Fables And Fantasies

I think that Poul Anderson's causality violation/historical alteration caused not by extra-temporal intervention but by quantum fluctuation was an original contribution to time travel fiction. Usually, imaginative authors present new treatments of familiar ideas.

Familiar Ideas
(i) Exotic beings hide among us.
In Poul Anderson's works: aliens; "a-mortals"; futurian time travelers.

In Bill Willingham's Fables, fairy tale characters are disguised as "mundanes" in New York. A journalist who discovers this clandestine community of ageless people thinks that they are vampires.

(ii) Alternative Earths in parallel universes; what is fiction on one Earth may be real on another.
Poul Anderson: several novels and short stories.
Fables: the "Fables" are exiles from other Earths somehow based on or derived from the mundane Earth.

Connections And Parallels

Because the Emberverse titles are listed in the wrong order in the back of my copy of The Sunrise Lands, I have got The Sword Of The Lady before The Scourge Of God but will acquire and read the latter before reading the former.

Of interest in the Acknowledgments of The Sword Of The Lady:

apparently, the opening paragraph of Poul Anderson's The Broken Sword is quoted as an ancestral epic in Chapter Seventeen;

Stirling refers to the song, "Fiddler's Green," which is yet another link to Neil Gaiman's The Sandman.

Gaiman's Fiddler's Green is a place in the Dreaming but escapes and wanders the waking world as a person called "Gilbert," modelled on GK Chesterton whose Fr Brown series we have just mentioned.

From (i) works of fiction by different authors and (ii) works of fiction about alternative histories, we can wind up with (iii) stories in which different authors' fictional narratives are set in alternative histories, as shown in Poul Anderson's Old Phoenix stories. In Bill Willingham's Fables graphic novels, characters from fairy tales live in hiding in New York, having been driven out of their homelands on parallel Earths. Since the Trygve Yamamura novel that I am currently reading features Italian characters and concerns and since Pinnocchio has a big role in Fables, I find a powerful if obscure conceptual connection between this Yamamura novel and that graphic novel series. The connection is strengthened by the fact that we have just discussed parallel universes in relation to detective fiction.

As Anderson's Time Patrol finds chaos lurking behind time criminals, Stirling's Emberversers seem to find something else lurking behind their human enemies?

(Tomorrow looks like being even busier and less blog-friendly.)

Fables

Late night other reading, sometimes political prose, other times graphic fantasy:

How many mysterious beings live secretly among us - in works of fiction? In different works, Poul Anderson has time travelers, immortals and aliens. Other candidates are mutants, superheroes, werewolves, former gods etc. In Neil Gaiman's The Sandman, a former Babylonian goddess is an exotic dancer. See Temple Prostitution.

In Fables, Bill Willingham adds another group, exiled fairy tale characters living secretly in New York. And such characters could have showed up in Anderson's inter-universal inn, the Old Phoenix, where the guests include Sherlock Holmes, Huckleberry Finn, Nicholas van Rijn and Sancho Panza - all fictional to us but real to themselves.

Good night and may Morpheus send sweet dreams.

Fictions And Fables

A subset of the parallel universes idea is that characters who are fictional in one universe are real in another. Thus, Robert Heinlein's Rhysling, the Blind Singer of the Spaceways, Poul Anderson's Nicholas van Rijn and inhabitants of the universe where Shakespeare's characters coexist can all visit the inter-universal inn, the Old Phoenix. Thus also, in Bill Willingham's Fables, fairy tale characters are exiled to "mundy" (mundane) New York when a multiversal empire conquers their homelands.

Alan Moore's The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen has every literary and fictional character coexisting on a single Earth but that gets a bit crowded.

Fables And Legends

Mirkheim.

In the Polesotechnic League Tetralogy, when Coya Conyon says:

"'...when I was a youngster... I'd hear about the latest adventure of the fabulous Muddlin' Through team...'" (I, p. 33)

- we remember reading "The Trouble Twisters" and Satan's World.

When Hermetian spaceship officers focus:

"...their attention mainly on the merchant, the living legend..." (XIX, p. 254)

- we remember reading "Hiding Place," "Territory" and again Satan's World. So the fables and the legends refer to just four previous instalments. The Earth Book of Stormgare adds:

for the trader team, "Day of Burning";

for van Rijn, "Margin of Profit" and The Man Who Counts -

- three more instalments. (Van Rijn was not in space in "The Master Key" or "Esau." The events of "Lodestar" were kept secret until much later.)

Poul Anderson achieves much with little.

An Obscure Connection

OK. Here is a really obscure late-night connection. You are going to love this one.

