The Golden Gate Revisited

See The Golden Gate and The Golden Gate Bridge.

I began to draft a post on peaceful cooperation between diverse intelligent species in Poul Anderson's works as against his (also very good) military sf. It occurred to me that perhaps the highest form of cooperation was conversion to each other's religions. Although we know that members of the Galilean Order converted Axor to Jerusalem Catholicism on Woden, I think that Adzel, also a Wodenite, was converted to Mahayana Buddhism while studying on Earth. However, I began to reread "How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson" in order to confirm whether Adzel was or was not already Buddhist before coming to Earth. Instead, I found a previously unnoticed reference to the Golden Gate:

"The Riefenstahl's apartment overlooked the Golden Gate. I saw lights twinkle and flare, heard distant clangor and hissing, where crews worked around the clock to replicate an ancient bridge."
-Poul Anderson, "How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson" IN Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (Riverdale, NY, 2009), pp. 175-197 AT p. 184.

Robert Heinlein's Future History was praised for giving the future a daily life. Some passages in Anderson's Technic History convey a sense of what it might be like to live in the Solar Commonwealth or the later Terran Empire.

The Golden Gate And The Summerland

SM Stirling, The Desert And The Blade (New York, 2016), Chapter One.

The Golden Gate looms again:

"...the fog-shrouded Golden Gate loomed before the Tarshish Queen's bow." (p. 5)

When dealing with people, certain basic issues recur. This time, I have formulated a mini-catecism.

Would I tell a child that she will meet her dead dog in the Summerland?

No.

Would I contradict a child's parents if I heard them telling her this?

No.

Is there a Summerland?

In the Emberverse, yes!

Can Emberversers be certain of this while still alive?

No.

So we are back where we started?

Yes.

The question of a hereafter is logically odd. An empirical question can be answered either yes or no on the basis of experience, e.g., there either will or will not be an eclipse tomorrow. If there is a hereafter, then we will know whereas, if there is not a hereafter, then we will not know so is it an empirical question?

The Golden Gate

"Manse Everard returned to Wanda Tamberly near sunset. Light streamed through the Golden Gate. From their suite they saw cable cars go clanging down towards the waterfront, islands and the further shore rising steep from a silver-blue bay, sails like wings of some wandering flock. They had hoped to be out there themselves." ("Death And The Knight" IN Time Patrol, p. 746)

We might remember Trygve Yamamura and the Great Flock of Lannach. As often happens, I have appreciated Poul Anderson's descriptive details more keenly by quoting than by merely reading them. On this occasion, the sunset sends light streaming through the Golden Gate but does not signify an ending for the characters. In fact, Everard and Wanda are just beginning a relationship as, unfortunately, the series ends.

Why does the Patrol interrupt Everard's holiday to ask him to take an assignment in 1307? Why did they not contact him at the end of the holiday? Do they know that something else will happen then? Everard, at least, takes full advantage of time travel. He does not have to leave immediately and will return to Wanda within an hour so that for her the holiday is not interrupted.

Manse's Memories

Poul Anderson, "Delenda Est" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 173-228, 2.

Everard's memories of his home timeline when he seems to have lost it:

broad plains
tall mountains
prideful cities
his parents
his father lifting him high
a girl at college
Bernie Aaronson, beer, smoke, talk
Phil Brackney, machine guns in France
the Whitcombs, high tea in Victorian London
the Denisons, chrome eyrie above New York
Jack Sandoval, Arizona crags
a dog
Dante's austere cantos
Shakespeare's ringing thunder
York Minster
the Golden Gate Bridge
a man's life
billions of human beings

He is in a timeline where all that had never been. We recognize the Whitcombs, the Denisons and Sandoval from earlier Time Patrol stories. We remember York Minster, the Golden Gate Bridge and a Shakespearean timeline from other works by Anderson.

There is also the question of whether there ever will be a scientific revolution in the Carthaginian timeline.

San Francisco And Falkayn Bays

"Clouds were massing in the west, but it was still a clear night for early November. From the window where he stood, Michael Stefanik looked down, across the glitter of San Francisco and the darkness of the Bay, to those hills which enclosed the farther shore. They were strewn with firefly light, their own cities, against a windy sky."
-Poul Anderson, Perish By The Sword (New York, 1959), 1, p. 1.

