York Minster

Poul Anderson celebrates the English City of York twice:

York exists in an alternative timeline in Anderson's novel, Operation Luna (New York, 1999);

the York of 1900 in an alternative timeline is "emulated" by an inorganic intelligence on a far future post-human Earth in Anderson's novel, Genesis (New York, 2000).

According to the narrator of Operation Luna, no town surpasses York in beauty and charm:

"Mellow gold-hued sandstone of ancient walls and towers, crooked narrow streets with names like Whip-Ma-Whop-Ma Gate, half-timbered houses whose arcades line them and galleries lean over them...history reaching back beyond the Romans and not embalmed but alive, here all around you -" (Operation Luna, p. 196).

The church that the characters seek:

"...lay almost in the shadows of the Minster. That most glorious of churches rose above roofs like God's personal benediction." (p. 197)

They walk on the city wall at night:

"A staircase led onto the city wall. Most of the medieval circuit remains. The top has been paved for easy footing. We wandered...between battlements. Beneath us slept the town. Opposite gleamed the river, and outlying homes gave way to broad countryside. Steeples, portals, the strong delicate towers of the Minster reached for the stars...stillness and ghostly fragrances from gardens. The east had gone pale..." (pp. 202-203)

We deduce that Poul and Karen Anderson did this. Although this passage is set in an alternative timeline, it describes the York we know.

In Genesis, an "emulation" is an elaborate computer/artificial intelligence simulation in which the simulated inhabitants of York are conscious, perceive the city and believe that they are living in it. Two characters entering the emulation as a virtual reality visit York Minster because it was:

" '...one of the loveliest churches ever built, in the loveliest old town.' " (Genesis, p. 184)

- although it had been " '...in sad condition...' " when last seen in reality. (p. 184)

In this alternative 1900, there is a Latin Roman Catholic Mass in the Minster. Anderson describes the interior of the church. Outside, the characters admire:

"...the carven tawny limestone of the front...The delightful narrow 'gates', walled in with half-timbered houses..." (p. 185)

There is a steam train but no automobiles and vehicles are pulled by diapered horses. The flag is a St Andrew's cross with an eagle. Soldiers march through to orders in German.

In this emulated timeline, generated as of its fifteenth century, the conciliar movement reformed the church sufficiently to prevent the Protestant Reformation and absolute monarchies. Thus, however, Germany was unified and became dominant, provoked rebellions and decayed.

" 'This Europe went through less agony, and invented and discovered less.' " (p. 188)

Anderson imagines a timeline that was better but only for a while. Meanwhile, he twice celebrates the ancient but transient beauty of York.

Sacred Spaces

Poul Anderson, Operation Luna (New York, 2000).

In York:

"...St. Oswald's on Oglethorpe Street...lay almost in the shadow of the Minster. That most glorious of churches rose above roofs like God's personal benediction." (p. 197)

(For York Minster above roofs, see image.)

Sometimes I comment on a passage. At other times I follow a line of thought suggested by the passage. Page viewers are invited to do the same.

When in York, I meditate in a side chapel of the Minster. I have mentioned other churches where I meditate here. When Sheila and I attended Evensong in the Minster, the Anglican clergyman thanked God for the lives of the founders of the Salvation Army and of the Missionaries of Charity. That same summer, I attended devotions to Krishna at a summer camp. At a conference in London, I meditate in a prayer room mainly used by Muslims. In a nearby village, the Anglican church had closed down, the Catholic church was locked and the Methodist church had a woman putting up posters so I helped her put them up before joining my family in a Temple of Bacchus, i.e., an English pub.

"Ginny and I weren't churchgoers. With all due respect, we'd never figured out which of the world's countless sets of rites and dogmas lead to the best relationship with God." (p. 123)

Which, if any, helps you most? A couple I know agreed, when getting married, that they would go to church, that they would do it together and that he would change to hers so Kevin has been a practicing Anglican ever since. He knows that I believe differently but is not the sort of chap who gets into discussions about religion. Poul Anderson's fiction invites discussion of theology as of everything else.