(i) Ichabod Crane is a traitor to Fabletown in Bill Willingham's Fables: The Mean Seasons.

(ii) Googling Ichabod Crane, we remind ourselves that he is a Washington Irving character.

(iii) We also learn that Will Rogers played Ichabod Crane.

(iv) "[Manse Everard] wasn't a celebrity hound, but after he'd decided that roping was an art that might come in handy, he'd gone to the trouble of making acquaintance with an expert in 1910, who agreed to teach him. His hours with Will Rogers were among the pleasantest of his life."
-Poul Anderson, The Shield Of Time (New York, 1991), 209 B. C., p. 81.

Thus, through several layers of fiction, the Fables Ichabod Crane has the most tenuous possible connection with Poul Anderson's Manson Everard of the Time Patrol. Fortunately, I don't have to invent any of this stuff. I just read it.

Caesars

I have borrowed The Twelve Caesars by Suetonius, translated by Robert Graves, from the Public Library. The title characters are:

DIVUS JULIUS

DIVUS AUGUSTUS

TIBERIUS

GAIUS CALIGULA

DIVUS CLAUDIUS

NERO

GALBA

OTHO

VITELLIUS

DIVUS VESPASIAN

DIVUS TITUS

DOMITIAN

Janne Floris of the Time Patrol to Manse Everard:

"'You remember, at the overthrow of Nero, civil war broke out. The year of the three Emperors - Galba, Otho, Vitellius - then, in the Near East, Vespasian - devastating the Empire as they contended."

-Poul Anderson, "Star of the Sea" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, December 2010), pp. 467-640 AT 2, p. 488.

Thus, two sentences in Time Patrol summarize important information about five of Suetonius' "twelve Caesars." 

Lycius the dwarf writes in his memoirs that:

"Augustus's will set the bounds of the Empire; forbade any expansion."

(Poul Anderson mentions this Augustan policy in "The Discovery of the Past." See Perspectives.)

Lycius continues:

"And in his will Augustus also appointed Tiberius as his successor. Our divine rulers have, since then, been successively evil, mad, foolish and -- now -- all three."

-Neil Gaiman, "August" IN Gaiman, The Sandman: Fables And Reflections (New York, 1993), pp. 98-122 AT p. 122, panel 4.

I think that Lycius means:

Tiberius, evil;

Caligula, mad;

Claudius, foolish;

Nero, all three.

Thus, Janne and Lycius summarize information about nine of the Caesars.

Terminus

(We, editorially speaking, are incapacitated by a cold, although not covid, so there might not be much posting today. There are some dvds waiting to be watched.)

Lycius: Eh? Who could be greater than Jupiter the greatest and most powerful? 

Augustus Caesar: Hm. Firstly, Terminus, the god of boundaries. Jupiter must bow to him; boundaries are the most important of things, Lycius.

 

-Neil Gaiman, "August" IN Gaiman, The Sandman: Fables And Reflections (New York, 1993), pp. 98-122 AT p. 107, panel 5.

 

To be is to be one thing, not another. Thus, boundaries define everything. Terminus asks Morpheus to inspire Augustus to set the bounds of the Roman Empire. Millennia later, Manuel Argos, Founder of the Terran Empire, says:

 

"'Oh, the empire won't have to expand forever. Just till it's big enough to defend itself against all comers.'"

-Poul Anderson, "The Star Plunderer" IN Anderson, Rise Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, 2011), pp. 325-362 AT p. 356.

 

Terminus is the name of the last inhabited planet at one end of the Galaxy in Isaac Asimov's future history and a terminus is the end of the bus route and this will be the end of my efforts for a while.

But checkout a good ghost story called "Terminus."

Woods Dwarfs

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

This cover shows the scene that I am rereading at present.

In the Carolingian universe, woods dwarfs:

live in the enormous forest;
eat mushrooms, nuts, rabbits and squirrels;
have no magical powers;
do not fear iron, silver or holy symbols;
unlike Narnian or Middle Earth dwarfs, do not take sides in wars between other beings -

"'We'll ha' naught to do wi' the wars in this uneasy land,' said Hugi. 'We'll bide our ain lives and let Heaven, Hell, Earth, and the Middle World fight it oot as they will. And when yon proud lairds ha' laid each the other oot, stiff and stark, we'll still be here. A pox on 'em all.'" (p. 26)

In one of Aesop's Fables, a donkey carrying military supplies is advised to flee in order to avoid capture by the advancing enemy. However, when he is told that the enemy will probably not try to make him carry any more than he is now because he is already at his limit, he replies, "I'll stay where I am!" In an sf novel by Fred and Geoffrey Hoyle, factory workers asked how they feel about the prospect of aliens conquering Earth, reply that they will still have to work in the factories. (That shocked me when I read it. Then I saw their point.)