These are the opening sentences of the novel.

For previous blog references to San Francisco Bay, see here.

"Nob Hill was more than a good address; it was seeing the great two-footed stride of the Bay Bridge, or the lovely curve men had thrown across the Golden Gate, or ships standing in past blue islands, whenever you wished."
-ibid.

For previous blog references to the Golden Gate, see here.

For comparable descriptions of Falkayn Bay on the colonized planet, Avalon, see here. (Scroll down.)

There is no direct connection between a contemporary detective novel and a futuristic sf novel. However, a real Bay on Earth and a fictional Bay on a terrestroid planet are comparable. Further, fictionally speaking, Avalon will be colonized in our future just as, fictitiously again, the events of the detective novel occurred in the 1950s. Thus, these two narratives could fit into a single timeline. In any case, we appreciate the descriptive passages set in such diverse periods and worlds of Poul Anderson's imagination.

Right Place, Right Time, Wrong Timeline

1989alpha A. D.

We learn that the Time Patrol second hand bookshop in San Francisco is in the Cow Hollow district.

The instruments on Wanda Tamberly's timecycle tell her that she is there although she is surrounded by wilderness. She recognizes Nob Hill and Russian Hill but they are covered by brush, not by buildings. Twin Peaks lacks the television tower. She has materialized on the surface instead of underground.

There is no:

San Francisco

Golden Gate Bridge

Bay Bridge

Eastbay cities

ships

aircraft

Oakland

Berkeley

Albany

Richmond

Golden Gate Park

What there is is:

"...the wind and the world." (p. 307)

The world without the works of man and, of course, the wind.

Wanda continues to think that she has arrived at the wrong time, not in the wrong timeline. But she will begin to suspect otherwise when she has flown east before the end of this chapter.

The Golden Gate Bridge

For the Golden Gate Bridge on the blog, see here.

For San Francisco Bay on the blog, see here.

Manse Everard and Trygve Yamamura see the Bridge;

SM Stirling's Other Siders see the Bay without the Bridge;Stirling's Emberversers see the beautiful structure of the Bridge rising from the mist while knowing that it will collapse in a few generations but meanwhile discuss maybe building an anti-pirate outpost garrison on the bridge deck or up one of the towers.

The Bridge, or alternatively its absence, is a focal point in more than one universe.

Records Of What Did Not Happen

This post should be called "Records Of What Did Not Happen In The Current Timeline." Each timeline has three spatial dimensions and one temporal dimension. Several of these four-dimensional continua succeed each other along a second temporal dimension.

Some Danellian records state that Charles Whitcomb remained a bachelor and eventually "...was killed on active duty with the Patrol." (Time Patrol, p. 52)

However, in the current timeline, Whitcomb:

retired from the Patrol after a single mission;
married Mary Nelson;
lived with her in Victorian London, starting in 1850;
sometimes thought wistfully about what he had been in the Patrol;
but decided that his wife and children had been worth that sacrifice.

The Whitcombs serve high tea before a cannel fire when visited by Manse Everard. Thus, Charlie retains an indirect contact with the Patrol although his bachelor life and eventual death on active service did not happen in this timeline.

When Everard and Van Sarawak are in the Carthaginian timeline, it is their lives and history that "did not happen." Everard remembers, among other things, his parents, visiting the Whitcombs and:

"...the austere cantos of Dante and the ringing thunder of Shakespeare; the glory which was York Minster and the Golden Gate Bridge -" (p. 184)

York Minster gets a consistently good press in Anderson's works. Later along Everard's world-line, when the Danellian history has been restored:

"Light streamed through the Golden Gate." (p. 746)

When Wanda Tamberly has come dangerously close to breaking the Patrol's Prime Directive, she is shown records of "'...time gone awry...'" (The Shield Of Time, p. 253) which teach her a necessary lesson.

In my opinion, this terminology of successive timelines makes sense of most of what is said about variable reality in the Time Patrol series although it is not the terminology used by the Patrol itself. I would love to learn Temporal and discuss the matter with Patrol agents on their own terms.

