Free Houses

"...the free houses that owe no allegiance to any one time or dominion..."

-Neil Gaiman, The Sandman: The Wake (New York, 1997), p. 29, panel 2 -

- include:

Neil Gaiman's Inn of the Worlds' End;

Gaiman's Toad-Stone;

Poul Anderson's Old Phoenix.

Differences between Worlds' End and Old Phoenix

(i) The Old Phoenix is between worlds whereas Worlds' End is at the end of all worlds. (Since worlds are ending all the time, the Worlds' End Inn is continually created.)

(ii) The Old Phoenix is always the same:

"The taproom is changeless..."

-Poul Anderson, "Loser's Night" IN Anderson, All One Universe (New York, 1996), pp. 105-123 AT p. 108 -

- whereas Worlds' End changes its size and shape even while people are in it.

(iii) In the Old Phoenix:

"Windows are always shuttered, I suppose because they would not look out over any of the worlds on which the front door opens, but onto something quite peculiar."

-Poul Anderson, "House Rule" IN Anderson, Fantasy (New York, 1981), pp. 9-20 AT p. 12.

- whereas guests in the Worlds' End both hear and see a storm - which is really a "reality storm" - and then see something very peculiar.

"Anomalous Variations In Reality" II

Continued from here.

The Old Phoenix is at an interuniversal nexus. Thus, it is located between universes, not at the end of worlds. Also, the words "universe" and "world" have different connotations. Given these clues, we might be able to deduce where some other Free Houses are located?

The Time Patrol prevents variations in reality whereas the Nantucketers inadvertently cause one. In fact, one Nantucketer demonstrates that there has been a variation in reality by reciting the Odyssey to Odysseus. The Free Houses exist in a context of many variant realities. Those who exit the Worlds' End return to the worlds from which they came or to very similar ones.

Our next question is "What is a reality storm?"

Three Free Houses

In England, a "free house" is a public house that is not tied to any one brewery and therefore is free to sell any brand of beer. Neil Gaiman extended this term to mean an inn that owes no allegiance to any one time or dominion. There are a few such in fiction, notably Gaiman's Inn of the Worlds' End and the same author's The Toad-Stone as well as Poul Anderson's Old Phoenix. However, we find that we have posted about these three before! Now is the time of evening to stop reading and to watch topical videos forwarded by former fellow student, Peter Bann. (But what a range of topics we cover.)

Narrator And Author

Poul Anderson, "House Rule" IN Anderson, Fantasy (New York, 1981), pp. 9-20.

Occasionally, the first person narrator of a work of fiction is explicitly identified with its author, e.g., Somerset Maugham in The Razor's Edge and CS Lewis in the Ransom Trilogy. Is the narrator of Poul Anderson's two Old Phoenix stories likely to be identical with Anderson?

The landlord of the Old Phoenix says that his guests:

"...are those who have good stories wherewith to pay him..." (p. 9)

- yet this narrator is "...not quite sure why..." (ibid,) he is invited. Maybe "stories" means life experiences rather than invented yarns although I should think that Anderson was rich in the former as well.

The narrator speaks Italian. Did Anderson? I don't know. I am merely listing data about the narrator.

He also speaks some medieval French but adds that his visits to the Old Phoenix have encouraged "...such studies." (p. 11)

Even if the narrator is Anderson, he does not express any surprise at meeting one of his characters, Nicholas van Rijn.

He was on a flight that was forced down somewhere in the Arctic and received local help.

There might be some more information in the other story, "Losers' Night," which I will reread shortly.

For the "shadowy beings" in the Old Phoenix, see here. 

Neil Gaiman offers an explanation of his Inn of the Worlds' End and maybe by extension of other such Free Houses:

Chiron: ...we will be safe in this place. The tavern itself cannot be harmed; that is the way of things. It is being continually created; after all, worlds are ending all the time.

-Neil Gaiman, The Sandman: Worlds' End (New York, 1994), p. 146, panel 2.

Dream And Tempest

There is some kind of orchestral performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream on TV. 