Time And York

York Minster features prominently in works by Poul Anderson. See here.

The Minster took 242 years to build, from 1230 to 1472. Thus, twelve generations knew this cathedral only as a building site.

The Minster has a uniformed police force answerable to the Dean and Chapter of the Minster, not to the Chief Constable. This seems to make it the oldest continuously existing police force anywhere, just as Britain has a very long tradition of fighting ships loyal to the king.

The Time Patrol has an office in London in 1000 A.D. which sends material and clothes to Agents Everard and Whitcomb when they have to travel from the London office in 1894 to 464 A.D. It may be the office in 1000 A.D. that has oversight of the building and early history of the Minster, possibly delegating a small team, a temporal equivalent of the Minster police force, to counteract any potential interruptions to the more than two centuries of building work. It would be an easy matter for some accident or extra-temporal interference to halt the work, thus changing the subsequent history of England.

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.

Learning History IV

(York with the Minster.)

See Learning History III.

In Europe, the Edwardian period was called the belle epoque." (p. 184)

In York Minster, the windows include the Five Sisters. (ibid.)

Christian and Laurinda hear Mass at the tierce hour, then, after, the Nunc Dimittis, wander around the Minster. (p. 185)

This alternative York has "...somehow Teutonic architecture." The George and Dragon public house is in a Tudor building and serves Continental beer. (p. 186)

In this emulated history, the conciliar movement succeeded. The Councils of Constance and Basel healed the Great Schism and made a reconciliation with the Hussites. (p. 187) In Poul Anderson's SFWA Bulletin article, he tells us that John K. Hord regarded the Council of Basel as the beginning of the breakdown of Western European civilization.

Diversity

Genesis, PART TWO, VII, 7.

(Numbers are expressed in Roman letters, a Roman numeral and an Arabic numeral.)

Laurinda and Christian attend Mass in York Minster in the 1900 of a timeline where there had been no Reformation: dimness, glories, chants and incense. In the York Minster of our timeline, I have meditated in a side chapel and attended an Evensong service where God was thanked for the lives of the founders of the Salvation Army and the Missionaries of Charity.

I appreciate the Hindu response to religious diversity, discussed in the combox here. In India, Hinduism incorporated the Buddha as a divine incarnation but Buddhism survived as a separate tradition by spreading through Asia. Although Hindus can also accept Christ as a divine incarnation, Christianity and several other traditions have maintained their integrity alongside Hinduism. There are synagogues with Indian Jewish congregations and the first European Christian missionaries to India found episcopal churches claiming apostolic succession from St Thomas. Sikhism is long established as a tradition distinct from its Hindu and Muslim origins. If, in SM Stirling's The Peshawar Lancers, some Anglicans had accepted absorption into Hinduism, others would not have. The diversity within Hinduism reflects the diversity without. 

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.

Again York Minster And The Haunting Of Europe

For previous references both to York and to its Minster, see here.

In Poul Anderson, The Avatar, XXV, Ira Quick projects a moving picture of the Minster, with a Gregorian chant on the sound track, onto a giant screen. This "...loveliest of medieval churches..." (p. 215) reminds Quick of Terrestrial achievements that are now threatened by interstellar contact - as he sees it. Extra-solar intelligences are merely "inhuman..."

In XXIV, Frieda von Moltke says that the Others, who constructed the T machines, haunt the extra-solar Betans "'...more than Christ haunted Europe...'" (p. 213)

More than that? Have the Betans focused systems of belief, hope and even architecture on the Others? Europeans now have access to every tradition. They can either ignore Christianity or locate it in a wider context, e.g., see Teachings.

Which significant political tract opens by stating that a specter is haunting Europe?

Five Sisters

(This is the 100th post for September. The theory is that I now take a break or draft some notes to be posted early in October. However, practice can diverge from theory.)