A trainer at the Time Patrol Academy states that travel to the past:

"'...involves the concept of infinite-valued relationships in a continuum of 4N dimensions, where N is the total number of particles in the universe.'" (Time Patrol, p. 9)

I think that time travel in an immutable timeline requires no extra dimensions and that time travel in a mutable timeline requires only one extra dimension. However, I am a philosopher, not a physicist. 4N is an enormous number. I think that it assumes a finite universe? Otherwise, N would equal infinity and 4N would also equal infinity? However, even if 4N is finite, it is a large enough number to incorporate not only the many successive timelines of the Time Patrol universe but also, in some other part of the multi-dimensional framework, the many coexisting timelines that have access to the Old Phoenix Inn.

The Daily Life Of The Future II

In Robert Heinlein's "daily life" of the future, a couple who have returned from the Lunar colony to Earth see the intercontinental rocket pass overhead. In Poul Anderson's "daily life," James Ching sees, from San Francisco, cities on the dark side of the Moon while also hearing the clangor of crews working to replicate the Golden Gate Bridge.

"Wings of Victory" describes first contact with Ythri and explains Ythrian biology;
"The Problem of Pain" describes Ythrian-human cooperation and presents Ythrian psychology and theology;
in "How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson," Jim, yearning to go into space, thinks:

"Wild wings above Ythri!"
-Poul Anderson, "How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson" IN Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (Riverdale, NY, 2009), pp. 175-197 AT p. 183.

These stories display three stages in the development of a pyramidal future history:

an alien race is introduced;
members of that race become protagonists in a later story;
they also become background material for later installments of the History.

Meanwhile, the emblem of the Polesotechnic League is:

"...a golden sunburst afire with jewels, surrounding an ancient rocketship..."
-"Margin of Profit," p. 138. (For full reference, see here.)

That sounds like later sun and spaceship of Empire.

Scrolls And Stars

"How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson."

In Adzel's shack:

"Two scrolls hung on the walls, one showing a landscape and one the Compassionate Buddha." (p. 65)

In a question and answer session, the Chinese postgraduate student who attends our meditation group asked, "Why do you have scrolls showing Bodhidharma and Kanzeon behind your altar? Those two figures are not usually associated in China."

What a question! One that I would not have known to ask. The answer was, first, that they are associated in our tradition and, secondly, that, when the group started, someone gave us two scrolls and they happened to be of Bodhidharma and Kanzeon. I could see that he liked that second answer. This is a domestic detail in the Solar Commonwealth that resonates with my current experience: scrolls.

The Riefenstahl's apartment overlooks the Golden Gate where crews work to replicate the bridge. In the living room, Betty punches for coffee while a full-wall transparency shows city lights, the Moon with cities visible on its dark side and a few stars. More welcome domestic details although too few.

Earlier sf writers took the trouble to get to the Moon. In later future history series, cities on the dark side are part of the background. Stars, of course, mean not just lights in the sky but somewhere that Jimmy wants to go. He contrasts the no-longer-existent San Francisco Chinatown which was probably regarded as picturesque with:

"(Oh, treetop highways under the golden-red sun of Cynthia! Four-armed drummers who sound the mating call of Gorzun's twin moons! Wild wings above Ythri!)" (pp. 60-61)

That reflection summarizes quite a lot of the Technic History.

Piet Van Rijn

In Murder Bound, the Valborg crew include Piet van Rijn from Holland! Poul Anderson fans are bound to ask: ancestor of Nicholas? But surely I have posted about this before? Searching the blog for "Piet van Rijn," I found only WORLDWEEK, which refers to:

Admiral Piet van Rinnekom;
van Rijn -

- but not to "Piet van Rijn."

I probably did notice Piet van Rijn on a previous reading but did not then think to post about him. And now I come across his name as if for the first time. We do not know a text if we have read it only once.

Predictably, violence occurs in Chapter i, and our series detective character, Trygve Yamamura, is called in at the beginning of Chapter ii. The opening paragraphs of ii resound with significant place names:

the Bay
San Francisco
Treasure Island
Alcatraz
the Golden Gate

We are on our way.

Ambiguity

"Death And The Knight."

Historical Fiction

"...he gripped a small crucifix that hung about his neck, symbol and source of help from beyond this world." (p. 746)

Symbol, yes. Source? Ambiguity.

