Not Tardis But Diaglossa

Doctor Who's Tardis not only transports its passengers to other times, places and planets but also enables them to understand and speak whatever language is currently in use at their arrival point. Impossible. At least two fundamental changes need to be made in any revamp of Doctor Who: first, the Time Lords should be not an extraterrestrial species but descendants of humanity, maybe colonists of Gallifrey, and, secondly, they should encounter linguistic problems when they time travel although, by the time we meet them, they might conceivably have learned many languages and programmed them into something like the "diaglossas" in Poul Anderson's The Corridors Of Time (London, 1968).

A diaglossa, a small artifact inserted into an ear, is a molecular encoder storing important languages and basic customs of an area and era, drawing energy from body heat and meshing its output with the user's brain, thus adding an artificial memory center. Thus, different diaglossas are necessary for different periods and the diaglossas' programmers have had to learn the languages and customs in the first place. Similar effect to the Tardis but a lot more plausible. Diaglossas are silent about historical events so that native auxiliaries will not learn their futures.

In northern Europe in 1827 BC, Lockridge's diaglossa gives him an agglutinative language with a complex grammar and many fine distinctions unknown to civilized men, like twenty words for water, but no single word for "mass," "government" or "monotheism," and very different concepts of cause, time, self and death.

At the gate of Viborg in 1535 AD, Lockridge is suspected of spying because, although he claims to be English, his diaglossa makes him fluent in both German and Danish. In the late fortieth century, he has learned how to draw information from his diaglossa: two languages, Western and Eastern; two ideologies, materialism and pantheism; much information on Ranger subordination of underlings but far less on the Wardens, whose diaglossa he uses, although he does get an impression of benevolent hierarchy (!).

Amulet And Diaglossa

In The Merman's Children, Book Four, Chapter VI, Tauno recalls the story of Herr Aage and Lady Else. I had never heard of it before.

Let's take a closer look at Panigpak's amulet. It is:

a bone disc;

an inch and a half in diameter;

slightly inward-curving;

hanging on a sealskin loop that passes through a hole at one edge;

yellowish white;

graven in the hollow with a blackened image of a bird and the moon;

able to -

- let its wearer understand any speech and reply in the same language;

draw in a soul, then let that soul enter its wearer;

give its wearer knowledge of the local environment.

The diaglossa, fitting into an ear, lets its wearer understand and speak any language with which it has been programmed and also bestows local knowledge. Thus, magical amulet and technological diaglossa have strong similarities.

Indo-Europeans

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

Poul Anderson invents some names for his story. The Indo-European "Yuthoaz" conquer the "Tenil Orugaray" of "Avildaro." I usually think of Indo-European as a language and of its speakers as Aryans.

Lockridge learns one limit of the diaglossa. His social habits make him thank Auri of the Tenil Orugaray for picnicking with him whereas the diaglossa reminds him too late that her people express "...thanks only for very great favors. Everyday helpfulness was taken for granted." (p. 52)

When the time travelers, Storm and Lockridge, use weapons from the twentieth and fortieth centuries to defend the Tenil Orugary, they do not risk changing history as Carl Farness possibly does when he defends his Goths from Vandals in Time Patrol.

Storm tells Lockridge that her enemies, the Rangers, initiated the Indo-European invasions of India, Turkey and Europe. The worship of a Sky Father by technologically innovative male warriors subordinating women and children paves the way for Christianity, centralized monarchy, machine culture, the rational state and the fortieth century Ranger regime! That is quite a long chain of historical circular causality.

Mentator, Diaglossa And Amulet

mentator
diaglossa
Panigpak's amulet (The Merman's Children, Book Four, Chapter I), p. 196.

What have these three artifacts in common? Follow the links and find out. The first two are technological whereas the third is magical. In fact:

"It is a deep magic...'" (p. 197)

The magician had to open his father's cairn and take a piece of the skull.

How do fictional characters converse with the people or beings that they meet on other planets or in ancient time periods? In some films or TV episodes, the problem is ignored. Everyone in the universe speaks and always has spoken English! Until the film is translated into French etc. Occasionally, a completely inadequate explanation is given. Two ERB characters, imprisoned in a cell, begin by pointing at objects and articulating nouns and are soon discussing abstract concepts like telepathy.

It is interesting to find an instant translator in both fantasy and sf, both written by Poul Anderson. The technological devices are versatile but have their limits. Of course. They are not "magic."

Mysticism And Materialism

Arrived in the Warden realm, Malcolm Lockridge consults his diaglossa:

"Religion: here a mystical, ritualistic pantheism, with Her the symbol and embodiment of all that was divine; among the enemy, only a harsh materialistic theory of history."
-Poul Anderson, The Corridors Of Time, CHAPTER FOURTEEN, p. 125.