The Dream and The Tempest are the two Shakespeare plays that link Poul Anderson and Neil Gaimain:

Gaiman's The Sandman: A Midsummer Night's Dream is about the first performance of the Dream before Auberon's court;

Gaiman's The Sandman: The Tempest is about the writing of The Tempest;

Anderson's A Midsummer Tempest is a sequel to both plays.

The Sandman and A Midsummer Tempest are each part of a fictional multiverse. Gaiman's characters meet in the Inn of the Worlds' End whereas Anderson's meet in the Old Phoenix: two free houses that are not part of any realm or domain.

Wanda Tamberly And Nicholas Van Rijn

(Thank you for 284 page views so far today despite no posts until this one today.)

Wanda Tamberly reads Analog so she must have read about Nicholas van Rijn, for example in "Hiding Place," although not about the Time Patrol. That series was published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Fictional characters are usually, though not always, fictions to each other.

In a "multiverse" (multiple universes) scenario, a character who is fictional in one universe may be real in another. However, Time Patrolmen inhabit not one universe in a greater multiverse but a single universe with a mutable timeline. Thus, van Rijn has access to the inter-universal Old Phoenix Inn whereas Patrol agents do not. The Sherlock Holmes who is seen in the Old Phoenix cannot be the same as the one who is real to the Time Patrol. Can there be different versions of Sherlock Holmes? Sure there are. We see them on screen all the time.

Neil Gaiman's equivalents of the Old Phoenix are "...the free houses that owe no allegiance to any one time or dominion," including the Inn of the Worlds' End and The Toad-Stone (The Wake, see below, p. 29, panel 2). One of the cleverest fiction-reality interfaces that I have read is this dialogue in panel 1, p. 62, of Gaiman's The Sandman: The Wake (New York, 1997):

Clark Kent: The one I hate is where I'm just an actor on a strange television version of my life. Have you ever had that dream?
The Batman: Doesn't everyone?
The Martian Manhunter: I don't.

However, the Manhunter has since appeared in the Smallville TV series. Alternative realities proliferate. All that an author needs is a blank sheet of paper or a computer screen as Poul Anderson continued to demonstrate until the end of a long career.

Starfarers Economics

In Poul Anderson's Starfarers, Chapters 47-52:

On Earth, robotics and nanotech make all necessities and all or most comforts free like air or sunlight so no one either pays for necessities or profits by selling them. However, a money economy still exists on the colony planet Harbor eleven and a half light years away:

 "The economy today is ruthless; for each person who succeeds, a hundred or a thousand go under." (1)

And land is overcrowded because population is rising steeply. Why have robotics and nanotech not been imported from Earth? Especially since it is stated that on Harbor:

"...technics feeds, clothes, houses, medicates everybody..." (1)

although with the qualifications that:

"...but it can't create living space; and poverty is relative." (1)

The population issue needs to be addressed but otherwise poverty would not need to remain relative if Harborian "technics" were upgraded to the level of terrestrial robotics and nanotech.

Speaking of his opponents on Harbor, Ricardo Nansen asks:

"This is a free society, isn't it? How can they forbid us applying our knowledge to make money and spending the money as we see fit?" (2)

The answer is that the opponents, with superior funds, resources and influence, can undercut Nansen's businesses, pressurise his potential financiers and subsidise hostile propaganda.

Nansen is right that he can make and spend money in a free society provided that that society has a money economy. Thus, it must be neither a primitive hunting and gathering society nor the robotics/nanotech economy existing on Earth at that time. On Harbor as it is described to us, both Nansen and his opponents can make money by hiring skilled or unskilled labour from among the rising population most of whom "go under" but, on Earth, Nansen would build and launch starships not by investing and hiring but simply by cooperating with like-minded people to deploy available resources.

Of Earth, we are told:

"The sort of competitiveness that drove material innovation, whether or not there was any current need for it, was simply not in this society." (3)

If this is a given of the story, then of course I must accept it as such while reading the story. However, I am confident that freedom from economic competition would not stifle but, in some individuals at least, would liberate human curiosity, creativity, ingenuity and energy. It would not be necessary for a small spaceship crew from eleven thousand years ago to re-inspire exploration.

