Temporal

"Temporal, the artificial language with which Patrolmen from all ages could communicate without being understood by strangers, was a miracle of logically organized expressiveness." (Time Patrol, p. 12)

Yet later, Merau Varagan, an enemy of the Patrol:

"...used fluent Temporal, the common speech of the Time Patrol and many civilian travelers..." (p. 657) (my emphasis)

Between p. 12 and p. 657, has the narrative moved to a different timeline where knowledge of Temporal has not been restricted to the Patrol?

We also learn that Temporal has tenses appropriate to time travel and variable reality. I would like to learn such tenses. Discussion of time travel paradoxes in English leads to confusion. Thus, World War II is in our past in our timeline (timeline 1). If we moved to the 2015 of timeline 2 where World War II never happened, then World War II would not be in our past in that timeline. But timeline 1, including its World War II, would be in the past of a second temporal dimension at right angles to the first. Thus, there would be a past tense in which it was true to say that World War II never happened and another past tense in which it would be equally true to say that World War II did happen. This is the source of some confusion in discussing the Time Patrol series.

Anderson's Technic History refers to fictional languages: Anglic; Eriau; Planha. CS Lewis' Ransom Trilogy has a Solar language and some Martian languages. Lewis' Narnians speak English since human beings entered that world from ours. Tolkien created imaginary languages, then the beings that spoke them, then those beings' histories.

World War II

I am rereading George Smiley's reminiscences about World War II. James Bond has an ambiguous relationship to the War. Either he was in Intelligence before the War or he joined Naval Intelligence, and then only by lying about his age, during the War, depending on which book you read.

How does the War impact on Poul Anderson's fiction? See:

War In Art And Life
War In Art And Life II
Continuing Consequences Of World War II In Life And Fiction
"Operation Afreet" 
The War II
After The War
Post-War Crime II
Defender Of Two Worlds
Etienne Fourre II

As ever, there was more already here than I had realized before I started to search for it.

Etienne Fourre II

When I summarized Fourre's career, my sources were:

"Marius" (published 1957; set approximately 1964);

"Un-Man" (published 1953; set approximately 2004).

What I omitted was the point of "Marius":

Fourre forcibly replaces Reinach with Valti as chairman of the European Council;

this is to prevent Reinach from becoming another Marius, a general who wins a war but is a disastrous politician;

also, according to Valti's equations, leaving Reinach in power would have led to World War IV and probably an end of humanity in another fifty years.

Fourre appeared in "Un-Man," then Anderson wrote the prequel, "Marius." Are they consistent?

According to "Un-Man," Fourre was in the French Resistance of World War II and was "...high in the Western liaison with the European undergrounds of World War III...," entering the occupied countries on several missions (The Psychotechnic League, New York, 1981, p. 54);

according to "Marius," he represents France in the European Council after World War III.

OK. This can fit together. He was in France during World War II and after World War III but was based in Britain or the US during World War III?

Of Fourre, Naysmith thinks:

"Such a man...would in earlier days have stood behind the stake and lash of an Inquisition, would have marched at Cromwell's side and carried out the Irish massacres, would have helped set up world-wide Communism...Thank God he's on our side!" (pp. 54-55)

Do we want such a man on our side? He arranges an assassination and a coup. But the assassinated man is a dictator, not a campaigner or reformer. The overthrown regime was anti-UN, not anti-US! And "UN" here means a peaceful, rational world government, not the institution with which we are familiar.

So maybe Fourre was the man for his time, after all?

Alternative World Wars

HG Wells wrote The War In The Air before World War I.

In SM Stirling's Black Chamber Trilogy, President Theodore Roosevelt fights World War I.

In Harry Turtledove's Worldwar series, alien invasion interrupts World War II.

In Poul Anderson's Operation Chaos, World War II is fought with magic against the Caliphate.

In James Blish's Black Easter, black magic initiates World War III as part of Armageddon.

Anderson's Psychotechnic History begins immediately after World War III.

Anderson's Shield begins after World War IV.

Stirling's Draka fight in the Great War, the Eurasian War and the Final War.

Now imagine that these eight timelines coalesce and combine.

Possible Histories

Alternative histories are logical possibilities. This means no more than that such histories can be imagined and contemplated without self-contradiction. Let us consider the cliched example of a German victory in World War II. A narrative describing a German victory is counter-factual in that it contradicts known history. However, such an account is not internally inconsistent or self-contradictory. This is all that is meant by logical possibility.