Page 143 of Poul Anderson's The Byworlder (London, 1974) has an intriguing misprint:

"...they were coming to know one who fared between the stairs."

Obviously, the alien fares between the stars. However, this is a fortuitous error. I am sure that either Neil Gaiman, author of Neverwhere, featuring London Below, or China Mieville, author of Un Lon Don, would be able to write a juvenile fantasy about "One Who Fared Between The Stairs." That phrase should be able to inspire a novel - how many worlds might be concealed between the stairs from the front hall to the first landing? - although I am not able to write it.

Recently, as I mentioned at the time, we visited York and I meditated in the Minster. I noted references to York in Poul Anderson's novels. Here is another such reference. In The Byworlder, the alien "Sigman" has come to the Solar System in search of artistic inspiration. Terrestrials mistakenly tried to communicate with words instead of with shared art. Having realized their error, they now show him a large and varied selection of works of art, including the Five Sisters windows in York Minster. See attached image.

Sharing beauty from different periods and cultures kind of puts the political rivalries between the US and China into a different perspective. Hopefully, the novel approaches a happy resolution although, at least in his short stories, Anderson sometimes gave us anything but a happy ending.

Old York

I have not posted until 11.30 pm today because we have had a day trip, with nearly six hours on the road, from our historic city of Lancaster to the historic city of York, founded as Eboracum by the Romans in 71 AD. As mentioned previously, York features in three novels by Poul Anderson, set in different times and timelines:

the historical past;
an alternative present;
an alternative recent past "emulated" by a far future post-human AI!

Yet again, Anderson seems to cover every possibility, in this case:

past, present and future;
medieval and modern pasts;
three timelines, one "emulated," i. e., consciously simulated.

Also, York is one of many great cities, from Ys and Roma Mater to Archopolis and the Merseian capital, Ardaig.

In present day York, we ate in a pub and walked on the wall. My daughter and granddaughter saw Mithras and other gods in the Museum. I meditated in the Minster, saw the statue of Constantine - proclaimed Emperor in York in 306 - then drank coffee and read Poul Anderson in Ye (pronounced "The") Old Starre Inne, where coaches changed horses from as early as 1644.

Regular readers will know the importance not only of York but also of the Roman Empire and of Mithras in Anderson's works.

In York

Poul Anderson's Mother Of Kings (New York, 2003) is encyclopedic and like a window onto a moving picture of nature, history and mythology. Maybe the changing weather and cyclical seasons are more important events than the fanciful and transient affairs of royal claimants?

In the opening paragraph of Book Three, Chapter VIII:

wind hisses;
geese honk;
York rackets;
stenches scatter;
light spills down.

Three senses are addressed.

"Thatch, turf and shakes blocked sight of the morning sun..." (p. 219)

I cannot find this meaning of "shakes."

The second paragraph has:

gleaming helmets;
rainbow cloaks;
shining byrnies;
a gold-embroidered, marten-trimmed tunic;
blue breeks over kidskin boots;
a silken-banded, wide-brimmed hat;
gold coiled at throat and on arms;
white wool skirts;
woven panels hanging from brooches;
an amber necklace;
red silk cloth over dark hair;
a garnet-set silver headband;
armed guards before and after.

The paragraph describes King Eirik accompanying Queen Gunnhild and their children to the cathedral (York Minster?) where they will be baptized. Even when bound on such an errand:

"...never would their lord fare meekly." (ibid.)

The Contemporary In The Cosmic III

In Operation Luna, Poul Anderson describes the York that we know (see York Minster) even though this, otherwise indistinguishable, York is on an alternative Earth where:

magic works;

air travel is by broomsticks or flying carpets;

the two American visitors are a werewolf and a witch whose daughter will later meet Prince Rupert of the Rhine and Holger Danske while traveling between universes;

the Devil/the Adversary is a real and active being;

Hell is a low entropy universe with distorted space-time;

there is contact with Heaven and a route to Yggdrasil;

evil supernatural beings have emigrated to the Moon;

an enchanted sword speaks;

etc.