Some assumptions here: materialism need not be either "only" or "harsh." Let's define some terms. I suggest -

mysticism: intuition of oneness;
materialism: the philosophical theory that being preceded consciousness;
mystification: obscuration.

Mysticism is not mystification and is compatible with materialism. Engels wrote that man is that animal in which nature becomes conscious of itself.

Dialectical materialism is not reductionist but recognizes that new qualities, especially consciousness, emerge from interactions between opposites and from quantitative changes becoming qualitative transformations. The Rangers' philosophy could be liberating instead of harsh. It might even be expressed through pantheistic rituals, yogic exercises and Zen meditation.

Translation And Time

Stanislaw Lem, The Star Diaries (London, 1976).

On "The Eighth Voyage," Ijon Tichy, arriving at the United Planets General Assembly, swallows "...an informational-translational tablet..." (p. 23) which functions like the diaglossa in Poul Anderson's The Corridors Of Time, not only interpreting but also informing. (In The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, space travelers put a "babel fish" in one ear.)

I realized that The Star Diaries were less serious and more "humorous" than expected when Tichy "...poured water on the overheated atomic pile..." ("The Seventh Voyage," p. 6) and also had "...a heavy pipe...to stoke the atomic pile..." (p. 16) so I might not find many comparisons to make with Anderson.

Some time travel paradox details:

Tichy is alone in a spaceship but a necessary external repair is a two-man job;

because of a gravitational vortex, the Tichy from tomorrow time travels to today but he and the Tichy of today cannot make the repair because there is only one spacesuit;

the Tichy of today must don the spacesuit and keep it on so that, the next time a Tichy arrives from tomorrow, both will be wearing it;

however, a Tichy from tomorrow cannot help with the repair today if he does not remember that the repair was made today;

instead the Tichy from tomorrow must don the suit so that he will be able to work with a Tichy from his future;

a Tichy trying to get into the suit finds that there is another Tichy already in it;

there is violence between Tichys arguing about which is oldest;

there are so many Tichys that they must form a committee and all of them defer to the one who is visibly oldest;

meanwhile, two child-Tichys use the suit to make the repair, one putting his arms in the legs.

I fail to see how the gravitational vortices drew Tichys from before or after the voyage into the ship but none of this is serious. Both Heinlein and Anderson handle circular causality better than Lem.

Diaglossa

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

What would it be like to have an instant translator in your ear? Of necessity, it would be "'...an artificial memory center...'" (p. 43), bestowing not only immediate understanding and fluent speech but also much background knowledge. Thus, when Storm utters the place name, "Avildaro," Lockridge instantly knows that:

"Avildaro" is an elision of an older name meaning "Sea Mother House";

the goddess of the village is an avatar of the Huntress in the forest;

the villagers have lived there for centuries;

 
they are descended from reindeer hunters who came when the glaciers receded;

the hunters became fishers when the herds followed the ice into Sweden and Norway;

locally, they have more recently learned farming from immigrants further inland;

but they still follow the sea goddess who is not known by the charioteers;

the charioteers worship male gods and trouble the peace -

- Lockridge must stop the distracting memory flow.

Anderson has thought through what an artificial translator would have to be like, then used it as a new way to do what he always does - telling us how people in the past lived: another perfect blend of science fiction with historical, or in this case prehistorical, fiction.

In The Wardens' Realm

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

Wine contains a euphoriac. Music includes subsonics. Colors shift hypnotically. The diaglossa teaches dance steps. Ritualistically used potions and incenses open the door to Her presence in everything. Losing the thread of the conversation, Lockridge listens as if to music.

Hu and Lockridge fly over endless parkland with no cities. A tower marked by an ankh is an industrial plant visited only by technicians. The palace roofs and spires are like an immense waterfall.

Clearly this is a synopsis but Anderson's description is itself brief. We have been told all that we need to know before Lockridge is sent to the antithetical domain of the Rangers, described in previous posts.

A Different Language

Poul Anderson, The Corridors Of Time, CHAPTER FIVE, pp. 40-42.

The attached image is from modern Copenhagen whereas Chapter Five is set in 1827 B.C. but there may be a connection if mermaids are related to the sea goddess. See below.

The diaglossa, a molecular encoder placed in the ear, powered by body heat and meshing its output with the nerve flow of the brain, gives Lockridge an artificial memory center including a language which:

has twenty words for water;
can express concepts like "mass," "government" and "monotheism" only with elaborate circumlocutions;
has very different concepts of "cause," "time," "self" and "death."

We need to spend some time thinking in such a language before returning to our own.

She of the Wet Locks eats land and men but gives shining fish, oyster, seal and porpoise to those who serve Her. She sounds like the goddess of Veleda in the Time Patrol story, "Star Of The Sea." 