However, the proposition that alternative histories are logically possible might still have two different meanings. It might mean either that:

(i) Hitler could have won World War II;

or that:

(ii) there could be a parallel universe in which Hitler did win World War II.

(i) and (ii) are not the same proposition. A novel could be based on premise (i). If challenged on the counter-factual status of his narrative, the author might reply not that his novel is set in a parallel universe - this would be premise (ii) - but simply that all fictional narratives describe events that did not happen in any case.

A short story or novel that is set entirely within an alternative history might be an example of:

(i) this did not happen or
(ii) this did happen in another universe -

- except that the "did happen" in (ii) is fictional in any case.

Poul Anderson's "The House of Sorrows" could be (i) or (ii). However, much alternative history fiction describes (highly improbable) travel between universes and therefore is premise (ii). SM Stirling's Draka series definitely becomes premise (ii) only in Volume IV.

Old Geezers

"'Christ, I get so fucking sick of these old geezers who never shut up about things before the Change.'"
-SM Stirling, The Sunrise Lands (New York, 2008), Chapter Nineteen, p. 462.

I am 68 which makes me an "old geezer" but it also means that I was born in 1949, after World War II. My problem is with some of the older geezers who were in the War.

Examples:

(i) I hand an anti-fascist leaflet to an older geezer. He responds, "You can't tell me anything about fascists! I fought them!" I reply, "If you think that there is no current threat, then I can tell you something about them!"

(ii) In Northern Ireland, Orangemen march to celebrate the Battle of the Boyne in 1690. Sometimes, they try to march through Catholic areas. Discussing this with a Northern Irish work colleague, I tried to make this comparison: "Suppose I wanted to celebrate the Allied victory in World War II and I deliberately routed a march down a street where there were a lot of German households..." When I had got as far as "World War II," an older colleague interrupted, "You ain't old enough!" I replied, "If I ain't old enough to celebrate World War II, then these bastards ain't old enough to celebrate the Battle of the Boyne!"

To the second man, all that mattered was that he was alive during WWII and I wasn't. The issue of provocative marches was lost on him.

Guardians Of Time?

We cannot change the past. I can regret past actions and resolve to act differently from now on but cannot change how I did act.

The past is partly known and completely immutable. Our understanding of World War II can change but not the fact that there was a World War II with certain dates, certain major events and turning points and many details, known or unknown. It is conceivable that someone might seem to himself to have been transported from 2020 to 1940, thus to be living among the events of World War II. However, if he makes the events of 1940-1945 different from the way that he remembers they were recorded, then, wherever or whenever he is, he is not in the World War II that is part of our known history. There must be some other explanation of his experiences.

All this has been discussed before, of course, but maybe we can clarify a principle? The proposition that the past cannot be changed applies not only to our familiar experience of time but also to any time travel scenario. Travel through time would involve travel to the past and the past cannot be changed. Anyone who, e.g., assassinates Hitler in 1940 is not in our past, therefore has not time traveled.

19352 A.D.: Observations

See 19352 A.D.

The Morennian Triumph and the Chorite Heresiarchy not only are in a different timeline from Technic civilization but also are at a much later date in their timeline.

The fact that the past can be changed means that other timelines, like that of Technic civilization, could be generated.

Also, 4N dimensions, with N as the total number of particles in the universe, give more than enough space for multiple timelines, even including the Old Phoenix multiverse, to coexist in different parts of the multidimensional totality.

However, the Danellians and the Time Patrol exist in a part of the totality that comprises not many coexistent timelines but one mutable timeline.

The Patrol language, Temporal, has tenses both for time travel and for variable reality. Even in English, by applying logic, we can discuss the relationships between timelines whether or not all of those timelines are regarded as existent. Thus, a time traveler with memories of World War II who arrives in 1938 and somehow prevents World War II can be regarded either as a macrocosmic quantum fluctuation or as a traveler from timeline 1 (with a World War II) arriving in timeline 2 (with no World War II). Timeline 1 can either precede "timeline 2" along a second temporal dimension or be regarded as a metaphysical fiction. There is more than one way to save the appearances.

