticipations
To Ear Or Not To Eat
Warmth And Light
Breakfast In The Hooligan

Some Details In A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows

A Meeting With Snacks

Operation Luna: Miscellaneous V  

Gerard, Demons And Coffee

Breakfasts

Breakfast In The Air

An Omelet And Fresh-Baked Bread 

Harleman

Satan's World.

There are two Harlemans (scroll down) in Poul Anderson's works, as I have just discovered by searching this blog for that name, but I want to focus on the one in Anderson's Technic History.

Van Rijn in "Hiding Place" refers to Juan Harleman of the Venusian Tea & Coffee Growers, Inc. (see here) and Thea Beldaniel in Satan's World refers to "'...Freeman Harleman of Venusian Tea & Coffee..." (II, p. 343) The same guy. A future history series is strengthened by every repeated background reference. Although Freeman Juan Harleman never appears and is mentioned only twice (I think), he is a brick in the wall of the Technic History along with all the other spear carriers and supporting cast. Not everyone is famous but everyone is part of the society that makes some of us famous.

Morning In Arvarnneth

Poul Anderson, The Winter Of The World, VI.

"Morning brightened [the chamber], coffee steamed delicious, windows stood open to mild air and a cheery sound of traffic." (p. 65)

Brightness, mildness, traffic sounds and the smell and taste of coffee: five senses in one sentence.

We read a morning conversation that begins to reveal more about the Lairs. We already knew that the Rattlebone Brotherhood organizes thieves, swindlers and cutthroats. Now Ponsario mentions that the Rippers train assassins. How many Brotherhoods are there and what do they do?

Cleaning out the Lairs would harm many innocents and create more problems than it solved.

"'Drastic changes cannot well be carried out overnight.'" (ibid.)

More wisdom, this time from the fat merchant.

Morning

Everyone should wake up happy, then decide what to do with the day.

SM Stirling in Conquistador (New York, 2004), describes a perfect awakening for his character, Tom Christiansen:

Tom is woken by the smell of coffee and the sound of voices;

although he is far from home, he remembers exactly where he is without any bewilderment;

he savors "...the sensation of physical well-being..." (p. 276) and grins at the ceiling;

he reflects that he is on a whole new unpolluted world, in for an adventure;

he finds that his kidnappers have brought his clothes in his own suitcases;

from the bathroom window, he sees "...the fog-streaked grandeur of the bay, lit by the morning sun..." (p. 277), also roofs and treetops emerging "...as the silver-white vapor retreated..." (ibid.);

in the kitchen, his recent girlfriend is at the stove in a bath-robe, her hair hanging loose;

she offers fresh Hawaiian coffee, eggs scrambled with cream, diced scallions and paprika, Canadian-style bacon smoked with apple wood, flapjacks, boysenberry pancakes, toast, fruit and cream;

the high quality of the ingredients is down to local farming that is artisan-scale, not capital-intensive.

It sounds like heaven although would anyone have to do the farming and cooking in heaven? Maybe, but there they would be fulfilling activities, not chores. However, this is not heaven...

1815-1914

Time Patrol agents know when there are wars and when there are periods of peace. It is possible for a time traveler to base himself in one peaceful period and to leave it for another before war starts. See:

Exempli Gratia;
The Quiet Before The Storm;
Change;
Long To Reign.

The image shows Unter den Linden.

In 1858, Herbert Ganz is safely distant from the Napoleonic War and the First World War. Middle-aged and a confirmed bachelor when recruited to the Time Patrol, he remains Herr Professor at the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin. Although an expert in early German history, he rarely time travels "...to anywhere but a superbly equipped office centuries uptime..." - "The Sorrow of Odin the Goth, 1858, " IN Time Patrol (New York, 2006), p. 400.

His hospitality to field operatives like Carl Farness includes:

a gargantuan midday meal;
a nap;
an evening stroll along Unter den Linden;
coffee, cakes and cognac served by a uniformed maid, who then ensures privacy.

Ganz's house is spacious but filled with books and bric-a-brac. His library, where the maid serves coffee etc, has sofas, a chandelier, bookshelves, up-to-date Empire furniture, busts, framed etchings and oils, Chinese-motif wallpaper and maroon drapes.

