Where Were We?

The blog is primarily about Poul Anderson.
This has involved comparing Anderson with many other writers.
Some posts have focused on SM Stirling as a colleague and worthy successor of Anderson.
Before Christmas, I began to read Dies The Fire. See also here.
At Christmas, I received Alan Moore's voluminous Jerusalem, which I am still reading and posting about here.
I have tried to link everything.
Multiple blogging is like juggling.
Normal service will be resumed.

Words And World

Language is like either clear or stained glass. We look either through or at it. Someone writing about Isaac Asimov said that Asimov's prose is totally like clear glass. The reader attends only to the content. In Poul Anderson's works, we appreciate the content, imaginative narratives with rich characterization imparting much scientific and historical information, but also Anderson's uses of language, in particular his vivid descriptions and the prevalent but understated pathetic fallacy. Read everything twice, the second time pausing to savor the descriptions of stars seen from space, of seasonal changes or of alien landscapes.

The process of writing focuses the writer's, if not also the reader's, attention on choices of words. In a recent post, having typed the phrase, "timeless treasure," and the adjective, "topical...," I cast about for a second alliterative noun. I like the phrase, "Where were we?," because each word is a diminution of its predecessor. And that should be the title of the next post.

Time And Motion

Is time a fourth dimension that might be traversed by immaterial consciousnesses and/or by material "time machines"?

We discussed relevant fiction by Wells, Blish and Anderson under the sub-heading "Means of Time Travel" in "Time Travel and Poul Anderson," here. More recently, we have discussed relevant fiction by Alan Moore in:

Walking Back
The Road Ahead
"Upstairs"
Conceptual Issues
Two Accounts
Wells, Blish And Moore
Moving Through Time? 
Upstairs

- and in other recent posts.

Certain ways of thinking about time seem to be embedded in consciousness even though they do not stand up to closer analysis. I hope that readers of Poul Anderson Appreciation will also read some of the relevant posts on the Personal and Literary Reflections blog.

Temporal Perambulators

We referred here to Lancaster quay so I thought that it was time for a picture. Lancaster Priory Church can be seen in the background. A fantasy or sf reader can imagine walking along the quay into Lancaster's maritime past which is remembered in a museum on the quay.

Poul Anderson coined the evocative phrase, peregrinator temporis, time traveler. Alan Moore goes further and refers to "...the temporal pedestrians..." (Jerusalem, London, 2016, p. 982)

Moore's ambulatory time travelers find whales that have grown legs and adapted back to land. This reminds us of "land-whales" mentioned by Anderson! (I can find obscure cross-connections anywhere if I am determined enough.)

Future Ice Ages

It is not easy to keep up blogging when British television shows programs on a timeless treasure like Julian of Norwich and a topical trouble like The Nazis: A Warning From History. (It was when contemplating the Eternal in Norwich Cathedral that I thought of trying to combine three different works on time travel. See here.)

Perhaps there is only time tonight to list three fictional future Ice Ages:

The Winter Of The World by Poul Anderson;
Winterworld by Chuck Dixon;
"...the temporary arctic chill caused by the failure of the Gulf Stream..." on p. 979 of Jerusalem (London, 2016) by Alan Moore.

Now it is time to watch some more Smallville before turning in.

Time And Length

In Poul Anderson's The Corridors Of Time, corridors constructed in normal space are rotated onto the temporal axis. Thus, anyone who walks or drives along such a corridor can exit in an earlier or later century.

In Alan Moore's Jerusalem, one feature of the hereafter is a long corridor parallel to the world lines of the mortal world. Thus, ghosts can walk into what the living regard as the remote past or future.

That is a textual and conceptual parallel. Moore's novel incorporates historical, contemporary and futuristic fiction and fantasy. He is comparable to Anderson in imagination and opposite in politics. We are enriched by reading both.

Blog Overload

Rereading works by Poul Anderson;
reading a book by Alan Moore, a book about Alan Moore and a book by SM Stirling;
watching dvds;
philosophizing;
socializing with those who mentally inhabit elaborate fictions;
life.

I will get back to you when I have sorted out what I am doing next.

(Is that title Spanish?)

Thursday, 2 Feb: I have been getting involved with some fantastic sf ideas on a couple of other blogs.

Also, world news is fantastic right now. What would Poul Anderson have said? I don't know but something informed and intelligent.

"The Faun": Continued

See here.

A boy, stepping out from among the pines, dressed and equipped for the outdoors life, is accompanied by a six-legged animal, its fur the same bluish green as the leaves on the native plants. They peer, listen and smell: three senses.

The boy, Tom, opens his entire nervous system to the forest. He combines the sensitivity of the Sensitive Man in Anderson's Psychotechnic History with the ecological oneness of the Freeholders in Anderson's Technic History. He has been trained for this purpose so that the colonists will not repeat the environmental mistakes and disasters of their ancestors on Earth.

Just a five page story originally published in Boys' Life but a whole new approach to extra-solar colonization.

"The Faun": Opening Paragraph

Comparing future histories has led us back to (what I call) Poul Anderson's Directorate History, which is just four stories.

"The Faun" was published in Boy's Life and thus is one of Anderson's juvenile works (see also here). The title and the opening sentence:

"A wyvern flew up in a thunder of splendid wings."
-Poul Anderson, "The Faun" IN Anderson, The Queen Of Air And Darkness and other stories (London, 1977), pp. 86-90 AT p. 86 -

- suggest a fantasy but the following sentences clarify that the story is set on a colonized extra-solar planet.

"A python tree coiled its branches." (ibid.)

A tree so called because its branches move.

"A chiming rang among the tiny red blossoms that covered the ground." (ibid.)

As often before, Anderson tells us what a terrestroid planet has instead of grass.

"Alien in the forest, a grove of pines stirred only to a breeze." (ibid.)

So this planet has been colonized by human beings who have brought some of their own ecology with them. And that concludes the opening paragraph.

Discussing SF

Copied from here.

Is it frivolous to post about science fiction given the present state of the world?

No. It is possible to appreciate fiction while addressing the state of the world which unfortunately will probably be bad for a long time yet.

Is sf escapist?

Some is. However, some other works of sf address serious issues, e.g., see:

Serious Issues
Issues In Mirkheim
War, Wells And Anderson
Cold War SF
Thermonuclear Warfare And James Blish
Fiction And Non-Fiction
Church And State
"The Old And Protean Enemy"
Future Politics
The Wardens' And Rangers' Time War II
The Sensitive Man 
What We Expect
Remember Wells
Mankind
Synthesis And Sensitivity
More Background Details
Some References In "The Sensitive Man"
A Note On Draka And Psychotechnic Politics
Comments On A Debate About The Future
The History Of The Science Of Society
A Debate About The Future
Flandry's Theoretical Understanding