Galactic North And South

Ferune of Mistwood Choth, First Marchwarden of the Lauran System, expects Terran spacecraft to attack:

"'...from well north and south of the ecliptic plane...'"
-Poul Anderson, The People Of The Wind IN Anderson, Rise Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, 2011), pp. 437-662 AT Chapter VII, p. 518.

We are used to thinking of north and south as directions only on the surface of a single planet. Thus:

northward journeys terminate at the North Pole;
from that single point, no direction is north, east or west, only south.

However, just as each planet has an equator:

the Solar System has an ecliptic;
there is a North Star above the Terrestrial North Pole;
even the galaxy has a North Pole. (See image.)

References to galactic compass points occur occasionally in sf, e.g.:

"Now the screen showed a flat-on photograph of a spiral galaxy. That it was the Milky Way was made plain by the presence of two satellite galaxies which were obviously the Magellanic Clouds...
"The photograph had been turned into a map by the addition of a three-color overlay in red, green, and gray. The red covered a large, irregular area on the southern side of the disc, including the Clouds, while the green covered much more of the northern side. The gray area wandered narrowly between them, but spread out, fan-like, to the west..."
-James Blish, The Quincunx Of Time (New York, 1983), Chapter Nine, p. 95.

"...arms of exploration reach 200 light-years up along galactic north..."
-Larry Niven, "Introduction: My Universe and Welcome to It!" IN Niven, Tales Of Known Space (New York, 1975), pp. xi-xiv AT p. xi.

Galactic SF II

After "galactic sf" would come "inter-" or "trans-galactic." However, there is not a great deal of this and the subject has been addressed in some previous posts. See here.

Regarding the features of this galaxy:

in "Starfog," Earth lies in the spiral arm behind the one containing the interstellar civilization served by the Commonalty, an organization covering an estimated ten million planets;

the human race has occupied two or three spiral arms in total;

the colonized planet Serieve is near the northern edge of the Commonalty's spiral arm;

thus, beyond Serieve is only the galactic halo containing thin gas with little dust and old, widely scattered, globular clusters.

In two different works by James Blish, it seems that random stellar movements have opened a galactic chasm or valley called "the Rift" which is so immense that it is difficult or impossible to traverse it even with the existing faster than light drive. But random movements do not work like that, do they? In conversation, Blish said that he probably had in mind something like the space between two of the spiral arms.

In The Quincunx Of Time (New York, 1983), Blish describes a color-coded photograph, taken from at least ten million light years distance, of the Milky Way and the Magellanic Clouds. A southern area of the disc and the Clouds are colored red and the north is green while gray wanders between them and spreads to the west. The colors are political and need not concern us here but I find it interesting to read of the points of the compass being applied to the galaxy. Earth, in this period called "High Earth," is "...far out on a spiral arm in the red area, near the Clouds..." (p. 95).

In Blish's Mission To The Heart Stars (London, 1980), Jack Loftus views "'...a galactic model or map...'" (pp. 31-32) that appears initially as a glowing sphere, each evenly distributed point of light within it representing a three-hundred-light-years-diametered globular cluster of about a hundred thousand Population One stars. Secondly, the map adds a line representing the galactic equator; thirdly, a central sphere, occupying a fifth of the total and containing individual Population One stars; fourthly, the Heart Stars (a political term), a spindle spreading out along the equator; fifthly, all the remaining Population Two stars, which transform the spindle into a lens stretching across the larger sphere along the equator; sixthly, an equatorial band representing remaining dust from which more Population Two stars may condense.

Rivers of dust run from the rim between the spiral arms towards the Heart Stars. In fact, according to this text, the dark areas between the arms are not empty but are places where the dust conceals the stars. Thus, when that dust has condensed into stars, the Milky Way will join the class of elliptical galaxies.

Poul Anderson's World Without Stars is set in a planetary system in intergalactic space. In Cities In Flight (London, 1981), Blish discloses that it was discovered in 1953 that "...tenuous bridges of stars...connected the galaxies like umbilical chords..." (p. 577). This is mentioned only because at that point in the narrative a planet is flying through intergalactic space. Blish hoped to find a way to incorporate the bridges of stars into an sf story.

Northern Marchmen

Poul Anderson, "Among Thieves," see here.

Again we have compass points in space. See Galactic North And South etc.

"'...despite the fact that interstellar space is three-dimensional and enormous, Norstad guards the northern marches of Civilization.'" (p. 174)

Kolresh seizes a planet in the galactic west, raids one to the north, fights one to the south and allies with one to the east. However, if it by-passes Norstad, the latter will attack it in the rear.

Unduma lectures the Premier on the Terrestrial history of marchmen who guarded civilization against barbarians, then became barbarized and attacked the civilization:

Assyria and Mesopotamia;
Rome and Greece;
Welsh border lords and England;
the Transoxanian Tartars and Persia;
Prussia and western Europe.

Historical outcomes:

Assyria sacked Babylon;
Rome conquered Greece;
Percy rebelled and allied with Owen Glendower;
Tamerlane overthrew Bajazet;
Prussia attacked France;
Norstad-Ostarik will attack Earth.

In Anderson's Technic History, Dennitza nearly rebelled against Terra.

The Milky Way Thread

OK. I am gathering together the posts quoting Poul Anderson's descriptions of the Milky Way. So far, they are:

The Milky Way
Mirkheim Miscellany
The Milky Way From The Dronning Margrete
Finishing Ensign Flandry Again
Mimir And The Milky Way
Descriptions, Including The Milky Way
Three Senses On Aeneas And The Milky Way
 
Any relevant new links will be added below:

Windhome And The Milky Way
Night Sky On Aeneas
The Milky Way As An Icefall
The End Of A Novel II 
Curdled Silver
Supernova Ships And The Milky Way
Across The Milky Way
Bellatrix And The Milky Way
Cairncross And The Milky Way
Icy Sweep And Blue Jewel 
The Milky Way In A Stone In Heaven
Radiant Road
Battle Sun And The Milky Way
The Frosty Glitter Of The Milky Way
Argent Flood Of The Milky Way
Sebastian Tombs And The Milky Way Etc
The Milky Way From Van Rijn's Yacht
Gandarian Street And The Milky Way
Life On Nerthus
The Milky Way And Ginnungagap
Starting The Jumps
Shadow And Milky Way
Constellations And Conscience
The Winter Of The World: Some Details
Concluding Details, Josserek And Van Rijn
The Sigman's Spaceship
Anderson And Blish
Columbus' Egg And The Milky Way
The Sea
Across The Sky
Furniture And Stars
On An Asteroid
Death And Aftermath II
Nebulae And Night
Latin, Poetry And The Milky Way
Olympus Mons And The Milky Way
Guthrie On Demeter And The Milky Way
Home Brew And The Milky Way
Moon And Milky Way
Milky Way And Magellanic Clouds
The Winter Road 
Catastrophe At Hades
A Freakishly Huge Moon
The Farthest Star
Arrival
Mars And The Milky Way
On Mars 
Fenn And Guthrie
The Fleet Of Stars: Concluding Observations From The Current Rereading
The Milky Way And A Moment
Ghostliness And The Milky Way
"Gorgeous Flow" (Julian May)
Some Anderson-May Parallels
An Infinitely Cold Cataract
Orbit Unlimited: A Few Details
Rustum Orbit
The Milky Way On Rustum
Ghost Road
Milky Way, Steak And Revolutionaries  (SM Stirling)
"Home"
The Unexpected And The Cosmic Setting
The Unexpected II
Three Senses In Space
Frosty Cataract
One Frozen Waterfall
Cold, Curdled Milky Way
The Permanent Frontier
The Milky Way Spilled
Mirkheim, Chapter XIX
Mirkheim, The Last Chapter, Continued
Curdled Silver II
Rochefort And The Milky Way
Frostiness And Warmth
Galactic Vastness And The Milky Way
Cosmic Summary
Orichalc And The Ocean Of Stars
A River Of Silver
The Heaven
The Milky Way Cascaded
Several Details In The Devil's Game
The Milky Way; Falkayn's Family
A Beautiful Paragraph
Crowd And Torrent
The Milky Way In An Ebon Mirror
Lost To Sight

A Death-Horse And The Milky Way  

Bo Jonsson, The Milky Way And The Great Bear  

Another Moving Moon And The Milky Way  

Navigating  

Dayspring And Milky Way  

Pale Bridge  

Great Curdled Rush  

A Bit Of The Milky Way  

Steve Matuchek And The Milky Way  

A Tremendous, Upholding Arch And An Ice-Clear Galaxy  

Prayers And The Milky Way  

Valeria Matuchek And The Milky Way  

Escape Velocity At Night  

The Milky Way From The Mesa   

The Galactic Belt And The Moon   

Look At The Milky Way  

Cold Rush  

Undeclared War: Phase 2  

The Ice River And A Cannibal Star  

The Milky Way In The First Century

Kipple, Spirit Trail And Wind 

Lohannaso And The Milky Way

The Galactic Bridge 

Via Lactea

Wild Terai, Then The Milky Way 

Return From Space

"The Milky Way Soared Overhead."

Night On Aerie 

The Galactic Belt And Yet Another Mirkheim! 

Starfarers, Prologue

Nansen's Philosophy

NGC 5460

The Milky Way And A Tree

Pulsar, Bible And Milky Way

Frozen Fire And Glowing Maelstrom

Epiphany And Dread 

Galactic River

The Sea Of Space 

On A Comet 

Angels And Aurigeans

A Silver Band And More Weather

Pale River And Talking Wind

Ghosts, Gods, Time And The Milky Way

The Milky Way From Mercury

Milky Way, Andromeda And Sirius

Some Descriptive Details

Milky Way And Mach Drive

Armies Of Stars

River And Circle

Eagle And Silvery Cataract

North American Union And Diamond Dust

The Temple Of Earth And The Ghostly Glory Of The Milky Way

"Inside Earth"

Wanderer And Night-Bridge

Science And Philosophy

Like Socrates, I value philosophical reflection, not empirical details. However, scientists have shown us that details matter. Poul Anderson quotes two expressions of the second law of thermodynamics in "Science and Creation" (NESFA Vol 2, pp. 456-457). I will try to summarize them:

heat cannot be converted into work without changing something;
heat cannot flow from a body of low temperature to one of high temperature.

The second law's wider applications include entropy which is describable with calculus: when an amount of heat Q is exchanged at temperature T, then the increase of entropy, or of disorder, is equal to the integral of dQ/T. Unfortunately, I have only ever studied the most basic level of school mathematics and have no understanding of calculus, of integrals or of the significance in this context of the symbol "d." I do understand the proof that there is no highest prime number although someone even more ignorant of mathematics than myself denounced this proof as "gobbledegook" merely because he did not understand it. Against stupidity, the gods themselves contend in vain.

Scientific creationists argue that the evolution of complex order would contradict the increase of disorder. However, the spatial diffusion of stellar energy generates a cosmic disorder that is far greater than any temporary order in galactic or biological systems. Anderson argues that, before the Big Bang, energy was not chaotic but concentrated and is now scattering. What preceded the concentration? Did anything?

The northernmost point is the North Pole. If we travel to that Pole and keep going, then we travel not further north but south although in a different hemisphere. Might the earliest moment be a "Past Pole" such that, if we traveled to it and kept going, then we would travel futureward although through a different volume of space? The question "What was before the earliest moment?" must be as contradictory as "What is north of the North Pole?" Maybe there was not anything before the singularity or random quantum fluctuation generating the space and energy that inflated to become the expanding universe?

Far Future Conflict

Genesis, PART TWO, VIII.

The robot Brannock addresses Kalava and his men:

"'Hear me. There is war in heaven. I am cast away from a battle, and enemy hunters may find me at any time. I carry a word that must, it is vital that it reach a certain place, a...a holy mountain in the north. Will you give aid?'" (p. 203)

Brannock reflects to himself:

"This must be a business of high importance; and the implications went immensely further, a secession from the galactic brain. His job was to get the information to Wayfarer." (p. 208)

I would not have thought that conflict was possible between post-organic intelligences as described but Poul Anderson finds a way: a secession from the galactic brain.

Ilyanda the Vilku wisely asks Brannock how they can know that he is of the gods but he proves that he is from the stars by displaying his knowledge of the usually cloud-hidden sky: the constellations, the ecliptic, the precession and the Great Comet. The Vilkui know of these things through centuries of observation.