Science Fiction

"'...Marlow has a miniature radiophone in a crucifix he always carries.'" (p. 750)

Now we understand that "source." But the tenses are scrambled. Marlow, discussed in 1990, had a radiophone in a crucifix in 1307. However, Manse Everard, in 1990, proposes to travel to 1307 to respond to the SOS call that Marlow had made on his radiophone to the fourteenth century Time Patrol milieu base which must then have sent a message capsule to the 1850-2000 milieu HQ in London, 1890-1910, which in turn would have messaged the San Francisco second hand bookshop in 1990 from where we already know that the Time Patrol agent/bookseller, Nick, telephoned Everard in his hotel overlooking the Golden Gate.

That Everard in 1990 can plan to intervene in 1307 partly legitimizes him in speaking of Paris, 1307, and San Francisco, 1990, as if they were two places coexisting at the same time provided that this is not misinterpreted literally. Half an hour elapsed in one century does not equate to half an hour elapsed in the other century and so on. Everard will take several days of his own lifespan to prepare his rescue of Marlow but that much time will not elapse for Marlow between his sending of his SOS message and his being rescued. Analyzing the implications becomes a fine science.

On The Beach

Perish By The Sword, 7.

A passage in this detective novel by Poul Anderson reminded me of passages in two of Anderson's sf novels.

Mike Stefanik drives over the Bay Bridge en route to Stanford. From there, he drives into Palo Alto (scroll down), then to the coast and south to Pescadero Bay where he is alone under the cliffs. The ocean is quicksilver, green and gray. Stefanik hears and feels roaring waves, feels and smells sharp wind and sees flying gulls, their wings like sword blades, appropriately.

"When he left, toward evening, he felt much eased. Whatever became of him, the sea would always follow the moon around this planet, and shout on lonely beaches. Let man burn himself off the earth, the sea would bring forth life again." (p. 71)

the oceans rush on the moon's trail around the globe
-copied from here.

Manse Everard and Wanda Tamberly drive over the Golden Gate Bridge. Then they drive along Highway One and through Olema but turn onto the national seashore at Point Reyes Station. Beyond Inverness, they are alone and walk on the beach where they meet a Danellian and learn the meaning of the Time Patrol.

Stefanik learns that Earth abides. Everard and Wanda learn that the Patrol is the stabilizing element.

The Contemporary In The Cosmic IV

This time, "contemporary" = 1990.

"Light streamed through the Golden Gate. From their suite [Manse Everard and Wanda Tamberly] saw cable cars go clanging down toward the waterfront, islands and the farther shore rising steep from a silver-blue bay, sails like wings of some wandering flock."
-Poul Anderson, "Death And The Knight" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, 2006), pp. 737-765 AT SAN FRANCISCO, THURSDAY, 8 MARCH 1990, p. 746.

But all is not as it seems. Everard must travel to France in October 1307 just before the suppression of the Knights Templar, a historically pivotal event. Anderson is restrained in his treatment of the Templars. They revere Abraham's jawbone and are not a front for the Patrol or for any esoteric magical or mystical tradition. Nevertheless, Anderson describes contemporary San Francisco, the setting of his three detective novels, before plunging Everard into yet another dangerous temporal mission, unfortunately his last to be written by Anderson. In Paris in 1307:

"'Let's go,' Everard said, and led them away." (p. 765)

He returns to his holiday with Wanda in 1990 but when after that?

Dense Texts

Poul Anderson, The Corridors Of Time (London, 1968).

We can find this much in a text only if it is there to be found and much of what is there can be missed if the novel is read only as light entertainment although that remains its primary function.

In The Corridors Of Time, I had forgotten many details. Some are stated so briefly as to be easily missed even when reading them.

(i) Lockridge's tantalizing passage through the twenty third century when he sees only a physical tunnel between time gates.

(ii) Brann's recommendation of Bourgogne 2012. We can drink that now, Brann.

(iii) Even in seventh century Bavaria, the Warden Hu says, "'Home!'" because, "'This is the Koriach's land: an estate of hers in the future, and therefore hers throughout the whole of time.'" (p. 134) That is the Warden's concept of property but any of us would be interested to see our own land in another time.