I am grateful to Anderson for writing novels that initiate this level of discussion not only of alien life forms and of technological advances but also of human society. 

(1) Anderson, Poul, Starfarers, New York, 1999, p. 471.
(2) ibid., p. 465.
(3) ibid., p. 450.

Versions

We know that alternative versions of historical figures and fictional characters can visit free houses like Neil Gaiman's Inn of the Worlds' End and Poul Anderson's Old Phoenix. Thus, the Sherlock Holmes who visits the Old Phoenix is not necessarily identical with the Holmes who lives in the Time Patrol timeline. Indeed, the Patrol guarding a single mutable timeline and the Old Phoenix existing between many immutable timelines do not seem to belong in the same multiverse - although I postulate a megamultiverse with discrete zones that are not equally accessible.

Unlike Holmes, James Bond receives minimal treatment in Poul Anderson's works. He is mentioned just once as a fictional character in The Corridors Of Time although this would not prevent him from showing up in the Old Phoenix.

In other reading, I have discovered that there are not two but at least three versions of Bond:

the Bond of novels by Ian Fleming, Anthony Horowitz and maybe one or two others;

the Bond of the films plus some film novelizations;

the Bond of other additional novels that are more akin to the films.

I recommend Horowitz.

Between Universes

Holger in the Old Phoenix:

"'After a lot of mishaps - the last with a clutch of Aztec gods, and I barely escaped in one piece - I'd picked up enough assorted hints and clues that I could fumble myself to this inn.'"
-Poul Anderson, A Midsummer Tempest (London, 1975), Chapter xii, p. 102.

Alianora, after hearing Holger:

"The feathered demons or were they pagan gods? - who ate hearts and drank blood made her shiver..." (Multiverse, p. 47)

Valeria to Holger in the Old Phoenix:

"'I even deduced there had to be an interuniversal nexus. That's how I found the Old Phoenix. You did it by accident, didn't you?'" ( A Midsummer Tempest, p. 96)

Holger to Alianora's family:

"'I spent all those years wandering from one world to the next, or else in some of the places between them all.'" (Multiverse, p. 53)

"'...the Old Phoenix...It's one of those places between the worlds that I was talking about. It doesn't belong to any of them.'" (p. 58)

Neil Gaiman tells us that there are six free houses owing allegiance to no realm. They include the Inn of the Worlds' End (see here) and I think the Toad Stone.

Shadowy Beings

Imaginary worlds pass from the minds of their creators into works of fiction and from there into the minds of readers where further evolutions occur. Some readers become writers, whether professional or amateur. Others imagine but less creatively.

The guests in Poul Anderson's Old Phoenix include shadowy beings:

"...full of small starlike sparkles."
-Poul Anderson, "House Rule" IN Anderson, Fantasy (New York, 1981), pp. 9-20.

I was fairly sure that such beings also belonged in Neil Gaiman's Inn of the Worlds' End but have not been able to find them there. Now I think that Anderson's description was so vivid and visual that I merely imagined that I had seen the shadowy beings in the Worlds' End.

The Sandman mentions that there are other Free Houses. The Old Phoenix must be one of them.

A Midsummer Tempest X

Poul Anderson's inn between worlds is called "the Old Phoenix." Neil Gaiman's is called "the Inn of the Worlds' End." Both names mean an ending. "The Old Phoenix" also implicitly means a re-beginning. Less overtly, "Worlds' End" also means a new beginning. The Inn itself is maintained and renewed by the continual ending of worlds. It is one of several "free houses" owing no allegiance to any realm so these could include the Old Phoenix.

House rules differ. Guests stay for only one night at a time in the Old Phoenix. In both, stories are told. The Worlds' End is a Chaucerian framing device whereas the Old Phoenix is an interlude in a novel, A Midsummer Tempest, and the setting for two short stories. The Old Phoenix landlord is a hospitable gentleman whereas the Worlds' End landlady is an Indian woman who, we come to realise, is Kali.

I imagine another inn where people have ended a journey. In Anderson's "Delenda Est," the Time Patrol deletes a timeline in which Carthage won the Second Punic War. I argue on my "Logic of Time Travel" blog that, when the Patrol "deletes," as they see it, a timeline, that timeline does not cease to exist from the point of view of its inhabitants. Either it simply does not exist (the potential timeline in which I remained a bachelor was prevented when I married) or it does exist as experienced by those in it.

