Today

Today, visiting Muncaster Castle and the coastal town of Whitehaven, both in Cumbria, we were away from home for nearly twelve hours. Hence, no posts until now. At Muncaster, the display of birds of prey reminded me of Poul Anderson's Ythrians, especially when two vultures (one called "Moriarty") and three kites swooped low over the audience to musical accompaniment and a vulture landed among us. Afterwards, I mentally catalogued Anderson's Technic History, and the Ythrian History within it, yet again.

Since, to Poul Anderson fans, past history is as important as future history, I should mention that:

Muncaster Castle, built on a Roman site, has been owned by the Pennington family since 1208 and was the home of the original "Tom Fool;"

Whitehaven, my father's birthplace and childhood home, was attacked by John Paul Jones during the American War of Independence.

We live and breathe history.

Not Time Travel

We are back home after two nights as paying guests in the Coachman's Quarters at Muncaster Castle.

The current agenda for this blog is:

Poul Anderson's The Star Fox, when we get back to rereading it;

Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveller's Wife, especially as this novel is comparable to Anderson's time travel works.

Being away from the blog for nearly three days gives me more time to think. The basic concepts underlying The Time Machine and its successors are inexhaustible inspirations for reflection and speculation.

Let us describe an experience, then discuss whether "time travel" is an appropriate interpretation or explanation of this experience. In 1960, a man embarks on a journey. He travels through space, time or other dimensions. Let us not specify which yet. At the end of his journey, he is surrounded by events that are indistinguishable from those of 1943, a year that he had lived through. He does not relive his experiences of that year. Instead, it as if he, bringing with him his memories of having lived until 1960, physically arrives on Earth in 1943. Because he knows where he was at a particular date and time in 1943, he can and does locate a younger version of himself. However, he also can and does influence events, making them different from the way that he remembers them. For example, he introduces himself to the younger version of himself even though he knows for certain that no older version of himself had contacted or communicated with him in 1943. Furthermore, he can and does impart to the authorities military intelligence that enables them to shorten or otherwise alter what is left of the war.

It follows that he is not in the 1943 that he remembers. He has not arrived in his own real past, the past that had led to and produced him as the person with a particular set of memories who had lived until 1960, then embarked on a mysterious journey. Surely "time travel" should mean travel/displacement etc along the single temporal dimension that links our remembered and recorded past to our immediate present? Travel to Mars means travel to the Mars in our Solar System, not to an alternative Mars in an alternative Solar System.

If our "traveller" arrives in his real past, then his problem is not that he cannot introduce himself to his past self - this is perfectly possible - but that, in our scenario, he already knows that he did not do this, therefore, if he tries to do it, then he will fail. Something will happen to prevent the encounter. I think that it follows that real time travel as I call it is either physically impossible or at best difficult and infrequent. If it were not only possible but also easy and frequent, then an unacceptably high number of implausible events would be necessary to prevent alterations to the past - like every time traveller who sets out to change the past is instantly killed by a meteor, a thunderbolt or a heart attack etc? In order to preserve both logical consistency and the known laws of statistics, it is necessary to infer that real time travel is either impossible or infrequent. And that seems to be the universe that we are living in. England was conquered in 1066 by a Duke of Normandy who had merely crossed the English Channel, not by Neldorians who would have had to travel from the 205th millennium. We do not live in a history where a time traveller prevented Hitler's grandfather's affair with his maid or where pro-Nazi time travellers ensured German victory in World War II.

A good time travel story, in my opinion, is one that shows that a time traveller has just as much freedom of action as anyone else but, however it happens, he does not change the past. But this rules out the Time Patrol series as good time travel stories! That series does present a lot of convincing travel to various periods of the past despite its premise that contradicts what I argue here. Poul Anderson pulls it off.

Reflection on return from Muncaster: time travel and ghosts can connect. Remember the character in Anderson's The Shield Of Time who time travels to a couple of occasions after his death and thus appears as a ghost.

Ghosts are from the past whereas time travellers come from the present or future but past, present and future connect.

Not Mentioning Any Names

"Hiding Place," see here.

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

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

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

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

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

Shamanism Or Tomfoolery

The Merman's Children, Book Four, I.

The Inuit shaman makes an epic journey and returns with important information. Despite this:

"'It was nothing,' he muttered. 'Just lies and tomfoolery. I am an old swindler, and no wisdom is in me.'" (p. 192)

We have recently discussed Tom Fool.