"'...he is from the stars. Trust him. We, we dare not do otherwise.'" (p. 203)

As a matter of fact, the galactic brain might judge that Gaia was wrong to re-create humanity. On the other hand, the solution would not be extermination.

Interstellar Relations In The Local Civilization-Cluster

Poul Anderson, After Doomsday, CHAPTER SIX.

"The hot F6 dwarf that was Kandemir's sun lay about 175 light-years from Vorlak, northwards and clockwise." (p. 63)

We have had compass points in the galaxy before, e.g., see Galactic North And South.

On Kandemir, nomads became spacefarers whereas, on Vorlak, seafarers became spacefarers. Some planetary ways of life adapt more easily than others to space travel.

When T'sjudan explorers had found Kandemir, many Kandemirians went to space not only as students or workers but also as mercenaries for imperial powers like T'sjuda or Xo. Then Kandemir built its own empire, defeating T''sjuda. Ferzhakan, grandson of Ashchiza the Great, hopes to conquer the spiral arm.

An opposing coalition dominated by the Vorlakka Dragar stopped the nomad fleet at the Battle of Gresh but this was followed by a long war of attrition with Monwaing, officially neutral, encouraging Vorlak.

What difference will Terrestrial mercenaries working for Vorlak make?

Northwest Of Sol

See Galactic North And South.

In Poul Anderson's The Avatar, a spaceship leaves the Solar System by orbiting around a T machine. In space, the vast number of visible stars crowds out and conceals familiar constellations. On the one hand, astronauts are trained to recognize constellations even in space. On the other hand, they are no longer in the Solar System. However, extragalactic objects are unchanged and, after a while, the astronauts think that they are able to discern a few of the constellations, albeit altered. They deduce that they have traveled to a point between one hundred and five hundred light years "...northwest of Sol." (VIII, p. 72) Here again, we find compass points in the galaxy: immense distances but nevertheless an almost parochial system of orientation.

Earth Seen From Space

Poul Anderson, "The Chapter Ends" IN Anderson, Starship (New York, 1982), pp. 253-281 AT pp. 256-257.

Jorun sees Earth from space:

"It was blue as it turned before his eyes, a burnished turquoise shield blazoned with the living green and brown of its lands, and the poles were crowned with a glimmering haze of aurora. The belts that streaked its face and blurred the continents were cloud, wind and water and the gray rush of rain, like a benediction from heaven." (pp. 256-257)

Can Jorun see Earth turning? I count four colors: blue/turquoise; green; brown; gray - plus the colors of the aurora. Jorun sees not only the planet but also its weather and other atmospheric phenomena.

"Beyond the planet hung its moon, a scarred golden crescent, and he had wondered how many generations of men had looked up to it, or watched its light like a broken bridge across moving waters." (p. 257)

Has the Moon been compared to a bridge before? After this brief visit by Jorun and his colleagues, mankind will leave the Solar System and the galactic periphery forever. Thus, this is very nearly a last farewell. It reminds us of a similar farewell in Anderson's "Flight to Forever." When the Moon has fallen to Earth and Earth now turns one face to the sun, a time traveler thinks:

"So good-by, Sol... Good-by, and thank you for many million years of warmth and light. Sleep well, old friend."
-Poul Anderson, "Flight to Forever" IN Anderson, Past Times (New York, 1984), pp. 207-288 AT p. 284.

"Against the enormous cold of the sky - utter black out to the distant coils of the nebulae, thronging with a million frosty points of diamond-hard blaze that were the stars - Earth had stood as a sign of haven." (p. 257)

We have to remember that Jorun has just flown across thirty thousand light years without a spaceship. Imagine swimming (somehow) across the Atlantic and seeing land. Of course the original home planet of mankind looks like a haven.

"To Jorun, who came from Galactic center and its uncountable host of suns, heaven was bare, this was the outer fringe where the stars thinned away toward hideous immensity." (ibid.)

Of course, apparently empty space is really full of unperceived electromagnetic and gravitational energy. CS Lewis' Ransom Trilogy replaces the conventional idea of cold, empty space with the semi-theological concept of "Deep Heaven," full of life-giving energy, whereas the scientific reality is that cosmic radiation is omnipresent but lethal:

Ransom en route to Mars experiences space as filled with a life-giving radiance whereas Haertel on the same journey knows that cosmic radiation is lethal.
-copied from here. 

"He had shivered a little, drawn the envelope of air and warmth closer about him, with a convulsive movement. The silence drummed in his head." (ibid.)

Two more sensations: shivering and silence.

"Then he streaked for the north-pole rendezvous of his group." (ibid.)

We commented on Jorun's self-propelled flight here.

Genesis: Climax

Kalava's contribution is crucial at the climax of Poul Anderson's Genesis (New York, 2001). Without his arrival on Mount Mindhome, Gaia, having changed Brannock's memories, would have successfully concealed her Frankenstein experiment from Wayfarer. By "Frankenstein experiment," I mean, of course, the creation of human life, not the making of monsters, although the former includes the latter.

Mary Shelley wrote the first modern science fiction novel, Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus. The role of science and whether it can or should be used not only to control but even to create life is clearly a consistent theme from Frankenstein to Genesis. (And Frankenstein's monster identifies with the Miltonic Adam who is an epic elaboration of the Adam in the Biblical Genesis.)

Brannock had advised Kalava:

"'Think of [Gaia] as a sorceress who deceives [Wayfarer] with clever talk, with songs and illusions, while her agents go about in the world.'" (p. 211)

Brannock is not lying. That is the most accurate description of Gaia that he can give in Kalava's language and it serves for practical purposes. Brannock continues:

"'My word will show him what the truth is.'" (ibid.)

That is the point. To get Brannock's word to Wayfarer, which Kalava does. Since Kalava is living inside a fantasy "Quest," we might wonder whether something like the real relationship between Wayfarer and Gaia could be the truth behind other stories of gods, heroes and sorcerers?

Brannock, after hesitating, describes Mindhome to Kalava and his companions as "'...a holy mountain in the north.'" (p. 203) The mountain has not as yet been revered by the new human race, who have not even known of it until now, but, again, this is the most appropriate description. When Kalava reaches the summit above the clouds, he thinks:

"Brannock had related truth...Upon it stood the demons - or the gods - and their works." (p. 237)

There are shapes that a twenty first century man might not recognize as buildings or machines: a rainbow, webs, nets, "...ashimmer, aripple, apulse..." (ibid.)