Synchronous Reading

"'You will be seeking strange lands,' Panigpak said. 'Their dwellers may speak tongues unknown to you. Whoever wears this amulet will understand whatever is heard, and can reply in the same tongue.'"

-The Merman's Children, Book Four, I, p. 196.

"The remarkable intentional translators everyone on Oric wore around their necks like amulets decoded the intent of any speaker into the language of the listener..."

-Elliot S. Maggin, Superman: Last Son Of Krypton (London, 1978), 9, p. 66.

See also:

Diaglossa

Where Is My Universal Translator?

The one thing that I do not do here is make all this stuff up. Now I really will try to get back to and stay with that other reading.

Poul Anderson And The Doctor

Some Comparisons Of Poul Anderson's Main Time Travel Fiction (Three Novels And One Series) With Doctor Who

(i) The Time Patrol and Doctor Who are two time travel series.

(ii) A Time Lord's TARDIS and a Time Patrol timecycle are not only time machines but space-time machines, which is how HG Wells' Time Traveler originally envisaged his Machine. However, a TARDIS has a cosmic range whereas the timecycles are merely Terrestrial.

(iii) The Doctor has visited past and future periods and also spent some time based in the present. Manse Everard of the Patrol, based in the present, visits historical periods and the reader is given minimal information about many future periods. See The Time Patrol Timeline.

(iv) Three time traveling villains are comparable:

Merau Varagan in the Time Patrol series;
Brann in The Corridors Of Time;
the Master, another rebel Time Lord.

(v) HG Wells time traveled in the TARDIS to a period when he heard the word, "Morlock," and, in There Will Be Time, was given free use of the time travel idea by one of the mutant time travelers.

(vi) The Doctor visited Atlantis and Anderson's time travel novels include The Dancer From Atlantis.

(vii) Anderson's diaglossa and mentator are more credible translators than the Doctor's TARDIS.

Languages

When an Atlantean, a pre-Attila Hun, a medieval Russian and a twentieth century American meet, the American is the only one of the four with the concept, "time travel." The futurian time traveler, Sahir, recognizes Duncan Reid as postindustrial and therefore uses the mentator to learn his language although not to teach Reid the futurian language. Just as the Hun would take days  or weeks to digest an idea like "steam engine," Reid would not know how to use many of the future concepts. After Sahir has died, the four unwilling time travelers use the mentator to learn the most ancient of their four languages because that will be the most useful when they are.

Wardens and Rangers wear a diaglossa in an ear. Time Patrollers speak Temporal between themselves and get other languages imprinted on their brains. Only the mutant time travelers have no recourse but to learn each new language the hard way.

There was going to be more but this morning breakfast is rushed. Laters.

The Corridors Of Time, Character Introductions

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

"...dojo..." (p. 12), a Japanese term meaning "place of the way," can refer to a temple adjunct or to a martial arts gathering place and training center.

Malcolm Lockridge is a recognizable Poul Anderson hero:

boyhood of work, forests, hunting and fishing;
enlisted at seventeen;
combat training in the Marines;
karate training in an Okinawa dojo;
read a lot while in the service;
wants to learn after experiencing the world;
studying anthroplogy;
does not romanticize primitive people;
but thinks they have something we have lost.

Storm Darroway reminds him of ancient Cretan images of Our Lady of the Labrys. We will learn that she is the original. He notices a discrepancy: her appearance does not match an Anglo-Saxon name. He sees "...a tiny, transparent button in her left ear." (p. 13) We will learn that this is not a hearing aid but her diaglossa. She lets slip one futuristic word, "'...slogg...'" (ibid.) Something of her philosophy is revealed when she explains that she will spare no expense to help Lockridge beat a murder charge because, "...it is wrong to cage a lion.'" (ibid.)

What Year Is It?

Three Hearts And Three Lions, CHAPTER TWO.

Continuing from A Man And His Role.

Time travel would not explain comprehension of the language but, as we have seen, some time travelers have their ways of coping with that. See the blog search result for diaglossa.

Someone who suspects that he has time traveled needs to know what year he is in. He is unlikely to be greeted with: "Welcome to 1000 A.D."

"Temporal agents always notice date & time; we must."
Robert Heinlein, "'-All You Zombies-'" IN Heinlein, The Unpleasant Profession Of Jonathan Hoag (London, 1980), pp. 126-137 AT p. 126.

"'What year is this?'
"We gaped at him. 'Well, it's the second year after the great salmon catch,' I tried.
"'What year after Christ, I mean,' he prayed hoarsely.
"'Oh, so you are a Christian? Hm, let me think... I talked with a bishop in England once, we were holding him for ransom, and he said...let me see...I think he said this Christ man lived a thousand years ago, or maybe a little less.'"
-Poul Anderson, "The Man Who Came Early" IN Damon Knight (Ed.), 100 Years Of Science Fiction (London, 1972), pp. 185-212 AT p. 191.