If there is a temporal axis along which it would be true to say that the Carthaginian timeline had existed but now no longer exists, then that temporal axis is at right angles to the timeline itself. Therefore, the cessation of the timeline's existence is not an event on the timeline. If people lived in it, then, from their point of view, they continue to live in it. So I imagine a group of Time Patrollers trapped in the Carthaginian timeline without access to a time machine. With a machine, they would be able to travel back to a time before the divergence, then travel forwards into their home timeline but, without a machine, they are stranded in the wrong timeline where they can only share a drink and talk about old times.

Intelligence And Freedom

Brain Wave, 8.

People who are many times more intelligent than us will cooperate with each other without needing to be coerced. Sometimes everyone will spontaneously see and understand what needs to be done. At other times, when the issues are more complicated, they will agree on practical programs of action after some reasoned discussion. Even in a local community, "'...the mechanically minded...'" (p. 77) will devise automatic machinery for routine tasks.

When Archie Brock, now managing the Rossman farm single-handedly, drives into the nearest town, he finds that:

the streets are empty although the houses seem occupied;

most shops are closed;

the supermarket displays unpriced goods;

the single supermarket attendant explains that -

the national government is no longer relevant;

local life has been rationally reorganized without money;

"property" is an outmoded concept;

most farmers have moved into town houses vacated by those who have moved elsewhere;

most farm work is automated;

the man spends his time doing something that he cannot explain to Archie;

those who disliked the new set-up have left;

those who remain devise new social relationships for their new personalities;

Archie can either join their community or make his own way in a dangerous world with escaped circus animals where a lot of physical labour is necessary just to survive;

(I disagree here. Surely the community could help Archie. But the man says that "charity" is as outmoded as "property.");

decisions are made by the Council and the "Societist" (p. 78);

the economy is not tyrannical but freer than any before it.

I get it that this economy is free but the man needs to spell this out in more detail to Archie who rejects the offer of becoming what he sees as a domestic animal doing whatever chores he is given. He ought to ask more before deciding. Already he has been working hard, reading, thinking, devising a schedule and inventing gadgets. He has some chance of surviving on his own but might also be able to contribute if he does join the community.

Returned to the farm, Archie is attacked by pigs and a bull but rescued by armed chimpanzees riding an elephant! See book cover image here. The chimps become his new allies. This is indeed a brave new world.

An Ancient Hell

"The Star Plunderer."

"They herded us aboard a tender after dark. It was like a scene from some ancient hell -..." (p. 330)

This hell is night, scores of houses burning like torches and guards kicking stumbling prisoners.

Later, on the ship, the three rebel leaders, having killed several Gorzuni, stolen their guns and switched off the anti-gravity and the lights, are about to free the male slaves:

"...I could dimly see the tangle of free-floating naked bodies churning and screaming in the vast gloom. A scene from an ancient hell. The fall of the rebel angels. Man, child of God, had stormed the stars and been condemned to Hell for it.
"And now he was going to burst out!" (p. 351)

I was interested in the repetition of "scene from an ancient hell." Epic poetry, originally oral, relied on repetition of phrases like Homer's "wine-dark sea." (I think that some sword and sorcery authors also repeat phrases, e.g., about "ichor"?) Anderson practices repetition to epic effect. His phrase, "The fall of the rebel angels...," echoes another epic, John Milton's Paradise Lost.

Fools And Knaves

See:

"Commentary"
Commentary

I quoted Poul Anderson who accuses some demagogues of rousing ignorant hordes by consciously lying. I have now found a similar passage in Dornford Yates:

"...of her wisdom, she knew that the truth was being denied. False prophets were spouting the praises of the new order of life. She tried to believe they were fools: she knew in her heart they were knaves. But their doctrines were hailed with delight by millions of dupes."
-Dornford Yates, Lower Than Vermin (London, 1950), PART THREE, p. 308.