(iv) Lockridge mentions "'...chalcolithic...'" (p. 219) which, google informs me, comes between neolithic and Bronze Age.

(v) The Koriach's immortality. This is crucial because, when Lockridge is defeating her, she offers it to him.

(vi) "...the years flew past..." (p. 211) because Lockridge and Auri lived through twenty five years in Cornwall before returning to Avildaro on the night that they left it. A passage near the climax of There Will Be Time describes years, and indeed geological epochs, flying past because Havig's group is returning by its very different means of time travel from the Pleistocene.

(vii) In order to travel a quarter century into the past, it is sufficient to enter a gate near its closure point and exit through it just after its beginning point. It is not necessary to travel along the corridor between gates.

(viii) Lockridge meets old Fledelius one last time before entering the gate. After guarding the last few days of the gate, Fledelius will return to the sixteenth century to resume his annual vigil at the Inn of the Golden Lion.

(ix) Storm knows that Lockridge is "'...the instrument of destiny...'" (p. 199). First, he was her bodyguard when she fled from the twentieth century to Avildaro. Then it was he who sent Brann to be captured by Wardens. Then he brought word from the further future. If he is destiny but has become the Wardens' enemy, should he be killed? But his death might be the event that will cause their defeat. Storm, the Goddess, knows that this is possible.

(x) "In full robe she walked over the land, big and supple and beautiful. The Wise Woman's staff was in her hand, a dozen Yuthoaz at her back...From her belt of power sprang an unseen shield off which the rain cascaded, so that she stood in a silvery torrent, water nymph and sea queen." (p. 198)

Murder Bound, Chapter iii

Murder Bound.

Yamamura investigates not as yet a murder but a man overboard. However, Chapter iii follows:

Conrad Lauring, who had been the single passenger on the Valborg;
Oddvar Finsen, the radioman;
Diana Lestrange, a girlfriend of Finsen;
Judith Mendel, Diana's roommate, introduced to Lauring.

Someone has tried to contact Lauring:

"Probably the detective whom [Captain] Matthiesen had expected the company would hire..." (p. 26)

- so Yamamura is decidedly off-stage for the time being.

Finsen's pre-date advice to Lauring:

"'Hint that if she really wants, you'll also show her the knife scar you got fighting that hashish-crazed lascar in mysterious Oojasquong. Works like magic.'" (p. 27)

I have googled "lascar" because we might need to know what it is and "hashish" because we might want to know more about it. "Oojasquong" is too mysterious for Google!

Evocative place names abound:

Marseilles (Finsen pretends to be American when there)
North Beach (Finsen describes it as the Bohemian quarter)
Ocean Beach
Golden Gate Park
Lincoln Park
Geary Street
40th

A Multi-Problem Story

Poul Anderson, "How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson" IN Anderson, The Earth Book Of Stormgate (New York, 1978), pp. 55-70.

p. 54 is Hloch's introduction to the story as collected in the Earth Book and therefore is an additional page of text.

Although Adzel's name is the first word to appear under the story title on p. 55, the Wodenite does not come on-stage until near the top of p. 64. Before then, on pp. 55-63, the first person narrator, James Ching:

converses by holovid phone with his principal counselor, Freeman Simon Snyder, who hands him the problem of how to devise a Chinese contribution to the Festival of Man without thereby flunking his preliminary tests for the space Academy;

calls Betty Riefenstahl, only to be told by her phone that she will not be available until the evening;

consults Library Central about the historic San Francisco Chinatown;

eats dinner with his well-meaning but insular parents;

flies to the Riefenstahl place in his own aircar, passing en route a bus carrying a Lunarian, an Alfzarian, a spacehand wearing a Brotherhood badge and a League journeyman;

sees the lights and hears the sounds of the round-the-clock replication of the Golden Gate bridge;

learns from Betty that her father, Freeman Riefenstahl, has been handed the problem of organizing a spectacular live operatic contribution to the Festival of Man;

agrees with Betty to visit Adzel who has the problem of keeping his giant body well nourished while studying on Earth.

The three problems - four if we include Jim's problem of how to get into space - will have a single solution. 

The Realms Of Lynx And Flower Feather

(Image of a flower feather.)