"Ilyandi had said Brannock was of the gods whom she served, her star-gods..." (ibid.)

At this stage of social development, there is not as yet any differentiation to be made between an astronomer and a star-god worshiper. But the astronomy is real. Brannock reflects:

"...the woman Ilyandi had an excellent knowledge of naked-eye astronomy. Given the rarity of clear skies, that meant many lifetimes of patient observation, record-keeping, and logic, which must include mathematics comparable to Euclid's." (p. 210)

I could not do it. I am a philosopher, not an empirical scientist. But this is why knowledge is specialized. There are powerful intelligences at some of the stars. They do not need Ilyandi's service but their quest for knowledge is also hers.

Laurinda leaves Gaia and accompanies Christian in Wayfarer back to Alpha where we are told that they will live only as memories:

"...what they were will be together, as one, and will live on, unforgotten." (p. 248)

Never forgotten? Real post-cosmic stuff? (p. 107) The galactic brain is only in its infancy (p. 101). Later, it will be able to do better for its human uploads, to give them holidays in emulations like that Surrey estate but without the moral problem of emulated underpaid servants:

"Gaia lacked both the data and the capability necessary to model the entire universe...Powers of that order lay immensely far in the future, if they would ever be realized." (p. 145)

But, given all time, knowledge and energy, why not?

What will the other nodes do about Gaia's new human race? Neither exterminate it nor round it up into a reservation. With their greater resources, they will be able to make a better job of what Gaia has already been doing: discretely guide individuals so that society can be helped towards a stable high technology civilization able to escape from the expanding Sun.

Gaia does not want Arctica colonized yet because human nearness to her physical centrum would lead to:

"'Chaos. The unforeseeable, the uncontrollable.'" (p. 242)

This is ironic because, as Wayfarer reminds her, she is loosing chaos by recreating humanity. And, in Poul Anderson's fiction, it is those who prefer foreseeability and controllability to chaos who are clearly making the wrong choice.

Genesis:

connects back to Frankenstein and to Olaf Stapledon's Star Maker;

is a culmination of a sequence of American future histories - the Future History, the Psychotechnic History, the Technic History, the Harvest of Stars tetralogy;

is at the same time a fresh work, not a mere copy or repetition of any of its predecessors;

ends a billion years in the future with the galactic brain in its infancy and a new human race colonizing the Arctican continent.

Posthistory?

The background of Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series allows for futuristic sf stories set on or off Earth in a galactic context over the next million years. However, that is just the background. The purpose of the series is to present historical sf. Unattached agent Manse Everard based in the second half of the twentieth century is told that he has become one of the most important Patrolmen operating in the last three millennia. We see him in post-Roman Britain, ancient Persia, pre-Columban North America, the Second Punic War etc.

Thus, it surprised me when Everard claimed to "'...have kicked around history, prehistory and even posthistory, quite a lot.'" (Time Patrol, p. 386)

Posthistory? The Danellian Era, which is forbidden? The Era of Oneness that precedes the Danellians? Or does he just mean future history, that which comes after what we usually call "history" and "the present"? If he means future history, then it is hard to imagine Everard operating effectively in interplanetary or interstellar periods. Surely missions in such periods should be entrusted to agents born later? On the other hand, his Academy training did cover fifty thousand years of weaponry from Bronze Age rapiers to cyclic blasts because "...he might be called into other periods..." (p. 12) He was also "...taught...to handle spaceships..." (p. 13) by a veteran of the Martian War of 3890. So maybe Everard does have future adventures but we just don't see them?

"...posthistory..." is another of those tantalizing hints that make the Time Patrol series so intriguing.

Hopewell

In haste en route to Christmas Eve party. Will extend this post later. Poul Anderson fans, please correct me when I get something wrong. I have spotted one definite error...

Later:

See here.

The error is that Hopewell was mentioned in "A Sun Invisible" and in Mirkheim. It must be difficult to appreciate all of the interconnections in Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization on a single reading. I notice many of the internal cross-references because I continually reread and blog about the series.

For example, Vixenite colonists, like Donarrians and Ymirites, feature in the Imperial period of the History and therefore are appropriately referenced in Mirkheim which was written later although set earlier.

The Seven In Space (see here)
Galactic Developments
XT Systems
Interstar Transport
Sanchez Engineering
Stellar Metals
Timebinders Insurance
Abdallah Enterprises

Abdallah Enterprises guards its centrum on Hopewell with a single orbiting corvette which is unexpectedly attacked by the Hermetian destroyer, North Atlantis. Because the approaching destroyer beams a warning, the corvette replies with missiles and an energy beam. The Hermetian dodges, disintegrates the pursuing torpedoes, then counterattacks with an energy weapon and pursues the fleeing corvette while destroying or diverting missiles and absorbing cannon shots until the survivors surrender.

Meanwhile, Muddlin' Through enters atmosphere with Falkayn broadcasting that the Free Hermetian Navy is about to destroy the installations of a company that has conspired with the Baburites. With Falkayn steering and van Rijn manning the weapons control turret, Muddlin' Through destroys a swarm of defense aircraft, lets staff evacuate the centrum, then destroys it with a fifty kiloton torpedo. Centrum becomes crater.

Again the theme of the novel: looking down at the centrum's "...splendid towers..." before destroying them, Falkayn thinks:

"This was a grand era in its way. I too will miss it."
-Poul Anderson, Rise Of The Terran Empire (New York, 2011), p. 266.

Change II

See Change.