Flying The Hump In World War II

Colonel Hugh Drummond, who has the same name as Bulldog Drummond, has just flown around the world for two years in an atomic-powered stratojet which he lands on the street of the US capital, Taylor, Oregon, where he is received by the de facto President, General Robinson, who says:

"'Gambai.
"Drummond thought Robinson must have flown the Hump in World War Two to learn that toast. That would have been long ago, when he was young and it was still possible to win a war."
-Poul Anderson, Twilight World (London, 1984), Prologue, I, p. 9.

Observations
I had to google the Hump.
World War II was "long ago" but still recent enough for a man who had served in it to serve also in World War III. That is no longer the case, if we are going to have a World War III: another example of a future becoming a past.

That is all for today, folks. I will be busy tomorrow but might manage to publish some posts.

War In Art And Life II

What did I miss about World War II here?

HG Wells predicted World Wars I and II.

Instead of WW I, II and III, SM Stirling's Draka have the Great War, the Eurasian War and the Final War.

CS Lewis' Perelandra was written and published during World War II:

"'...the two sides, as you call them, have begun to appear much more clearly, much less mixed, here on Earth, in our own human affairs - to show in something a little more like their true colours.'
"'I see that all right.'"
-CS Lewis, Perelandra IN Lewis, The Cosmic Trilogy (London, 1990), pp. 145-348 AT p. 162.

Thus, Lewis, like Anderson in Three Hearts And Three Lions, links the War to a vaster conflict.

Two Kinds Of Multiverse

Two similar but distinct hypotheses:

(i) that our space-time continuum is just one of many such continua distributed along a fourth spatial dimension;

(ii) that, within our continuum, every random event or conscious choice causes a bifurcation such that divergent timelines proliferate in a second temporal dimension.

Both hypotheses involve many universes and at least one extra dimension. However, (i) involves many permanently distinct and self-sufficient universes whereas (ii) involves a single universe continually splitting into increasingly dissimilar alternative versions of itself. In (ii), another universe might contain, e.g., a World War II won by the Axis whereas, in (i), World War II - and indeed the entire history of Earth, the Solar System and the Milky Way - occur only in our universe. (ii) has "parallel Earths" whereas (i) has only one Earth. A variation on (ii), as expounded by Valeria Matuchek in Poul Anderson's A Midsummer Tempest, is that the diverse universes have been distinct from the beginning but their differences did not become apparent until later.

Olaf Stapledon's Star Maker experimentally creates many increasingly complex universes, including ours. Thus, Stapledon presents (i) but not (ii). HG Wells, as he did with several key concepts, presented (ii) in a single novel. Several subsequent sf writers have, as we know, endlessly elaborated (ii). However, I think that (i) must also be present somewhere in Anderson's vast body of work?

World Wars

In my teens in the 1960's, futuristic sf was mostly about either spaceships or post-nuclear-war survival although, of course, the sky was the limit and other familiar themes included natural catastrophes, alien invasions, time travel, telepathy etc.

Several works by Poul Anderson, including two of his future history series, begin in the aftermath of a nuclear war. I used to think that nuclear war and World War III were synonymous and that MAD prevented the latter.  However, here is a suggestion from Andrea above the Old Pier Bookshop today. Are we already in World War III? World War II took a couple of years to grow from local and regional wars into a world war. Are we at that stage with WWIII?

Here is another Andrean thought, this time drawing on history. The Hundred Years War was the real World War I, the Napoleonic Wars were the real WWII and subsequent global conflicts should be renumbered accordingly. Now that such conflicts are numbered, they need not be periodically renamed.

I think that we can agree that our Italian Fascist (former or otherwise) friend above his brother's Old Pier Bookshop has not let us down and I don't feel like exercising any more grey cells for the rest of this evening. Van Rijn can come in and sound off if he likes.

(Star) Wars

Poul Anderson, After Doomsday, CHAPTER SEVEN.

Carl Donnan's humanoid Kandemirian captor says, "'Ah, so.'" (p. 76) - and thus sounds Japanese. This plus an American at war far from home recalls World War II, as in High Treason. For impacts of World War II on Anderson's fiction, see World War II. For similarities to occupied Europe, see An Occupied Planet and Flandry On Vixen.

With their long history of armed conflicts on Earth, the Terrestrials have something to contribute to their local civilization-cluster with its long drawn out struggle between two imperial powers, Kandemir and Vorlak. However, interstellar wars are rare.