Augustus And Argos

 

Augustus: But we can leave things behind us.

Augustus: I am leaving an Empire.

Neil Gaiman, The Sandman: Fables and Reflections (New York, 1993), p. 111, panel 5.

"'And you yourself, I suppose, will be the first emperor?'

"[Argos'] eyes were expressionless. 'Yes,' he said. 'Unless I find a better man, which I doubt.'"

-Poul Anderson, "The Star Plunderer" IN Anderson, Rise Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, March 2011), pp. 325-362 AT p. 357.

"'We'll have to get the racist complex out of mankind. We can't conquer anyone, even the Gorzuni, and keep them as inferiors and hope to have a stable empire. All races must be equal.' [Argos] rubbed his strong square chin. 'I think I'll borrow a leaf from the old Romans. All worthy individuals, of any race, can become terrestrial citizens. It'll be a stabilizing factor.'"

-Anderson, op. cit., p. 360.

Pragmatic anti-racism but anti-racism, nevertheless. People kept as inferiors revolt, practising the violence taught to them by their oppressors. Slaves killed slave-owners and raped their wives but that kind of violence ended when slavery had been ended.

Gaiman shows us Augustus (literally "shows" in the graphic medium); Anderson shows us Augustus' remote successor, Argos.

We posted before that Anderson imagines a Roman sf writer projecting two futures for Rome, a long empire or a short one, and Gaiman shows us Augustus choosing between those same futures.

End Game

"Ricia's gamin(e) smile breaks forth."

-"The Saturn Game," IV, p. 69.

My other two editions of "The Saturn Game" have "gamin," not "gamine," let alone "gamin(e)." "Gamin" is masculine. "Gamine" is feminine. "Gamin(e)" is how a dictionary would indicate both genders but is not usual in texts.

Even after Garcilaso's death, Scobie and Broberg continue their psychodrama which involves:

a Pythoness

an old man with one eye, a grey beard, a wide hat and a blue cloak (say no more)

trolls

a dwarf

the White Witch (Narnia!)

a giant

Kendrick's spear forged by Wayland

orcs besieging a tower (Middle Earth!)

(I have just read about Wayland Smith in Bill Willingham's Fables.)

Realizing that their fuel cells will run out long before they are able to climb out of the bowl into which they have fallen, they must choose between a heroic or peaceful death in the fantasy or full consciousness of their deaths in reality. They choose the latter but the only way to terminate the game is for Kendrick to kill Ricia, then himself. There is a double space between paragraphs...

The reader wonders: when Kendrick kills Ricia, then himself, does Scobie kill Broberg, then himself? They are trying to escape from the fantasy but do they succeed? Yes:

"'That was...a nightmare.' Broberg sounded barely awake." (p. 70)

In an Andersonian moment of realization, she realizes that they can use Garcilaso's fuel cell to light a beacon that will enable Danzig to locate them. The game had sustained them as they climbed to a height from which the beacon would work but then they had to return to reality so that Broberg could think clearly.

Perspectives

Homer, expressing the Greek perspective, describes Odysseus as crafty and wise whereas Virgil, expressing the antagonistic Trojan perspective, describes Ulysses (the same character) as cruel and deceitful.

In Poul Anderson's Technic History, the Fall of the Terran Empire is followed by a period of chaos called the Long Night. Pete Pinto, the second-hand bookseller, made the point that later civilizations which had grown out of that period would not refer to it as "the Long Night."

Poul Anderson imagines an sf writer in Augustan Rome who considered three possible futures:

the Empire will conquer the whole world;

in accordance with Augustan policy, the Imperial borders will remain unchanged;

the Empire will fall as barbarians move in, leaving - 

"...nothing...but ruins and wilderness."

-Poul Anderson "The Discovery of the Past" IN Anderson, Past Times (New York, 1984), pp. 182-206 AT p. 190.

Instead, Anderson tells us that:

"A heretical offshoot of the religion of a subjugated people, afar in a corner of the Mediterranean ambit, took over Romans and barbarians alike, completely transforming them and breeding new, utterly different civilizations." (ibid.)

Augustus himself, in a fictional account, tells Lycius the dwarf that the prophetic volumes foretold that either the Romans would:

"...last a few hundred years and then [be] gone - - eaten from outside by barbarians, from inside by strange gods."