Science fiction is about change:

a short story can show a single technological advance affecting society (Heinlein: nuclear power; Asimov: robots; Niven: organ-legging);

a futuristic novel shows society changing over time (Wells' The Sleeper Wakes: global industrial capitalism; The Time Machine: devolution of social classes);

a future history series shows further changes over time (Heinlein: space travel but also social regression; Asimov and Anderson: interstellar imperial rise and fall and human-AI interactions);

Wells technologized warfare with tanks, aircraft and atomic bombs;

the first five installments of Heinlein's Future History each focus on a single technological advance, although the first is suppressed;

Anderson's History of Technic Civilization covers the rise and fall of post-Western, interstellar Technic Civilization with additional information on one earlier and two later interstellar civilizations;

Anderson's Time Patrol series dips in and out of Terrestrial history and prehistory -

the Oligocene
the transition from the Miocene to the Pliocene
the Pleistocene
Beringia
ancient Persia
Bactria
the Roman Empire
Goths and Germans
post-Roman Britain
the Middle Ages
pre-Columbian North America
the nineteenth century
Victorian London
World War II
late twentieth century New York and Amsterdam
a lunar base in 2319
galactic conflict in 19352 AD
hints about many other future periods -

- but not Technic Civilization. These are different fictional universes. Each is a complete, self-sufficient series - worthy successors respectively of Heinlein's Future History and of Wells' The Time Machine. Everyone has at least heard of The Time Machine. The phrase has entered the language. Anyone who wants to know more about the literature of change should at least check Heinlein and Anderson.

Summarizing significant science fiction always feels fresh, which is why I keep doing it.

Revisiting Geological Eras

Poul Anderson treats us to:

the Psychotechnic Institute;

the Polesotechnic League;

Technic civilization;

the inappropriately entitled The Psychotechnic League;

the Paleotechnic geological era (mass extinction)!

The Paleotechnic must have been preceded by the Neotechnic?

Anderson's Time Patrolmen visit, e.g., the Pleistocene and the Pleiocene, and other time travelers visit elsewhen, but none of them share with us any detailed information about future Epochs, Eons, Eras or Periods so it is the nodes of the galactic brain in Genesis who inform us of the Paleotechnic.

In the period of Wayfarer and Kalava, there is an Arctican continent with geographical features known only to Gaia:

the Coast Range;
the Remnant River;
the Bountiful Valley;
the Boreal Mountains (with naked rock peaks);
the Rainbowl Lake;
the forested Mount Mindhome, hiding Gaia's physical centrum in clouds.

The centrum: dome, towers, silver spiderwebs, mobile units, darting and hovering flyers, shimmering air, force fields, quantum waves, microscopic and submicroscopic entities. (Kalava knows "'...old tales of monstrous things glimpsed from afar.'" (Genesis, p. 115))

Approaching from space, Wayfarer gets a god's eye glimpse of territory that we have already seen from a human point of view:

the mainly green fringe of a large continent stretching east-west;
"...a stretch of sea..." with maybe "...something peculiar on it..." (p. 128);
the circumpolar landmass;
a globe entirely unlike the one Brannock remembers.

Plate tectonics have slowed. Radioactivity and core heat have declined. But geological processes continue. Arctica broke free (from where?), drifted north, collided with other land and lifted the Boreals. Gaia and Brannock remember the Earth that was.

Gods And Galaxies

Poul Anderson wrote heroic fantasies with gods as characters and hard sf about galactic exploration. When reading, in "Starfog," about a space-suited explorer on a lifeless planet in a globular cluster near the edge of another spiral arm of the galaxy millennia in the future, it is impossible to believe that gods can exist in that same universe. In fact, such beings belong in a prescientific cosmology. The way out of Midgard was not up and out into space but north to Utgard or over the rainbow to Asgard. Galaxies beyond ours were confirmed in 1922, a hundred years ago.

Can a single work of the imagination encompass both gods and galaxies? An intervention by Thor in a story like "Starfog" would destroy the integrity of a hard sf narrative. Such a narrative should proceed from start to finish entirely by its own logic. But reality is vaster than any single kind of narrative. Anderson's works present a multiverse with an inter-universal inn patronized by Nicholas van Rijn from the same universe as "Starfog" and also by characters who have met gods in other universes.

In James Blish's The Day after Judgement, characters who have seen demons nevertheless find it hard to believe that such beings exist when they are travelling in a jet aircraft. Blish shows an ultimate conflict between the technological and the supernatural. The Strategic Air Command attacks Dis when that demon city has been raised to the Earth's surface in Death Valley.

The Permanent Frontier

Technic civilization has a permanent frontier. Le Matelot tells us that we (not everyone), "...sailing out among the stars...," are:

discoverers;
pioneers;
traders;
missionaries;
composers of epic and saga;
bolder than earlier generations;
ambitious;
individualistic;

- and that some have become:

greedy;
callous;
disregarding of the morrow;
violent;
bandits.

"Such is the nature of societies possessed of, and by, a frontier."
-Poul Anderson, INTRODUCTION: HIDING PLACE IN Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (Riverdale, NY, 2009), pp. 555-556 AT p. 555.

In an interstellar society, it would be possible to live permanently on the frontier, always moving ahead of the advancing wave of civilization, as if North America never reached the Pacific but receded to infinity. New kinds of natives would be encountered at every stage. In an almost uncharted sector of this galactic arm:

"'Our intelligence reports, interrogation of prisoners, evaluation of explorers' observations, and so on, all indicate that three or four different species in this region possess the hyperdrive. The Adderkops themselves aren't certain about all of them.'"
-"Hiding Place," pp. 557-609 AT p. 567.

So it must be like that all around the galaxy: many hyperdrive-possesssing species, interacting routinely with several other civilizations while merely detecting evidence of many more.

Van Rijn needs:

in civilized volumes of space, good managers and routineers;

for the bypassed, but as yet unexplored, regions within the boundaries of known space, trade pioneer crews;

for "'...the wild places...,'" innovators "'...what can meet wholly new problems in unholy new ways...'" ("Esau," p. 552)

A good pun on "wholly" and "holy."

We have found a new description of the Milky Way:

"...the sky was aswarm with small frosty fires, across blackness unclouded and endless. The Milky Way girdled it with cool silver, a nebula glowed faint and green, another galaxy spiraled on the mysterious edge of visibility."
-"Hiding Place," p. 599.

Recognizing stars that lie in the direction of Earth and Ramanujan, Torrance remembers "...blue Mount Gandhi." (pp. 598-599)

Merseians And The Draka

See here.

Kinds of Regimes
democracies or dictatorships
real or sham democracies
flexible or inflexible regimes

Poul Anderson's Merseian Roidhunate and SM Stirling's Domination of the Draka cannot change their basic policies. The Roidhunate regards diplomacy as war by other means. Thus, in war or peace, the goals remain racial supremacy and galactic domination. Clearly, Terrestrial Intelligence needs to know this. If Merseian peace negotiators were honest, then they would require a reciprocal response. However, Anderson shows us that such an approach to the Merseians would be fatal. But this is fiction. In real life, how many intelligence services learn their enemies' real motivations and how many instead are driven by the ideological presuppositions of their own ruling elites? I suspect that there are more of the latter.