Peaceful, indeed.

A Conference Dinner

SM Stirling, Lord Of Mountains (New York, 2013), Chapter Fourteen, is a political argument and a meal so let's focus on the meal, starting with the pre-dinner cocktail hour:

an ice-cold mixture of whiskey, sweetened cream, coffee, anisette and absinthe;
potted shrimp, spiced goose liver or smoked salmon and capers on crackers;
chicken sausage soup simmered with wine, broth, garlic, tomatoes, spinach and tortellini;
hot beaten biscuits and butter;
dry white wine;
horseradish-cruted roast venison;
seasoned grilled potatoes;
late asparagus;
a winter salad of pickled vegetables;
warm breads;
red Pinot Noir;
pastries;
glazed fruit-tarts;
ice-cream with hazlenuts;
liqueurs;
coffee.

Breakfasts And "Good Morning"

Dominic Flandry tells Chives that "Good morning" is a contradiction in terms. Before breakfast, Flandry swims twelve laps, then exercises. Chives serves coffee royal and a souffle. I have just slouched out of bed for muesli and coffee.

On a weather-controlled fine spring morning, Chives retracts the outer wall so that Flandry sees flowers and an orange tree with a Cynthian song bird in his roof garden. He is surrounded by the towers of Archopolis, blue sky, white clouds, sparkling aircars and the pulse of machines. After eating, he smokes by a fountain in the garden.

From where I am sitting, I can see sky, clouds and trees but no towers, aircars, song bird or fountain and, of course, am not served by Chives. I should have worked for Terrestrial Intelligence.

"More Tea, Sir?"

See "Tea Or Coffee, Sir?"

In some film that I saw, a US Army officer says, "My orderly is the last surviving member of the Mottisa tribe." The orderly appears with a tea pot and asks, "Mo' tea, sir?"

There is more tea in the Technic History. A Gwydiona likes the tea stuff that has come with the expedition and Raven says that no one should come between an Oakenshaw and his tea: a rare moment of relaxation with the ever-vigilant Commandant. Tea will still be growing at that time in the former Merseian Roidhunate.

Brit or no Brit, I really do prefer coffee.

Not Mentioning Any Names

"Hiding Place," see here.

A work colleague said, "A clique was developing. And I'm not mentioning any names. And Richard was in it!" He had completely forgotten the second sentence when he uttered the third. Nicholas van Rijn speaks in what sounds like a similar way but, in his case, every word and thought is under his control:

"'...is the human brain a turtle just because it is armored in bone? A parasite just because it lives off blood from other places? Well, maybe some people I could name but won't, like Juan Harleman of the Venusian Tea & Coffee Growers, Inc., has parasite turtles for brains. But not me.'" (p. 608)

(Tea and coffee growing on Venus. If only... SM Stirling gives us a retro terrestroid Venus in The Sky People.)

Is Harleman a distinguished competitor whom van Rijn must pretend to despise or an economic "parasite" whom he does in fact despise? If ever we met Harleman, then we would make our own assessment. But, meanwhile, we have reached the end of the last story in The Van Rijn Method and must decide what to read or reread next after a night's sleep and some other responsibilities.

Today: The herons at Muncaster Castle still remind me of Ythrians.

Five Senses And A Meal

The Devil's Game, INTERVAL SIX, Part Three, pp. 176-191.

"Leaf shadows flickered on the patio outside. Small cottony clouds ran before a wind that made rushing noises in the trees. Coffee and bacon perfumed the mild air. Neither man seemed to notice." (p. 176)

But we notice flickering, rushing, perfume and mildness, in fact five senses because we imagine not only smelling but also tasting the coffee and bacon.

"Darkling, the precipices dropped straight down to the wrath among the reefs." (p. 177)

"Darkling" is an unusual term that I associate with HG Wells but have also found before in Anderson. See here. (Scroll down.)

Larry and Julia share a picnic lunch:

feta cheese;
marinated tomato slices;
salami;
cucumber;
roast beef and horseradish;
sweet-buttered pumpernickel;
Greek olives;
pears;
wine.

(I am just finishing a glass of wine. I now drink a little but not enough to interfere with meditation.)

(Me: cheese, yes; olives, no.)