Within a cluster:

"There was trading... There was tourism. There was a degree of interchange in science, art, religion, fashion. Sometimes there was war." (CHAPTER THREE, p. 34)

But:

"The civilization-clusters were never hostile to each other. There was nothing to be hostile about. Conflicts occurred among neighbours, not among strangers who saw each other once a year, a decade, or a century." (ibid.)

After The War

I was born in January 1949, just over three years after the end of World War II. Without understanding anything about the War, we read War comics and saw War films. Our parents' generation remembered the War and it seemed that it would be forever a major recent event. Poul Anderson's "Time Patrol" was published in May 1955 and his "Delenda Est" in December 1955. It followed that the hero of these two Time Patrol stories, Manson Everard, had been in the War. I read a Library copy of Guardians Of Time, published in 1961, and bought the Pan paperback edition, published in 1964.

The first James Bond novel, Casino Royale, was published in 1953. It followed that Bond had been in the War and had even been active in the Secret Service before the War. You Only Live Twice, published 1964, revised Bond's biography. (Had time travelers been at work?) Now he had entered the Secret Service only during the War and then only by lying about his age. Nevertheless, the War had to remain part of his past.

By now, we are well out from under the shadow of that War. Its sequel, the Cold War, has come and gone. Anderson's The Shield Of Time (1990) mentions Gorbachev. The Bond novels retained their post-World War II flavor at least until You Only Live Twice, the eleventh of the twelve novels, but also showed signs of the Cold War slacking off. Now contemporary novels contain satellites and computers that were previously science fiction.

"Time Patrol" had said that the gadgets in a typical room at the Time Patrol Academy were:

"...the sort you would have expected by, say, AD 2000..."
-Guardians Of Time (Pan, London, 1964), p. 12,

and included:

"...screens which could draw on a huge library of recorded sight and sound for entertainment. Nothing too advanced, as yet." (ibid.)

In The Twentieth Century

The Technic History begins by referring to television versus psychodrama in the mid-twentieth century whereas the Psychotechnic History begins in the aftermath of a World War III that did not occur in our timeline. However, that World War III is so close in time to World War II that Fourre and Reinach, who decide the fate of Europe and the world after WWIII, are veterans of World War II and even reminisce about it and its aftermath:

"'Do you remember that night soon after the Second War, we were boys, freshly out of the Maquis...'"
-"Marius," p. 15.

Thus, both of these future history series are firmly grounded in common memories of the twentieth century.

Continuing Consequences Of World War II In Life And Fiction

(i) Every British town and village has a War Memorial. A man who returned to England after decades in Australia learnt that his best friend during the War had not survived the War by seeing his name listed on such a memorial.

(ii) When a missing girl is being sought:

"Patrols were sent out to make a second sweep of the particularly rugged terrain, as well as an area known as 'the fortress' - a now-abandoned bunker system that was built during the Second World War."
-Stieg Larsson, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (London, 2008), Chapter 8, p. 136.

(iii) Visitors to Ostend can look around inside the former German defences.

(iv) An instructor at the Time Patrol Academy tells cadets how easy it would be to prevent the birth of Adolf Hitler...

(v) Over a thousand years later, Dominic Flandry cites the example of countries changing sides after World War II. See Changing Sides.

"Operation Afreet"

This is neat:

in Poul Anderson's Operation Chaos (New York, 1995), the countries waging World War II cannot use atomic weapons because the Tibetans keep turning "...anitnuclear warfare prayer wheels..." (p. 18);

transformation into a werewolf, formerly requiring a bright full moon, really needs only polarised light of certain wavelengths to trigger the pineal gland so Polaroid mass markets a WereWish Lens.

The narrator, a werewolf on an undercover operation in World War II, tells us that "...human language doesn't have the words..." to describe the were experience, then proceeds to describe it. (p. 19) His vision is weaker: blurred stars; a colourless flat world. His enhanced hearing, into the supersonic, "...made the night almost a roar..." (p. 19) He smells wet grass, dirt, "...the hot sweet little odor of a scampering field mouse, the clean tang of oil and guns, a faint harshness of smoke..." (p. 19)

An effort of trained will keeps his human memories and purposes in charge of his wolf's nerves, glands, instincts and limited intelligence. Weres in the old days had not had the right habits drilled into them from birth.