The Draka cannot invade North America immediately. Therefore, they expect their grandchildren or great-grandchildren to do so, and plan accordingly. There is no way that any vote in the Draka Assembly will change this:

"'...if there's one thing the Eurasian War showed so's even a Yankee couldn't miss it, it was exactly what the Domination is an' what we intend. The Alliance will hold; we may be able to convince a few useful idiots of our peaceful intent, but not enough to matter. Pity.'"
-SM Stirling, Under The Yoke (New York, 1989), p. 115.

Useful idiots? Knowing that that was what they thought would certainly harden positions against them. 

On Merseia and in Drakia, education incorporating military training is one practical application of a supremacist philosophy, the only difference being that Merseian females do not fight...

Pale River And Talking Wind

The War Of Two Worlds, VI.

"She looked up toward the sky, where the Great Bear wheeled and Andromeda's nebula was a tiny whorl of silver impossibly far away and the Galactic belt's clustered suns ran like a pale river between the constellations." (p. 57)

I quote this passage because it is yet another description of the Milky Way that I seem to have missed before.

This chapter nearly concludes with another familiar theme:

"That night we slept on pine boughs with the wind talking in the trees overhead." (p. 59)

What did the wind talk about?

This has been an interlude. The text must return to the action. The very last sentence of the chapter reads:

"Our interlude was ended, and we started out next day for the new capital of North America." (ibid.)

Addendum: I had not missed that description of the Milky Way. It is here.