-Neil Gaiman, August IN Gaiman, Fables And Reflections (New York, 1993), pp. 98-122 AT p. 113, panel 5 -

- or that they would conquer the whole world.

And here is my point about perspectives: what Anderson describes as transformation by a foreign heresy, Augustus describes as being eaten by strange gods!

At This Time Of Year...

Relevant Christmas Presents
(i) Neil Gaiman's Norse Mythology - relevant to both Gaiman's and Poul Anderson's works.

(ii) Julian May's The Many-Coloured Land (Pliocene Exile, Vol. I) - an author's note refers to Mananaan, the Son of Lir.

(iii) Robert Lanza's Biocentrism, which argues against mainstream cosmogony.

(iv) The next volume of Bill Willingham's Fables. (Scroll down.)

There may be more next week when it is my birthday.

Werebeasts

See:

Where We Were-
Wolf
Parallel Reading
"Operation Afreet"

Other Authors

"There Shall Be No Darkness" by James Blish is a scientifically rationalized werewolf story, well written but badly filmed;

in Bill Willingham's Fables graphic novels, Bigby (Big Bad) Wolf is a werewolf;

Mike Carey's Lucifer features a were-tiger.

Poul Anderson

In Operation Chaos, Steve Matucheck is a werewolf. Before the War, he was a Hollywood actor, playing in Call of the Wild and Silver Chief. 

"I weigh a hundred and eighty pounds, and the conservation of mass holds good like any other law of nature, so I was a pretty big wolf." (III, p. 19)

Matuchek fights a were-tiger:

"Tiger Boy stood close. In man-shape he was almost seven feet tall and monstrously fat." (V, p. 28)

"Tiger Boy" is:

"...paying the price of being a really big werebeast..." (p. 30)

By contrast, "...a fennec, the small fox of the African desert..." (ibid.)

is, in human form:

"...naturally, a dwarf barely one foot high." (ibid.)

"Poul Anderson immerses you in the future... Anderson puts you into a whole new world."
-Larry Niven, back cover blurb on Poul Anderson, Rise Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, 2011).

Anderson immerses us not only in his Technic History but also in an Earth with werebeasts.

The Two Sides Of Empire

A fictional hero can be either an agent of empire or a resistance fighter.

Whereas Poul Anderson's Dominic Flandry is the titular character of Agent of The Terran Empire:

"Entire companies of the Emperor's most diabolical soldiers - trolls, giants and worse - were tasked with [the wolf's] capture or destruction."
-Bill Willingham, Fables: Legends in Exile (New York, 2012), p. 130.

- and:

"'There's thirty, forty men with guns all coming for us. Imperial soldiers, what's more.'"
-Philip Pullman, The Subtle Knife (London, 1998), 14, p. 308.

So which side are we on? Usually, when reading fiction, on the side of our hero but which side is he on?

"'Why do you stand with Josip? You know what he is.'"
-The Rebel Worlds, CHAPTER ELEVEN, p. 475.

It is possible to appreciate Anderson's fiction while not always agreeing with his heroes. And, meanwhile, we have to take sides in real life with no author to point the way.

New Books

 

There will now be an intermission while I read some books received as presents.

Although Edgar Rice Burroughs (ERB) is rarely referenced in Poul Anderson's works, this blog has had several occasions to refer to him. The following quotation is more generally relevant to all imaginative fiction:

"This collection is respectfully dedicated to the wonderfully restless shade of Edgar Rice Burroughs, who was the first, in my encounters, to put great and ponderous wooden fighting ships in the sky. His were held aloft by the mysterious Eighth Ray of Barsoom, while ours are lifted by artful carpets, but it's the same primal force at work in both cases.

"Thank you, old ghost, for a lifetime of inspiration."

-Bill Willingham IN Bill Willingham and others, Fables: War and Pieces (New York, 2008), p. 4.

Also received:

Sathnam Sanghera, Empireland: How Imperialism Has Shaped Modern Britain (Penguin Books, 2021).

It has. Anderson's Terran Empire harks back to Rome, not to Britain, and will be left with no time to reflect on how its imperialism has shaped it. Anderson commented elsewhere:

"We might glance at Great Britain, too, whose chief patrimony was merely coal, and at how it became affluent but now seems on the way back to genteel poverty."

-Poul Anderson, "The Discovery of the Past" IN Anderson, Past Times (New York, 1984), pp. 182-206 AT p. 195.

(Not always genteel.)

Also:

"...the Irish remember Oliver Cromwell in much the same way that the Jews remember Hitler, and for much the same reason..."

-Anderson, op. cit., p. 201.