When disagreeing with what someone has said, we can either accept him as honest or accuse him of dishonesty but must have good grounds for that latter assessment. Mere mind reading is unacceptable.

I have seen someone fail to understand a point, then refuse to understand it, indeed to deny that there was a point. This was face saving. He did not want to acknowledge that he had misunderstood in the first place. I base this judgment on my reading of his words and manner, not on telepathy.

Years ago, an acquaintance told me that:

she would never live on our, racially mixed, street;
it was a terrible environment in which to bring up a child;
we were patronizing Asians by living next door to them!

The economic reality was that we had moved to Blades St. because its houses were half the price of similar houses in other parts of town but, being racist, my acquaintance knew that our motivation could only have been based on inverted racism.

I read authors with whom I disagree because they write well but a welcome by-product is the broadening of perspectives gained by imaginatively entering into very different world views. I do not accuse the sometimes arrogant Yates of knavery. Poul Anderson was a fellow pilgrim and seeker of the truth that makes us free.

City Life

Poul Anderson, For Love And Glory (New York, 2003), Chapter X.

Asborg's largest "free city" (p.56) is Inga - "free" meaning that it is neither owned nor controlled by any of the landholding Houses? (maybe).

Inga has towers, slipways and a harbor with walls along the docks. Although the harbor is quiet at night, traffic, light and life continue in the city center.

The opening paragraph of Chapter X addresses three senses:

(i) because the dock walls block the city lights, some stars are visible and a rising moon lights the waves -

(ii) - which lap audibly against the piers despite the urban throb;

(iii) there are smells of salt, engines and cargo.

Thus, ancient human life continues on an extrasolar planet despite the changed conditions on Earth.

Inter-Species Politics

What political arrangements would best serve the interests of two rational species sharing a planet?

On Avalon, human beings elect Members of the Parliament of Man whereas any free adult Ythrian in the relevant territory is entitled to attend and speak at a Khruath. However, many human beings join choths and therefore participate in Khruaths, not in Parliament.

On Dennitza, the zmayi both retain Vachs and elect Members of one House of the tri-cameral Shkoptsina. However, since the Shkoptsina is a human institution not fully suited to zmayi sensibilities, there have been occasions when demonstrations, e.g., of several hundred Obala fishers marched into the Chamber and demanded that their leaders be heard.

Although the two human Houses are often turbulent and sometimes even violent, the zmayi, both Members and demonstrators, are able to cope with this occasional semi-institutionalized interruption of demonstrators' leaders demanding to be heard, being heard, then withdrawing, thus contributing without (too much) disrupting.

See also On Avalon And Dennitza.

On Avalon And Dennitza

Avalon is an extrasolar planet jointly colonized by human beings and Ythrians. We should not say "Terrans and Ythrians" because the Founder, David Falkayn, was Hermetian and his fellow colonists included children of an Altaian. Dennitza is an extrasolar planet colonized by Serbian Terrans who later welcomed Merseian immigrants.

On Avalon, there is a Parliament of Man and a High Khruath of all the choths. Many human beings join choths and live under Ythrian law and custom. Some Ythrians adopt the human lifestyle of atomic individuals in a global community and, I imagine, are represented in Parliament. A Khruath, i.e., a periodic meeting of all free adults in a given territory, has judicial and limited legislative but no administrative authority. The planetary High Khruath meets every six years or on extraordinary occasions.

On Dennitza, there is a tricameral Parliament, the Shkoptsina, with Houses of the Lords, the Folk and the Zmayi (Merseians) although Mersians also retain their traditional Vachs. A Vach is not ruled by a Head but served by a Hand.

"'The Shkoptsina's no controlled inner-Empire congress. It's about five hundred proud individuals, speaking for as many different proud sections of land or walks of life. It's often turbulent - fights have happened, yes, a few killings - and tomorrow it'll be wild.'"
-Poul Anderson, A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows IN Anderson, Sir Dominc Flandry: The Last Knight Of Terra (Riverdale, NY, 2012), pp. 339-606 AT Chapter XVI, pp. 548-549.

