The Ultrawave Series

If a series is more than one work, thus at least two works, then maybe I have found an "ultrawave series" by Poul Anderson. "Earthmen, Beware!" and "The Star Beast" depend on different applications, mental and technological, of an "ultrawave," which is very similarly described in both stories although I have found one difference:

"'The important thing is that these effects are transmitted with no measurable time lag...'"

("Earthman, Beware!" IN Anderson, Alight In The Void, 1993, pp. 29-60, AT p. 46)

"The transmitter field was generated. At the speed of light, Harol flashed around the world..."

("The Star Beast" IN Alight In The Void, pp. 61-102, AT p. 66)

However, maybe the superhuman Joel Weatherfield detected a deeper level of the ultrawave? According to his account, which mostly matches "The Star Beast":

ultrawave radiation is unrelated to electromagnetism;

vibrating energy fields produce detectable effects without time lag in similar apparatuses elsewhere (this sounds like James Blish's instantaneous Dirac transmitter);

in order to attract his people to Earth, the stranded alien Joel broadcasts pulses representing stars, with intensity standing for absolute brightness and time separation standing for distance;

however, receiving no reply, he realizes that he must instead use his telepathy which turns out to be another part of the ultrawave spectrum.

There is more but it is proving difficult to unravel at nearly midnight so further discussion of the ultrawave will have to be postponed till a later post.

Ultrawaves And Telepathy

In Poul Anderson's "Earthman, Beware!" (IN Anderson, Alight In The Void, New York, 1993, pp. 29-60):

neuronic activity generates short-range brain pulses that are measurable by encephalographs but not directly related to telepathy;

telepathy, part of the ultrawave spectrum, crosses space without time lag;

spatio-temporal geometry generates gravity from matter and ultrawaves from vibrating energy;

however, an ultrawave is generated only when there is both a transmitter and a receiver;

an ultrawave's frequency is that of its generating fields but infinite velocity would generate an infinite wavelength so the wavelength should be conceived in terms of tensors;

ultra-energies are omnipresent in the cosmic structure;

the telepathy center of a super-human brain can impose vibrations on it;

other centers control ultra-energy to create, destroy or move matter, cross space, scan the past or scan future possibilities;

when the stranded alien, Joel, telepathically contacts his people, several of them immediately come physically to Earth across what might be millions of light years, from another galaxy.

When discussing Anderson's Brain Wave in an earlier post, I commented that sf can show our place in the galaxy without necessarily having human beings travel physically into the galaxy. Here is another example of that.

Maybe the ultra-energy is what the Black Nebulans and the Chereionites access in Anderson's Technic Civilization History.

Technology In The Star Beast

(i) Spaceships can travel at only half light speed so there are extra-solar colonies but little contact with them.

(ii) The ultrawave, linked to wave mechanics, not to electromagnetism, and generated by the existence of both a receiver and a transmitter, can transmit energy without loss over many astronomical units.

(iii) The robot-controlled Power Station on Mercury dark side transmits solar energy to the entire Solar System.

(iv) Every part of the Station is recorded so that, if it goes wrong, it is dissolved and recreated in the matter bank.

(v) Any body can be scanned atom by atom, dissolved to energy, transmitted by ultrawave with the scanning signal and recreated by the receiver.

(vi) Transmitter Station in Brazil holds records of addresses and coordinates all transmitters and receivers.

(vii) Signals can be recorded and reproduced from any matter bank. Thus, everyone has a duplicator or matter creator from which he can produce any material goods.

(viii) Everyone's body is recorded in its prime. When an individual has lived for as long as he wants, his neural pattern is recorded and superimposed on the record, then his aged body is dissolved in the matter bank to produce a new body with continuity of memory.

(ix) Records are altered to eliminate disease.

(x) Perfect specimens are recorded with ego-patterns removed so that neural patterns can be superimposed on them.

(There is more but it is time for me to turn in.)

FTL Communication

Ursula K. Le Guin coined the term, "ansible," which has come to be widely used.

I regard James Blish as the master of fictional faster-than-light communication and I relate Blish's devices to Poul Anderson's Joel Weatherfield and holonts.

Blish's Devices

Ultrawave

Waves of contraction pass along a caterpillar's body faster than the caterpillar's own forward motion. Similarly, pulses along a laser beam between Earth and Centaurus III move 25% faster than light.

The Dirac Transmitter in Cities In Flight

A positron moving through a crystal lattice is accompanied by de Broglie waves corresponding to the waves of an electron elsewhere. Thus, controlling the frequency and path of the positron causes the electron to appear instantaneously in another communicator.

The Dirac Transnitter in "Beep"/The Quincunx Of Time

In a four-dimensional continuum, "instantaneously" means in the past and future as well as the present.

The CirCon Radio in A Case Of Conscience

The CircumContinuum radio communicates around the continuum but only in the present.