The enemy wear turbans around their helmets, an early hint that this World War II is not being waged against Germany. An enemy aircraft passing overhead is, of course, a carpet carrying men and machine guns. Flying carpets are familiar magical equipment and were used in "Magic, Inc." but, with many of the other details, Anderson confirms in these opening pages what he had said in the Introduction, namely that: "There were many more possibilities..." in the concept of magic as technology than had been presented in Heinlein's original work.

The War

Should we write "the war" or "the War"? We usually know which war we mean. Very often, "the war/War" means the Second World War unless stated otherwise. To take an example from a book that I am currently reading:

"In the autumn of 1947 Krishna, fully recovered, left Ojai on his first trip abroad since before the war."

-Radha Rajagopal Sloss, Life In The Shadow With J. Krishnamurti (London, 1991), PART THREE, 20, p. 215.

("Krishna" is not the Hindu god but someone named after him.) Obviously, in 1947, "the war" can only mean World War II but it continued to mean that for decades afterwards.

Flora, the immortal escaped slave says:

"'Po' young Marse Brett, he done get killed in de waw.'"

-The Boat Of A Million Years, XIII, p. 272.

We accept this reference to "de waw." Then we reflect that Flora must be speaking before the American Civil War. Edmonds wonders and asks:

"'What war?'

"'De Rebolution, it was. Yay, eben us slaves heard 'bout dat.'" (p. 273)

That makes her about a hundred - which the Edmonds do not believe. A more plausible explanation is that:

"'She's overwrought.'" (ibid.)

 - and:

"'...kind of crazy.'" (ibid.)

Well, it is obvious that "de waw" has different meanings in different contexts. I remember a good-humoured exchange between some students and a barman:

First student: "Ah, but I was referring to the Second World War, Jim!"

Barman: "So was I, you cheeky devil!"

Second student: "I assumed you meant American Civil!"

If only we lived that long.

The War II

See The War.

Contemporary novels become dated, then cease to be contemporary.

Poul Anderson's Murder In Black Letter was published in 1960. See here. Its main viewpoint character, Professor Kintyre, was aged nine in 1930. Thus, he was in World War II and, somewhere in the text, he tells us what either he or an acquaintance was doing in 1943. (I find it difficult to scan back and find relevant passages in an ebook.) (Later: I realized that I can search the ebook, e.g., for "1943.")

My interest, as before, is in fiction that was written when World War II was still a living memory. We are passing out of such a period. The longest running British TV soap opera began in late 1960 - originally intended as only a six-episode serial! In that opening episode, one elderly character spoke disparagingly about how a rather younger woman had conducted herself during the War. That whole period is becoming history. The cast of the soap has changed many times since then with only one character, originally a teenager, still played by his aging actor. I value Anderson's character, Manse Everard. Joining the Time Patrol in 1954, Everard both remembers the War and becomes able to revisit it.

Post-War Crime II

For the literature of the second half of the twentieth century, World War II has a kind of temporal gravity. We are continually pulled back to it.

Recruits to Poul Anderson's Time Patrol identify themselves by name followed by place and year of recruitment, thus:

Manson Eeverard, New York, 1954;
Charles Whitcomb, London, 1947.

Despite that seven year difference, Everard and Whitcomb are members of the same Academy class which is recruited from the period 1850-2000 and which also includes a young physicist from 1972. Described as a girl, she must have been born post-War. Everard's and Whitcomb's dates of recruitment inform us that they had been in the War. In fact, Whitcomb had just been demobbed from the RAF. What better recruit to the Patrol? Except that his proximity to the War motivates him to commit a time crime: to try to prevent his fiancee's death in an air raid in 1944, just ten years before Everard's recruitment. The War is always close and even closer for Time Patrolmen.

When Everard becomes involved to help his friend, he loses any innocence that he might have retained after his first trip, in normal time, through World War II. At the very end of the opening story, "Time Patrol," Everard returns to his home base from London, 1944:

"Everard climbed weakly aboard the hopper. And when he got off again, a decade had passed." (Time Patrol, p. 53)

Of course a decade passes between 1944 and 1954 but the morals of the story are that:

Everard has now experienced time travel for real;
he feels as if he has aged ten years in a very short subjective span.