"'Ychani" is the Eriau name for Dennitzan Merseians:

"'Ychani have always been the Peculiar People of Dennitza. The House of the Zmayi has never entirely spoken for them; it's a human invention.'" (p. 550)

Occasionally, hundreds of Merseians have marched into the Chamber and demanded that their leaders be heard. More like a Khruath?

Moving In Time

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

There is a big difference between space-time machines, like the TARDIS or the Time Patrol timecycles, and mere time machines, like the Time Traveler's Time Machine or Martin Saunders' time projector. The latter remain in the same position on the Earth's surface. The Time Traveler returns to a different part of his laboratory because the Morlocks had moved the Time Machine into the White Sphinx. Saunders had departed from the underground workshop of a house on a hill but returned to a point half way up the hill because the projector had been moved at Brontothor.

Eve and MacPherson who had remained at the house are surprised to see not the projector returning in the basement but Saunders walking into the house - but why does he say that he is "'...a little early.'"? (p. 288)

After the Morlocks and Eloi in 802, 701 AD, the Time Traveler has "The Further Vision" of a darkening, dying Earth under a red giant sun. After Brontothor in 50,000 AD, Saunders has a "Flight Without End," beyond the end of the universe. To return home, the Time Traveler turns back whereas Saunders can only "GO ON..." (p. 281)

The location of the time projector changes from an underground workshop to:

a ruined basement;
a pit;
the top of a low hill;
"...a small cobbled courtyard between high houses with shuttered and darkened windows..." (p. 222);
radioactive, blackened, fused rock;
a vitrified crater;
a forest;
a lawn between buildings of the American College;
etc.

Three times, Saunders and Belgotai arrive to find a spaceship parked nearby.

Saunders' first companion, Hull, is killed by the Armageddonists in 2500 AD. In 3000 AD, Belgotai, a mercenary, joins Saunders because "...mercenary companies were helpless before the organized levies of the rising nations..." (p. 228) Belgotai hopes to find an era where he can still fight as a "'...free comrade...'" (ibid.) He is a helpful companion for Saunders because of his military skills but is he a good guide to the future? He is able to tell Saunders, in general terms, what has happened in the Solar System between 1973 and 3000 and this might be of some assistance in preparing to face further periods of interplanetary travel. Nevertheless, he knows no more about periods post-3000 than Saunders.

Earth had suffered from:

"...the onslaughts of barbarians from the outer planets..." (p. 227)

Anderson did a good job of rationalizing barbarians with spaceships in his History of Technic Civilization but is interplanetary barbarism a likely development in the Solar System?

Economics

Starfarers, 48-49.

Although nanotech and robotics have made all necessities and perhaps also all comforts free, the places of business in Elya include shops so what is bought and sold?

A mansion belongs to an association of which Varday is a member and she currently has the use of it. What is the basis of such membership?

Earth exports Seladorianism but not nanotech to Harbor, Tau Ceti, where there is both money and poverty although we are also told that:

"...technics feeds, clothes, houses, medicates everybody..." (49, p. 471)

 Do vested interests oppose nanotech as they oppose the Venture League and subsidize Seladorian missionaries?

Planets have become self-sufficient so there needs to be a reason for star travel other than trade.

One Future Earth

Poul Anderson, Starfarers (New York, 1999), Chapter 21.

The low houses and other buildings of Kith Town have endured for centuries while the towers of a city have grown up around them, then their immediate urban neighborhood has declined. Kith Town has a few permanent residents but most Kith families leave their homes unoccupied for decades while they trade between stars. Over a lifetime, a Kithman returns to Earth in different centuries and historical periods. Kenri Shaun was born eight hundred years ago and even some Kith children were born a hundred or more years ago.

During the period when Kith Town is surrounded by a slum, the Terrestrial world state, called the Dominancy, decrees that, when outside the Town, Kith must wear a badge, like Jews in Medieval Europe or Nazi Germany, and must also pay for it, a new extortionate tax. The Dominancy has a genetic hierarchy:

the Star-Free are unspecialized geniuses, aesthetic and ornamental;
Star-A's do intellectual work;
Norm-A's do physical work;
the armed, uniformed guards of residential towers are "...giants bred..." (p. 197).

The Kith have seen the Dominancy become more repressive but will simply outlast it.