 

An Irish fellow student observed that there is a difference between the kind of old men encountered in Irish bars and those encountered in English bars and he thought that the latter country's imperial past explained the difference. An old man in an Irish bar told me, "The only good thing England did for Ireland was that, if it hadn't been in the way, we'd've had the French or the Spanish over and they'd've been worse!"

Other Reading About Telepathy

We saw here that a telepath who can read only surface thoughts talks to a prisoner in order to bring associations into his conscious mind.

Thus, we read, in a book received as a present today:

D'jinn, disguised as a slave girl: Gather all who serve Yussuf's ascendancy together tonight for an important meeting.

Sidi Nouman: Is that wise? In the past we've never congregated more than two or three at a time. Those were always Yusuf's orders.

D'jinn: No Matter. I simply needed to ascertain the fullness of the list which appeared in your mind the moment I inquired of them.
I've captured it complete, and so you are of no further use to me, Sidi Nouman, famous abuser of horses.
-Bill Willingham, Fables: Arabian Nights (And Days), (Burbank, CA, 2006), p. 59, panels 5-6.

Fantasy And Reality

It would have been very easy - all too easy? - for Poul Anderson to write a fantasy story corresponding to the role play game played by characters in his hard sf story, "The Saturn Game." This does not happen. The fantasy remains only in the minds of those characters. We happen to know that another way for denizens of the Technic History to encounter magic is to visit the inter-universal inn, the Old Phoenix, but that has no impact on the uncompromisingly scientific setting of "The Saturn Game."

It would have been even easier for the play and film, Shadowlands, to alternate between the events of CS Lewis' life and scenes from his Narnia series but that also does not happen. When one of Lewis' future stepsons enters a bedroom and looks in a wardrobe, it is only a wardrobe.

Near the end of Bill Willingham's Fables graphic series, the military forces of the mundane world enter Fabletown, previously magically concealed from their sight, where the mayor, the former King Cole, awaits them... A new and fabulous age dawns and the series unfortunately ends.

Marco Polo And Extratemporal Encounters In At Least Four Timelines

Some sources:

Poul Anderson, "The Only Game in Town" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 129-171.

Neil Gaiman, "Soft Places" IN Gaiman, The Sandman: Fables And Reflections (New York), pp. 124-148.

Doctor Who, during the period of the first Doctor.

Section 2 of "The Only Game in Town" begins:

"Anno Domini One Thousand Two Hundred Eighty:..." (p. 133)

- then tells us what Kublai Khan, Marco Polo and several others, including two Time Patrolmen, were doing in that year.

"Soft Places" begins:

"Anno Domini 1273.

"A sense of mounting panic rises in Marco's chest." (p. 125, panels 1-2.)

 

- then shows us Marco Polo's encounters with people from other times.

 

Marco did not record his meeting with the Doctor because he thought that time travel would not be believed.

 

I have read one other work that concluded with an extratemporal encounter with Marco but remember neither title nor author's name. The text ended:

 

"Mar. Co. Po. Lo. A strange name in a strange tongue."  

Only The Phoenix Arises...

A Poul Anderson fan reading Neil Gaiman must be reminded of Anderson.

"Only the phoenix arises and does not descend..." (see here) recalls the Old Phoenix.

Although Gaiman's The Sandman and Anderson's Time Patrol series do not apply the same concept of time, there are similarities in the way that time is described:

"Time at the edge of the dreaming is softer than elsewhere, and here in the soft places (scroll down) it loops and whorls on itself. In the soft places where the border between dreams and reality is eroded, or has not yet formed...
"Time. It's like throwing a stone into a pool. It casts ripples."
-Neil Gaiman, The Sandman: Fables & Reflections (New York, I cannot find a publication date), p. 141, panels 1-2.

"'An incipient causal loop is always dangerous, you know. It can set up a resonance, and the changes of history that that produces can multiply catastrophically.'"
-Poul Anderson, "The Sorrow of Odin the Goth" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 333-465 AT 1935, p. 449.

"...it was all one swirl on a river that swept from the peaceful prehuman landscape where he had been to the unimaginable Danellian future."
-Poul Anderson, "Time Patrol" IN Time Patrol, pp. 1-53 AT 3, p. 17.

"History. The stream of events, great and small, running from cavemen to the Danellians. But what about the eddies, the bubbles, the insignificant little individuals and happenings that are also soon forgotten, whose being or nonbeing makes no difference to the course of the stream?"
-Poul Anderson, The Shield Of Time (New York, 1991), PART ONE, 1902 A. D., p. 120.