See:

the combox for During The Storm

blog search result for Tom Fool (scroll down)

Idiom Origins

"Tom Foolery" dates from the early nineteenth century. "Tom Fool" dates from the fourteenth century. The Tom Fool of Muncaster Castle died around 1600 which would mean that he was not, after all, the original Tom Fool as is claimed.

The Elephant In The Room

"Hiding Place," see here.

This MIGHT be the last post this month although I have said that before, then written more. Tomorrow, weather permitting, we will make the round trip to Muncaster Castle, which will be a long day.

My purposes in the present post are to show a book cover (see image), to summarize the relevant passage from within the book, then to ask blog readers to spot the differences. On p. 581, one of the organisms within the zoo ship is described:

a quadruped;
elephant-sized;
slenderer than an elephant, implying lower gravity;
green;
faintly scaled;
some hair on its back;
alert, enigmatic eyes;
an elephant-like trunk ending in psuedodactyls (?) which look as strong and sensitive as human fingers.

Which two details are incorrect in the book cover image?

(Details to be discovered and discussed within an Anderson text seem to be endless. I have been through this story before but now it seems like a different story.)

Tradition And New Life

(Muncaster Castle.)

Mirkheim.

Returning to Starfall, Lady Sandra Tamarin-Asmundsen flies near the Palomino River and above the Runeberg domain:

"Afar she glimpsed the mansion of the Runebergs themselves. She had visited there and remembered well its gracious rooms, ancestral portraits, immensity of tradition, and children's laughter for a sign that new life was ever bubbling up from beneath these things." (X, p. 147)

In England, we visit "stately homes" where indeed we see gracious rooms, ancestral portraits and children of current occupants. Poul Anderson makes Hermes seem as real as England. Anderson readers also remember the Coffin home on Rustum.

A Haunted Nebula?

In Poul Anderson's "Sargasso of Lost Starships," as in his Psychotechnic History, characters refer to "Galactic sectors" as if their field of action were the whole "Galaxy," not, as in the rest of the Technic History, a small part of one galactic arm.

We are not used to ghost stories on an interstellar scale:

the superstitious say that the Black Nebula is haunted;

there are stories of ships disappearing in the Nebula, of ghostly things seen and whispers heard in ships passing nearby and of men going mad;

there was inexplicable physical trouble with engines, lights etc;

Donovan recommended abandonment of the base on the planet Heim at the edge of the Nebula;

he suggests that Nebular radiation affects particles and nervous systems.

Research into reported apparitions at Muncaster Castle includes investigation as to whether zinc in the ground affects nervous systems. (I think.)

Living In The Technic History

Poul Anderson fandom becomes a state of mind. I wonder what Britain will be like in the Terran Empire especially since this island will have a Mayor Palatine in Flandry's time. When Flandry is a guest of the Mayor, it is in his lodge on Catalina so we do not see anything of Britain. Will London have engulfed the entire South? Will the Lake District, Morecambe Bay and Lancaster Castle have been preserved? I expect that country roads will be buried under grass and forest unless someone has kept them clear for recreational purposes. I imagine Flandry visiting Lancaster Priory Church or St. Peter's Church in Heysham - the latter already over one thousand years old - and again wondering about contact with Kossara.

When I see birds, I think of Ythrians. There are birds of prey at Muncaster Castle in Cumbria. Seagulls scavenge along the coast. In Caernarfon, Wales, seagulls swooped down to take food from customers' plates on tables outside cafes. I imagine Ythrians - although not stealing food, of course. If I lived on Avalon, then I would want to join a choth and to participate in Khruaths, not to vote for the Parliament of Man, but it would have to be a new kind of choth that combined what its members regarded as the best aspects of Ythrian and human traditions, e.g., the rule of law as against deathpride or duels. We would participate in Oherran by boycott, not by violence. From Avalon, I would want to visit Hermes and Dennitza.

If I lived on Earth in that timeline, then I would prefer it to be during the Solar Commonwealth, working for a government service or department, not for any of the Home Companies, and a member of the relevant trade union. 

Is time travel possible in the Technic History timeline? As a matter of fact, yes. It is possible to pass from that timeline to the inter-universal inn, the Old Phoenix. Therefore, it should be possible to re-enter the timeline at an earlier time. This is probably against the rules for ordinary guests of the inn but it should be feasible for magically propelled travelers like Valeria Matuchek or Holger Danske.

I have recently stopped driving a car. I would not be able to cope with an aircar unless it was 100% self-driving.

There is probably more to be said about living in the Technic History.