When disguised time travelers in ancient Tyre insist on booking passage on a particular day, this gives a canny local the idea that precise remembering might be profitable so:

"'Back then, I couldn't read or write, but what I could do was mark whatever special things happened each year, and keep those happenings in order and count back over them when I needed to. So this was the year in between a venture to the Red Cliff Shores and the year when I caught the Babylonian disease -'"
-Poul Anderson, "Ivory, and Apes, and Peacocks" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 229-331 AT p. 317.

This enables him, when asked by a Time Patrolman in 950 B.C., to state confidently that a particular event occurred:

"'An even one score and six years, come fifteen days before the fall equinox, or pretty near to that.'"
-ibid. p. 316.

We have learned some interesting ways to tell what year it is:

the second year after the great salmon catch;
the year between a venture to the Red Cliff Shores and the year when I caught the Babylonian disease...

Many people who have lived A.D. have not thought in terms of A.D. - and, of course, no one thought in terms of B.C.

Prehistoric Innocence

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

In 1827 BC, Malcolm Lockridge's instant translator and artificial memory, his diaglossa, informs him of the lives of the aboriginal Danish Sea People, the Tenil Orugaray:

peace and hospitality;
bouts of hard work separated by long easy intervals of amber shaping, music, dance etc;
friendly rivalry between closely related fisher settlements;
trade, and only trade, with inland farmers;
hunting of wisent, bear and boar;
hard labor to build dolmens and passage graves;
gales, waves, sleet and snow in winter;
pursuit of seal and porpoise;
trading in England and Flanders;
no war, hardly even murder, until the charioteers came.

No war and almost no murder sounds almost Paradisal, although the winters don't.

A persistent theme in Anderson's Time Patrol series is innocence lost. That theme is here also.

Future Cities

In the Technic History, on Earth:

"Everywhere around towers soared heavenward in fluid grace; this quarter of the city went back two centuries, to when an inspired school of architecture had flourished. White clouds wandered through blue clarity; aircars sparkled in sunlight. A breeze brought coolness and a muted pulse of machines in the service of man."

-A Stone In Heaven, III, p. 32.

Flandry in his roof garden sees white clouds and blue sky and feels a cool breeze so he is not completely enclosed or cut off from nature. His urban environment comprises high, graceful towers, aircars and machine sounds. Although it is all a thousand years in the future to us, it is two hundred years old to Flandry, living in his present.

In the Technic History, on Ramnu:

"Across a bridge, Dukeston reared and roared and glared."

-ibid., XI, p. 151.

This sentence conveys the dynamism of a city without, for once, delineating any details.

In The Corridors Of Time, Malcolm Lockridge sees Niyorek:

"Monstrous it gloomed on the shore, and inland further than his vision went. Maps and diaglossa had told of an America webbed from end to end with megalopolis. Little broke that mass of concrete, steel, energy, ten billion slaves jammed together, save here and there a desert which had once been green countryside...

"North, south, and ahead, the city raised ramparts where nothing but a few wan lamps, and the spout from a hundred furnaces, relieved the lower murk. A sound came over the sea, humming, throbbing, sometimes shrilling so high it was pain to hear: the voice of the machines. On the upper levels, individual towers lifted a mile or more, the first dawn-glow pallid on their windowless sides. Cables, tubes, elevated ways meshed them together. The spectacle had a certain grandeur. They were not small-minded, the men who dreamed those vertical caverns into the sky. But the outlines were brutal, bespeaking a spirit whose highest wish was the unrestrained exercise of unlimited power, forever."

-Poul Anderson, The Corridors Of Time (Panther Books, St Albans, Herts, 1975), CHAPTER FIFTEEN, pp. 130-131.

Compared with Archopolis: higher and louder; not inspired but brutal.

After four million years of time travel, Martin Saunders stops in a city:

"...he couldn't follow the wild geometry of the titanic structures that loomed about him and they were never the same. The place throbbed and pulsed with incredible forces, it wavered and blurred in a strangely unreal light. Great devastating energies flashed and roared around him - lightning come to Earth. The air hissed and stung with their booming passage."

-Poul Anderson, "Flight to Forever" IN Anderson, Past Times (New York, 1984), pp. 207-288 AT CHAPTER SIX, p. 280.

Why does he think that this is a city? Not a voice but a thought warns him away.

"A billion years in the future there was a city standing on a plain where grass grew that was blue and glassy and tinkled with a high crystalline chiming as the wind blew through it. But the city had never been built by humans, and it warned him away with a voice he could not disobey."

-"Flight to Forever," p. 283.

After a billion years, it does not matter whether the non-human builders are our descendants or have evolved separately. This city is not described.