Tuesday 26 November 2013

Threshold Of Eternity Update

Usually to review a book we need to finish reading it first but, when blogging, we can do as we please: fac quod vis. In fact, I find it convenient to comment on a book while still reading it. So far this week, other activities have prevented me from  finishing John Brunner's Threshold Of Eternity (New York, 1959), the point being to compare this Brunner novel with Poul Anderson's time travel fiction first because the blog's title is "Poul Anderson Appreciation" and secondly because Anderson's carefully constructed time travel narratives set a standard that is difficult to match.

In Threshold, time travelling spacecraft fight within sight of twentieth century Earth. However, one ship stationed between the battle and Earth converts radiant energy into high energy particles so that Terrestrial astronomers notice nothing more than increased cosmic radiation - a neat solution, worthy of Anderson's Time Patrol.

However, time travel technical terms like "Anchor team..." and "...temporal surge..." (p. 10) and, later, "...temporal interference..." (p. 78) are newly invented and repeatedly used with little or no explanation. If any reader who is swept along by the narrative thinks that he does know what these words mean, then I would be interested in an explanation.

At one point in the narrative, a war party from the twenty-third century Crocerauninan Empire is displaced to 1957 when it fights Russian forces before responsible time travelers intervene to remove the intruders. One time traveler explains that the Empire grew from the wreckage of China and Mongolia, retaining some science but treating it as magic. This reminds us of several Anderson works in which war destroys civilization but new societies emerge from the ruins.

One of the many strengths of Anderson's time travel fiction is his ability to write authentic historical fiction and to integrate such passages into time travel scenarios. Thus, he does not merely inform us that his characters have traveled into the past but shows us ancient Tyre and Persia, barbarian Germania, a battle in the Second Punic War etc. As I read, Brunner's characters have just entered the mid-seventeenth century...

6 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Hi, Paul!

I've been meaning to ask if you ever read L. Sprague de Camp's LEST DARKNESS FALL? I think Poul Anderson read and admired that book, and it may have helped to shape how he used the timei travel theme. Like "The Man Who Came Early," the hero of LEST DARKNESS FALL was accidentally thrown into the past. It differs from Anderson's story in showing how Martin Padway (the protagognist of DARKNESS) succeded in stead of failing.

Sean

Paul Shackley said...

Sean,
Yes, Poul Anderson said he was influenced by de Camp and I discuss LEST DARKNESS FALL somewhere on the Logic of Time Travel.
Paul.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Hi, Paul!

I did a quick skim thru of your "Logic of Time Travel" blog and found only a brief mention of de Camp's book. LEST DARKNESS FALL is, IMO, better than many other novels which had protagonists cast into the past trying to change history. Because, at first, Martin Padway was NOT directly trying to change history, just trying to get by and make a living discreetly using modern knowledge.

Sean

Paul Shackley said...

Sean,
OK, maybe I only mentioned it! I'll check back thru that blog myself. But DARKNESS is important in itself and as a stage between CONNECTICUT YANKEE and THE TIME MACHINE before it and THE TIME PATROL after it.
Paul.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Hi, Paul!

No rush! It was quite legitimate of you to focus on Wells, Twain, and Anderson, et al, in your "Logic of Time Travel" blog.

Yes, I can see how de Camp's LEST DARKNESS FALL was a response to both Wells and Twain's books. And how it could have been one of the inspirations which led to Poul Anderson's own time travel novels and stories.

Paul Shackley said...

Sean,
On my Time Travel blog, DARKNESS does not have an article to itself. As you probably saw, it is mentioned early in the article "Time Travel And Poul Anderson" under the heading "Causality Violation." There is a brief para on DARKNESS itself. Still under the "Causality Violation" heading, there is an early reference to de Camp in the summaries of the Time Patrol stories. These summaries are meant to show that the Time Patrol follows Twain and de Camp.
Paul.