The Time Patrol Timeline

The Oligocene.	The Patrol Academy exists for half a million years in the American West, then is carefully demolished. Babylonian recruits cannot understand time travel and have to be given a battle-of-the-gods routine. An ancient Roman does not understand that a machine cannot be treated like a horse. Stephen and Helen Tamberly meet at the Academy. Everard meets Whitcomb and Elizabeth Gray. Wanda Tamberly meets Tu Sequeira, from Mars in the Solar Commonwealth, who will monitor early spacefaring. The Academy is the venue for an emergency conference to deal with the Punic timeline.
31,275,389 BC.	Wanda Tamberly, training at the Academy, is interviewed by Guion who is investigating the possibility of temporal changes not caused by time travellers.
Miocene-Pliocene transition.	A Patrolwoman from the First Matriarchy makes a full-sensory record of the Atlantic flowing into the Mediterranean. Tom Nomura rescues and marries her.
The Pleistocene.	A Patrol lodge in the Pyrenees employs Cro-Magnon guides. Half an hour after departing for 1960, Unattached Agents Everard and Van Sarawak return to the lodge from a timeline where Carthage won the Second Punic War.
18,244 BC.	The Pleistocene lodge is the venue for emergency conferences to deal with two divergent timelines. Wanda Tamberly and Keith Denison return from the European theocracy of 1989alpha AD.
15,926 BC.	A Patrol ranch in pre-human North America.
15,000 BC-900 AD.	Stephen and Helen Tamberly holiday in archaic Japan.
13,212 BC.	The Paleo-Indians cross Beringia, observed by Patrol Specialists Ralph Corwin and Wanda Tamberly.
2937-2930 BC.	Patrolman Stephen Tamberly, marooned in South America by Luis Castelar, duplicates contemporaneous Japanese pottery.
2930 BC.	Guillem Cisneros of the Universarium of Halla solves the archaeological mystery of the Valdivia ware and rescues Tamberly.
1765 BC.	A Patrol base in a vault under the Babylon of Hammurabi. Disguised and guided, Denison and Mikelian tour the city after tracking Indo-European migrations.
c.1550-1292 BC.	Unattached Patrol Agent Komozino investigates the disappearance of an expedition from her home millennium that was seeking cultural inspiration in the Egyptian Eighteenth Dynasty. Patrol bases in 1137 AD contact her about their crisis.
c.1300 BC.	Everard and Cynthia Cunningham holiday in pre-human Hawaii.
c.1040-597 BC.	Epsilon Korten from twenty-ninth century New Edom on Mars directs Jerusalem Base which is responsible for temporal traffic in Hebrew lands from the birth of David to the fall of Judah.
950 BC.	Exaltationist time criminals threaten to destroy Tyre. Zakarbaal (Chaim Zorach) and his wife are Patrol agents in Tyre. Everard recruits Pummairam, who expects to battle wizards in a strange realm, and captures Varagan but the latter's clone mate, Raor, remains at large.
500's BC.	Keith Denison, Patrol Specialist in East Indo-European Proto-History, traces the migration of Aryan clans.
578 BC.	Everard and Denison prevent the murder of the infant Cyrus, thus also preventing Denison's sixteen years as a surrogate Cyrus.
542 BC.	(Everard, investigating the disappearance of Keith Denison, receives hospitality from Croesus, then learns that Cyrus the Great is Keith Denison.)
218 BC.	Neldorian time criminals intervene, and the Patrol counter-intervenes, in the Battle of Ticinus.
213 BC.	Plautus' Asinaria is first performed. The date and the exact text do not agree with what later scholars recorded. Guion thinks that this indicates instability in that section of history.
209 BC.	Patrolman Benegal Dass has spent and will spend widely separated decades watching the growth and death of a city now threatened by Exaltationists. However, Everard captures the remaining Exaltationists, including Raor.
c.5 BC - 30 AD.	The Patrol must know what happened but we are not told. However, Carl later reflects that he cannot in honesty argue either for heathenism or for Christ. On the other hand, it is possible that Koch is a sincere Catholic.
22-37 AD.	Patrol Specialist Janne Floris lives for fifteen years with the Frisii, marries and bears two children.
43 AD.	Patrol intervention accidentally initiates a Goddess movement that, without further Patrol intervention, would prevent Northern Europeans from converting to Christianity. Everard visits Carl and Laurie Farness at the Patrol's Polynesian resort.
49 AD.	Patrol ethnographer Jens Ulstrup has spent twelve years as Domar among the Langobardi.
70-95 AD.	After Everardus the Goth has initiated peace negotiations between Civilis and Cerialis, Janne Floris, appearing as the goddess, helps the pagan prophetess Veleda to re-conceive her deity as peaceful.
Early 100's AD.	Time travelling sociologists studying Rome find a copy of Tacitus' Histories that differs from the standard version.
300-372 AD.	Carl visits four generations of his Gothic descendants.
372 AD.	Wodan appears and betrays his followers as described in the Volsungasaga.
458-461 AD.	Stane from 2987 tries to re-organise post-Roman Britain. Killed by unknowns, he is buried with his belongings in a barrow.
900's.	Jean-Louis Broussard from the 24th century is a Patrol observer in France.
985 or 986 AD.	Everard accompanies Bjarni Herjulfsson to Vinland.
The Middle Ages.	Stalemate in church-state conflict prevents either theocracy or autocracy, allowing the growth of freedom and science.
1137 AD.	Patrol milieu headquarters for the Holy Roman Empire are in Mainz. The director is Otto Koch whose "servant"/assistant is Karel Novak.
1137AD (and 1137alpha AD).	Space-time-energy fluctuates as Guion feared. (Events occurring in divergent timelines would have to be listed separately. Also, although they were visited, very little is known about the divergent timelines.)
(1137alpha AD.)	(King Roger of Sicily dies in battle. Emil Volstrup, Patrolman in Palermo, knows that Roger should live for nearly twenty years...)
1140 AD.	The Patrol base in Palermo is expanded from a one-man operation when Norman Sicily gains importance.
1146 AD.	The Patrol kills a knight who interacts with so many important figures that small changes in his career have major effects on medieval politics.
c.1160/65-1225 AD.	Ma Yuan, Chinese painter. The exact objects depicted on one of his scrolls are another of Guion's instabilities.
1196 AD.	Stefan Nemanya, Grand Zhupan of Serbia, abdicates. Another of Guion's instabilities.
1198 AD.	Patrol milieu headquarters move from Mainz to Rome.
1200's AD.	Amerindian Patrol Specialist John Sandoval traces Native American history, including Athabascan migrations.
1280 AD.	Mongol expedition to North America.
1287-1307 AD.	Boniface Reynaud establishes himself as Reinault Bodel, wool dealer in Harfleur, chief seaport of Northern France, where he directs Patrol operations headquarters. Timecycles arrive in a locked dockside shed.
1295-1307 AD.	Patrolman Hugh Marlow rises in the Knights Templar.
1307 AD.	The Templars are suppressed but their fleet escapes.
1524 AD.	Exaltationists try to prevent the civil war that made it easy for Pizarro to conquer the Incas.
1533 AD.	Exaltationists try to steal Atahualpa's ransom but instead kidnap Conquistador Luis Castelar and Patrolman Stephen Tamberly.
1536 AD.	Time vehicles are glimpsed above the siege of Cuzco.
1589-1613 AD.	Everard and Cynthia Cunningham go to the theatre in London.
1610 AD.	At Machu Picchu, Castelar and Tamberly escape from Exaltationists on a timecycle. The Patrol attacks the Exaltationists.
1638-1715 AD.	Reign of Louis XIV. An agent recruited from this period is assigned to the same milieu. The Patrol has few recruits from before the First Industrial Revolution.
1731 AD.	On Good Friday, a time traveller records Bach's St Mark's Passion in Leipzig Cathedral.
1800's.	Everard and Cynthia Cunningham waltz in Vienna.
1826 AD.	Simon Bolivar receives bad advice - from an Exaltationist. Everard's first meeting with the Exaltationist leader Merau Varagan who escapes in a causal loop.
1843 AD.	Everard and the Farnesses see Lola Montez in Paris.
1850-2000 AD.	The period covered by Patrol headquarters 1890-1910 with smaller offices in other decades.
1850 AD.	Charles Whitcomb, formerly of the RAF and the Time Patrol, and his wife Mary settle down in Victorian England.