Can our York coexist with all that? Many who have lived there have believed in at least some of these things.

Acknowledgments

Poul Anderson, American and agnostic, shows us contemporary York (see York Minster) and presents Catholic characters, like van Rijn and Axor, sympathetically. SM Stirling presents authentic British characters, like Sir Nigel Loring, and settings, like Newport Pagnell, and understands every religion that he writes about.

Further, Stirling acknowledges his sources. Thus, let us on this blog also thank:

Steve Brady for assistance with dialects and British background;
Kier Salmon for help with the Old Religion;
Diana L. Paxson for information on Asatru;
Dale Price for help with Catholic organization, theology and praxis.

Stirling also acknowledges other sources but here I focus specifically on the British and religious backgrounds.

SM Stirling, The Tears Of The Sun (New York, 2011), Acknowledgments.

The Corridors Of History

Time And York was occasioned by a TV program about York Minster presented by Tony Robinson. A link from the latter post leads to other posts about different periods in English history.

I have found that reading either historical fiction or time travel fiction can lead into reading history, e.g., Simon Schama's A History Of Britain based on a TV series.

Announcing The End Of The World

Sometimes a single phrase in a single text raises a question that generates references to an unmanageable number of other texts.

How will the end of the world be announced - or presaged? Is "the world" Earth or the universe? Do we mean the end of everything or only of the present world order? Will the end, in whichever sense, arrive unannounced?

In Paris, on the Left Bank overlooking the Boulevard St. Germain, in 1902:

"Everard tried not to remember that in a dozen years this world would crash to ruin."

-Poul Anderson, The Shield Of Time (New York, 1991), PART ONE, 1902 A. D., p. 119.

 

The precursors of the Jehovah's Witnesses had predicted the end of the world - or at least the end of the present sinful world order - in 1914 and subsequently, of necessity, reinterpreted it. Thus, a supernatural event occurred then but the end will come soon.

 

In Anderson's After Doomsday, spaceships re-enter the Solar System after Earth has been sterilized. Its inhabitants would have had no warning. In his Tau Zero, the crew of a relativistic spaceship sees the universe fading and contracting. However, the sterilized Earth will be re-seeded and the contracted universe re-expands so is there an end? In Anderson's Harvest Of Stars and Genesis, the latter a highly appropriate title, consciousness and intelligence might survive the heat death of the universe.

(A British TV program is just now showing the East window in York Minster which begins with (the Biblical) Genesis and ends with Apocalypse.)

Before the Ragnarok, three cocks crow, in Jotunheim, Hel and Asgard, respectively. See Cockcrow, Addendum. 

 

See also Gabriel's horn.

 

I could also reference James Blish, Isaac Asimov, Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman but perhaps Anderson alone, plus Voluspa and Apocalypse, is comprehensive enough? 

 

This post was initiated by a passage in which James Bond reflects that Goldfinger, funding SMERSH, is:

 

"...piling up the surplus for the day when the trumpets would sound in the Kremlin and every golden sinew would be mobilized."

-Ian Fleming, Goldfinger (London, 1959), CHAPTER 7, p. 64.

 

So the free world would have ended when, metaphorically of course, trumpets sounded in the Kremlin? Unlikely and, in any case, did not happen.

Remembering Earth

Poul Anderson, Starfarers (New York, 1999), Chapter 12.

Old Michael Shaugnessy, having returned to the extrasolar planet where his wife is buried to die there, remembers Earth. He lists familiar place names but also says:

"Shwe Dagon recalled another faith..." (p. 90)

I wrongly took this to refer to the god Dagon.

The planet to which Shaughnessy has returned is called Feng Huang but has a valley of the Kshatriya. (This must mean that a river is named after an Indian caste?)