Poul Anderson, The Corridors Of Time (London, 1968).

Malcolm Lockridge/Lynx's contributions are more than human:

he is responsible for the capture of the Ranger Director Brann by the Wardens and of the Warden Koriach Storm by his own people;

thus, he is indirectly responsible for the deaths of both Director and Koriach and also, we think, for the loss of momentum in the Warden-Ranger conflict;

in twenty five years, Auri/Flower Feather and he have nine children of whom eight survive and four of the five boys become old enough to fight;

he founds "...a powerful, progressive confederation in the southwest [of England], which had even started a little tin mining to draw merchants from the civilized lands..." (p. 122), had persuaded southern farmers to stop "...those grim rites which formerly made them shunned..." (p. 121) and will erect "...a great temple on Salisbury Plain, as the sign and seal of their confederation" (p. 213);

he will spend twenty or thirty years building "...the same kind of league in Denmark." (p. 221);

he and Auri might even influence "...America, where the Indians were to tell of a wise kindly god and of a goddess named Flower Feather." (p. 222)

Comments:

We always wondered what Stonehenge was for.

On p. 122, Lynx knows of the "powerful, progressive confederation." p. 213 summarizes how he built it.

On p. 122, leaving England, he thinks "...with a pang here was where he belonged." It is where he belongs. His older self is already there.

On p. 210, he thinks of what he is losing and gaining:

"...he surrendered his country and his people, his whole civilization - the Parthenon and the Golden Gate bridge, music, books, cuisine, medicine, the scientific vision, every good thing that four thousand years were to bring forth - to become, at most, a chieftain in the Stone Age. He would always be alone here.
"But that, he thought, would mark him out for awe and power. Knowing what he did, he could work mightily, not as conqueror but as uniter, teacher, healer, and lawgiver." (p. 210)

Library Central

See:

The Daily Life Of The Future
The Daily Life Of The Future II

I have found one concrete detail of daily life in a fictional future and furthermore a detail that is common to Earth in the Solar Commonwealth and to Avalon in the Domain of Ythri.

To us, a library is a place where we go to read or borrow books. It is now possible for the contents of all books to be displayed on computer screens. In The Earth Book Of Stormgate, the historian Hloch addresses his fellow Planha-speaking Ythrians in the Stormgate Choth on Avalon. When introducing an extract from the reminiscences of the spaceman James Ching, he advises his readers:

"To screen a glossary of obscure terms, punch Library Central 254-0691."
-Poul Anderson, "Introduction: How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson" IN Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (Riverdale, NY, 2009), pp. 175-176 AT p. 176.

Since, in this extract, Ching reminisces about his teenage years as a student while still living with his parents in San Francisco Integrate on Earth, Avalonian Ythrians are bound to find many obscure terms like:

"...the Golden Gate."
-Anderson, "How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson" IN The Van Rijn Method, pp. 177-197 AT p. 184;

"...the San Jose district."
-op. cit., p. 187;

Ching's sarcastic reflection that, for the Festival of Man, people with surnames like Marcantonio should dress in togas while those called Smith should paint themselves blue. (op. cit., p. 182.)

Advised to make a Chinese contribution to the Festival, Ching asks "Library Central" about the former special ethnic sections of San Francisco and is shown information about Chinatown where a Lunar New Year was celebrated with fireworks and a parade. Time-blurred photographs are accompanied by text.

Thus, "Library Central" informs Avalonians about Ching's period and Ching about ours.

Earth In The Solar Commonwealth

"How To Be Ethnic..."

As we turn the page, this story becomes richer and richer in information about Earth in that future period. There are "...many-armed..." (p. 184) towers, ecocentres and an endless machine murmur. Traffic Control passes Jim's aircar so near a bus that he sees its passengers:

a dandified Lunarian;

a blue Alfzarian;

a spacehand wearing his Brotherhood badge;

a League journeyman.

Jim visits the Riefenstahls whose apartment overlooks the Golden Gate where crews restore the ancient bridge. In the living room, Betty merely punches for coffee. A transparent wall shows the city and the Moon with cities visible on its dark side. Betty's father, director of the San Francisco Opera, has revived live opera as against holographs and computer-generated works.

This is the daily life of the future as in Robert Heinlein's Future History.