For similar devices in Poul Anderson's works, see:

The Ultrawave Series

Change, Actions And Information

The Future History In "The Star Beast"

Poul Anderson, "The Star Beast" IN Anderson, Alight In The Void (New York, August 1993), pp. 61-102.

See Procyon in:

Wikipedia

Poul Anderson Appreciation (scroll down)

Procyon is 11.46 light-years from Sol. In this fictional future, interstellar spaceships can travel at only half light-speed. The journey between Sol and Procyon takes twenty years.

Nearly nine hundred years ago, human beings colonized the Procyonite System where their long and bitter struggle for survival has involved a centuries-long war of extermination against the Czernigi. During that time, the Procyonites, as they now are, have had no contact either with Earth or with any other extra-solar colonies. However, a warship of mutated human beings from Procyon has just arrived in Earth orbit. Its captain, Felgi, and a squad of blaster-wielding guards descend in an armed boat. Felgi converses with Coordinator Ramacan who constitutes the sole government of an unarmed and undefended Earth. When Ramacan has confirmed Earth's defenselessness, Felgi announces that he and his men are taking over.

What Has Happened On Earth During Nine Hundred Years

Seven or eight centuries ago:

"'The ultrawave was discovered...'" (p. 72)

The ultrawave transmits solar power to the whole Solar System and can also transmit matter. Hence, teleportation. From teleportation, duplication, including duplication of rejuvenated, healthy bodies onto which memories can be electronically superimposed. Duplication and transmission enable individuals to live far apart. Robot ships can transport recorded personalities to extra-solar colonies with which there is no contact except through occasional curious wanderers.

Thus, yet another STL (slower-than-light) future history is summarized in a single short story.

Non-Human Races

How many non-human races will interact with Earth in its future? In Poul Anderson's "Flight to Forever," (Alight In The Void, New York, 1993):

Ixchulhi conquerors built an enormous stone pyramid that stood for over twenty thousand years;

the Grimmani built the also enormous stone fortress of Brontothor;

Taury's Imperial court included a centauroid, an avian from Klakkahar, a four-armed Haamigurian and the Dreamer;

 

the "gods" of the city were so far beyond mankind that it was irrelevant whether they were our descendents or the outcome of an independent evolution;

Saunders wonders "How many intelligent races had risen on Earth and had their day, and died...?" but concludes "At least...we were the first." (p. 235)

Thus, some non-human races are separated from us not by space but by time. They are not extraterrestrials but extra-temporals.

The Dreamer is the last of the Vro-Hi. In Anderson's Technic Civilization History, we realize that a Galactic Empire would be too impossibly vast to rule and that even the much smaller Terran Empire, only four hundred light years across, cannot really be ruled centrally from Archopolis. However, in "Flight to Forever," "'...the coordination of a billion planets...'" in a single Galactic Empire becomes temporarily possible because of "'...scientific psychodynamics and the great cybernetic engines...'" and the guidance of the old, wise, telepathic Vro-Hi. (p. 214) The Vro-Hi are not just collectively ancient. The Dreamer alone is half a million years old.

"'No other race is intelligent enough to coordinate [the Empire].'" (p. 208)

The Dreamer works on the philosophical basis of the Second Empire just as Asimov's Second Foundation applies psychohistory to project their Second Empire. However, the Dreamer also proves that permanence is self-contradictory so that, "'There can be no goal to reach, not ever.'" (p. 214)

No permanent goal, no.

The Dreamer agrees with the time traveler Saunders that "'To travel hopefully...is better than to arrive.'" (p. 213) CS Lewis commented on this aphorism that, if it were true and were known to be true, then there would be nothing to hope for. But Lewis believed in a permanent goal. Surely for the rest of us there is both constant motion and many inherently valuable moments along the way?

The Vro-Hi "'...achieved a static physical state in which the new frontiers and challenges lay within our own minds...'" and wrongly thought that this ideal should suit all other beings. (p. 213) This same, I think false, dichotomy recurs in Anderson's much later Harvest Of Stars Tetralogy. Integrated intelligences will continue to explore both the endless outer cosmos and mental realms like pure mathematics.

The Dreamer offers to remove the time travelers' "'...little neuroses...'" but Belgotai replies that he likes his. (p. 213) I would have accepted the offer. When painful memories arise during Zen meditation, we neither suppress nor prolong them and do not think about them but let them pass and, until they pass, sit with them. But attention to the present would be facilitated if the memories did not arise.

"Flight to Forever" gives us another reference to the "ultrawave" (p. 216) and a space battle comparable to those in the Technic History. Saunders ironically uses the phrase, "All the time in the world." (p. 188), which is used not in The Time Machine but in one film adaptation of it.

Science fiction hints at some interesting other languages:

Old Solar in CS Lewis' Ransom Trilogy;
Temporal in Anderson's Time Patrol series:
Stellarian in "Flight To Forever" -

- languages of the sun, time and stars.