Of the Terrestrial places listed by Shaugnessy, we recognize two that appear in other works by Anderson, York Minster and Machu Picchu. He also mentions an Empress Theodora. Relying for the moment on memory, I think that one Empress Theodora, although maybe not this one, features in Anderson's The Last Viking Trilogy?

Chapter 12, just over two pages in length, mainly tells us that time is passing and also that times are not currently good on Earth. Meanwhile, the Envoy, with its massive time dilation factor, remains in flight...

Tourist Trips And Traps

(Woburn Abbey.)

SM Stirling's Emberverse Vol II, The Protector's War (New York, 2006), begins at Woburn Abbey, England, in 2006 AD, Change Year Eight. An ex-SAS man thinks:

"I've been here before..." (p. 1)

So have I, although too long ago to remember anything.

"In 1953 the eleventh duke had opened [the Abbey] to the paying public, complete with golf course, pub, guided tours and antique shop - and avoided the forced sales which so many of his peers suffered after the Second World War." (p.2)

There is a lot of that in England. Also, former private residences are outdoor pursuits centers etc.

It is always interesting to read a North American author's account of a visit to a historic site in England. In particular, see York Minster.

Not For Publication

(York Minster, interior.)

Poul Anderson, Operation Luna (New York, 2000).

Steve Matuchek answers a question I asked earlier:

"My reconstruction of events is partly guesswork. No matter. This whole account isn't for publication. Too explosive, as well as being often too personal. It's going under hundred-year seal. Maybe after that it can give some kind of unforeseeable help to somebody in the unforeseeable future. A warning, if nothing else." (p. 208)

Most novels are third person narration and we do not ask who is addressing whom, how does the narrator know this? etc. The most creative use of narrative points of view that I have ever come across was in CS Lewis' That Hideous Strength. Anderson does interesting things with narration in his two Operation... volumes:

both are narrated in the first person by Steve Matuchek;

Steve, in a trance, telepathically broadcasts Operation Chaos to hypothetical other universes although he tells us in Operation Luna that there was no response;

Operation Luna is not for immediate publication;

both are warnings although ...Chaos is regarded as urgent whereas ...Luna clearly is not.

The circumstances of the narration of a story can in themselves become an additional story. This almost happens here.

This World

Finding themselves in another world, some characters remember and appreciate this world.

Manse Everard recalls his friends, including characters from previous stories, and:

"...the austere cantos of Dante and the ringing thunder of Shakespeare; the glory which was York Minster and the Golden Gate Bridge..."
-Poul Anderson, "Delenda Est" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 173-228 AT 2, p. 184.

In Three Hearts And Three Lions, CHAPTER THREE, Holger Carlsen recalls (I will rewrite them as a list):

the graceful spires of Copenhagen;
moors, beaches and wide horizons in Jutland;
ancient towns in green dales on the islands;
the skyward arrogance of New York;
the mist on San Francisco Bay made gold by the sunset.

While he is riding into Faerie, Holger remembers what reads like an even more fabulous realm.

Operation Luna: Miscellaneous VI

Operation Luna.

In Steve Matuchek's study (20, p. 175):

books by Mark Twain;
books by Jack London;
mystery novels;
Arizona Flyways;
Decatur's sword (scroll down);
Hoppe's No. 9.

Searching the blog for "Decatur" revealed an earlier reference to him in Poul Anderson's "The Pugilist," which I had completely forgotten.

Frogmorton's garden path is "...lined with zinnias." (21, p. 183)

Steve and Ginny visit a church on Oglethorpe Street in York, near the Minster. (22, p. 197) I have found a lane called Oglethorpe in York, near the Minster. In the church, the altar looks rococo and the stained glass lacks the Burne-Jones influence.

Frogmorton deciphered Mayan and Aztec inscriptions by animating copies (?), a technique which has cracked Minoan Linear A. (20, p. 181) For more on Frogmorton, see here.

Steve thinks that he will be able to handle Fu Ch'ing's dacoits. (21, p. 193)