1856 AD.	Helen Tamberly born in Cambridge.
1858 AD.	At the Friedrick Wilhelm University in Berlin, Carl, reporting to Patrol agent Professor Herbert Ganz, displays a 3D recording of his meeting with Ulfilas, the Arian Apostle to the Goths.
1864 AD.	Emil Volstrup born in Copenhagen.
1873 AD.	Helen Tamberly orphaned, studies classics, later recruited by the Patrol.
1875 AD.	Cowboy Jack Hall recruited by the Patrol.
1880's AD.	Because Helen Tamberly would not like Stephen's birthtime, they live on York Place (crossing Baker St) in Victorian London, Stephen as an American employee of Dalhousie and Roberts. Helen studies the Ionic colonies in the seventh and sixth centuries BC, interpreting reports from Patrol observers. Next, they might live as Spanish colonials while he directs other researchers for several decades.
1885 AD.	Everard, investigating the disappearance of Stephen Tamberly in 1533, visits Dalhousie and Roberts for a second time.
1890's AD.	Everard knows a New York saloon that sets out a magnificent free lunch.
1890-1910 AD.	Patrol milieu headquarters in London, Moscow and Peiping.
1891 AD.	Otto Koch born in Germany.
1894 AD.	Time shuttle fuel chest discovered in an ancient British barrow. Dalhousie and Roberts, Importers (the Patrol's London base) must prevent assassination of Queen Victoria. Mainwethering of the Patrol would like to engage a private inquiry agent but the only worthwhile one is too clever and might detect time travel.
1895 AD.	Ralph Corwin born.
1908 AD.	Agop Mikelian recruited by the Patrol after the massacre at Van.
1910 AD.	Will Rogers teaches Everard lassoing.
1912 AD.	The Irish-American Altamont penetrates a German spy ring but might also uncover the Patrol military studies group and must be diverted.
1914 AD.	Otto Koch, studying medieval history, is called into the German army.
1917 AD.	German steals time machine and goes to 1894 to murder Queen Victoria.
1918 or 1919 AD.	Otto Koch, adrift after the war, recruited by the Patrol.
1920's-1930's AD.	Corwin studies American Indian anthropology before joining the Patrol.
1924 AD.	Everard born in the US Midwest.
1925 AD.	Wanda and Manse have dinner in Paris and a drink in the Deux Magots two tables away from two of Wanda's literary idols.
1927 AD.	Keith Denison born.
1930's AD.	After Carl is recruited to the Patrol, he and his wife opt to live in 1930's New York. Carl's visits to 300-372 are supervised by Everard from 1980.
1930 AD.	John Sandoval born.
1936-1945 AD.	Patrollers studying the earliest stages of spacefaring work their way into Peenemunde.
1936 AD.	Stephen Tamberly born.
1941-1982 AD.	Patrollers monitoring early spacefaring work their way into White Sands.
1942-1945 AD.	Everard is a lieutenant in the US Army Engineers.
1943 AD.	Everard knows a girl in Streatham who later marries someone else.
1944 AD.	Everard defies the Patrol and the Danellians by helping Whitcomb who has gone to London in a recovered Ing time shuttle to prevent his fiancee, Mary Nelson, from being killed in an air raid. A Danellian intervenes and Everard is promoted to Unattached status in the Patrol.
1945-1954 AD.	Everard, a mechanical engineer, has design and production experience in America, Sweden and Arabia before responding to a job ad for "Engineering Studies Co."
1947 AD.	Tom Nomura born.
c.1950's-1960's.	Everard and Cynthia Cunningham visit bars in "Tom Lehrer's New York."
1950's AD.	John Sandoval fights in Korea, goes through college on the GI bill and joins the Patrol.
1950 AD.	Denison completes his PhD in Anthropology after taking a collegiate boxing championship and crossing the Atlantic in a thirty-foot ketch. Drafted to Korea. Karel Novak, on the run from the Czechoslovakian government, is hidden by an acquaintance who persuades him to take curious tests and recruits him to the Patrol. A young black woman recruited in Jamaica will be part of the team that rescued Everard from Exaltationists at a temple outside Bactria, 209 BC. Janne Floris born.
1952 AD.	Everard visits Amsterdam. Denison, discharged from the US Army, recruited to the Patrol.
1954-1990 AD.	Everard maintains an apartment in New York for at least this long. It acquires Bronze Age spears and a helmet, also a polar bear rug given to Everard by Bjarni Herjulfsson. Cynthia Denison (nee Cunningham), John Sandoval and Guion visit the apartment.
1954 AD.	Manson Everard recruited. Just back from training at the Academy, he reads about "...the singular contents of an ancient British barrow."
1955- AD.	Patrollers studying early spacefaring work their way into Tyuratam.
1965 AD.	Wanda Tamberly, Stephen's niece, is born. Wanda Tamberly from 1990 visits Corwin in Berkeley.
1968 AD.	Stephen Tamberly takes tests and finds that he has been recruited into the Patrol.
1970 AD.	Following advice given by Shalten in 1987, Everard posing as a tourist reconnoitres the terrain in preparation for his mission to the Greek kingdom of Bactria in 209 BC.
1971 AD.	Chaim Zorach, working as an archaeologist in Israel, meets his future wife, Yael.
1972 AD.	Tom Nomura recruited to the Patrol in San Francisco. Physicist Elizabeth Gray recruited.
1975 AD.	The Zorachs are recruited into the Patrol.
1980 AD.	Carl Farness, who must play the role of Wodan, is recruited by the Patrol.
1980-'81 AD.	Keith and Cynthia Denison start new identities in Paris.
1985 AD.	Laying a trap for the Exaltationists, Shalten of the Patrol plants fake evidence about Bactria, then, later in his experience, removes the evidence so there are records of mutually inconsistent events in Afghanistan.
1986 AD.	Everard re-visits Amsterdam on a Patrol case. Willem Ten Brink manages the export-import firm that fronts for the Patrol's Amsterdam office and is chief of Patrol operations in that corner of Europe.
May, 1987 AD.	Everard rescues Wanda from Castelar and recruits her to the Patrol.
September, 1987 AD.	Castelar kidnaps Wanda Tamberly from the Galapagos.
1998 AD.	Everard lends his apartment to an operative who needs such a base.
1990 AD.	A Danellian reveals the real meaning of the Patrol to Manse Everard and Wanda Tamberly. Manse and Wanda begin a holiday, interrupted by Manse's mission to 1307.
2000's.	Mainwethering from Victorian London visits the twenty first century. Hassan, an Iraqi recruited to the Patrol, will work at the ranch in 15,926 BC.
2100's.	Andean Resurgence; Inca revival. Andean Patrol agent Julio Vasquez born.
2200's.	Insulsynth.
c.2207.	Boniface Reynaud born.
2300's.	Van Sarawak born in a pioneer society on Venus. Birth of Jean-Louis Broussard, a Patrol observer in tenth century France.
2319.	A hospital with artificial gravity on the Moon.
2800's.	New Edom on Mars; Second Asteroid War.
2900's.	Rozher Schtein (Stane) and Guillem Cisneros born. Interplanetary wars; Venus attacks Earth; blast-ray guns; synthrope; trade with the Saturnian System.
2987.	Disappearance of a trader from the Ing Empire and his time shuttle; Patrol notified.
post-2987.	Interregnum; secret of synthrope lost; Ing Empire; trader leaves for 2987 to barter raw materials for synthrope.
3100's.	Genetic engineering in the Saturnian System.
3700's.	Coordinator Stanel V, the Great Experimenter; colonies reproducing past societies.
3890.	Martian War; Guidance Corps on Earth; First Matriarchy soon.
9573.	Dard Kelm, Patrol Academy tutor, born.
11511.	The Morennian Triumph.
19352 AD, the 7841st year of the Morennian Triumph.	The Chorite Heresiarchy breaks up. Commercial and genetic rivalry on a galactic scale. The Nine discover time travel. The Danellians appear and found the Patrol.
30,000's.	Exaltationist princes, genetically engineered for adventure on the cosmic frontier, seize power, lose it and flee on stolen timecycles.
204,000's.	Neldor; an age of time bandits.
Undated:	Everard's viking Scandinavian mission. Chrysopolis on Mars. Venusian Renaissance. Scientific Renaissance. Three Technological Renaissances. Patrol suppression of the Trazon matter transmuter during the third Technological Renaissance. Three Matriarchies. Solar Commonwealth. The Cold Centuries; weather control systems. The Universarium of Halla. Home eras of Komozino, Guion and Shalten.
pre-1,000,000.	Era of Oneness.
post-1,000,000's.	Danellians, our evolutionary successors, the High Command of the Time Patrol.

Email address: paul