The Winter Of The World, Chapter XVII

The Winter Of The World.

Much speculation by Josserek about the Rogaviki, obviously leading toward the conclusion that they are not human, e.g.:

"It shouldn't be humanly possible." (p. 142)

Something of interest to us living before the Ice -

Across the world, there are many large craters above fused layers and:

"...occasionally, relics of ancient cities..." (p. 143)

What might a struggle for dwindling resources have led to? What do we, living in the pre-Ice technological civilization, think is the most likely explanation of such craters?

The text has become a travelogue of Rogaviki territories and will climax in the showdown with the invaders but not tonight.

Tomorrow we walk before rain in the evening so that is when the next blogging might happen.

The Meaning Of Existence

The Winter Of The World, XVI.

"'The hunters [live by the chase], in spirit still more than in body. For them, when the big grazers go, so does the whole meaning of existence.'" (p. 132)

That is called "putting all your eggs in one basket." When the meaning of existence goes, people follow different options:

stop eating;

commit suicide;

live recklessly on a "What does anything matter now?" basis;

find another meaning.

I was told that one interpretation of Judaism was that, when the Jerusalem Temple was destroyed, the Covenant was ended. In practice, of course, worship of the Biblical deity continued in synagogues or churches. 

Years ago in the US, a man who had been sentenced to death and who had accepted the sentence was seriously aggrieved when his execution was delayed by a debate about whether to abolish the death penalty. If I had been his counsellor/chaplain etc, then I would have tried to suggest that his former life had indeed ended on the originally proposed date of his execution and that he had now been given an opportunity to be someone else. God can be brought into such a line of reasoning if appropriate but everything depends on how the man himself perceives and understands things. 

Jack Havig's Growth Rate

 

See Time Away And Time Of Return.

And, of course, I should have mentioned Poul Anderson's mutant time traveller, Jack Havig, who, in his childhood, has:

"...remarkably fast physical and mental development, these past months..."

-Poul Anderson, There Will Be Time (New York, 1973), I, p. 14 -

- and an:

"...astonishing growth rate..." (II, p. 20)

- because he spends time in the past but returns to or near his departure moment.

Even this can be a stumbling block in some readers' understanding. Havig departs from the twentieth century, spends (say) a year in the nineteenth century and returns to the twentieth century to find that a year has elapsed during his absence? He could allow a whole year to elapse but why should he do it that way? He wants to conceal his time travel ability from his family and acquaintances. There does not have to be any absence. He could return shortly before his departure and see himself depart. 

We understand that, in The Time Traveller's Wife, Clare has to wait for Henry but we must also understand that, when time travel departures and arrivals are controllable, there is no need for waiting. I gather that Henry's and Clare's daughter, Alba, has better control of her time travelling.

Languages

We have discussed fictional languages in Poul Anderson's works. Should some of the dialogue in screen adaptations be spoken in Temporal, Planha, Eriau, Anglic etc with subtitles? Dennitzan zmayi/ychani speak archaic Eriau. Thus, there is plenty of scope for linguistic creativity and inventiveness. The question becomes even more sharply focused in Anderson's The Winter Of The World. When Donya addresses her family in Kursovikian, Josserek understands the first sentence and a half but then she becomes unintelligible:

"Yes, I've read, I've been told, the man from Killimaraich remembered, kindred here make their own slang, generation by generation till a private dialect has turned into an entire language never shared with those who are not of the blood." (XV, p. 129)

In a film, even if Donya began speaking, for our benefit, in English, she would have to lapse into something else without subtitles because viewpoint character Josserek does not understand it. 

For most of us, languages are just a means of communication but, for an older philosophical tradition, they meant something more. CS Lewis, friend of Tolkien, wrote a novel in which Ransom tells his friend, Dimble, to address Merlin in the Great Tongue, telling him that he, Dimble, comes:

"'...in the name of God and all angels and in the power of the planets from one who sits today in the seat of the Pendragon...'"

-CS Lewis, That Hideous Strength IN Lewis, The Cosmic Trilogy (London, 1990), pp. 349-753 AT CHAPTER 10, p. 587.

When Dimble rehearses this speech in Old Solar:

he raises his head;

syllables sounding like castles come from his mouth;

the viewpoint character's heart leaps and quivers;

the room becomes intensely quiet;

animals present become still and stare at the speaker;

the voice does not sound like Dimble's;

it is as if the words speak themselves through him from a strong, distant place;

as if they are "...present operations of God, the planets, and the Pendragon..." (ibid.);

this is "..the language spoken before the Fall and beyond the Moon..." (ibid.);

the meanings are nor arbitrary but inherent.

"This was Language herself, as she first sprang at Maleldil's bidding out of the molten quicksilver of the star called Mercury on Earth, but Viritrilbia in Deep Heaven." (ibid.)

Afterwards, domesticity returns.

Could that be presented on film? Yes, someone could try to do it. We might not quite hear the sounds that Dimble utters.

As a materialist, I believe that languages are social interactions between psychophysical organisms. As a Platonist, Lewis believed that language was an Idea before it was instantiated in particular languages. But how can a meaning be inherent in a sound?

Lewis presents an interesting insight into a particular world view. Anderson shows us languages as we know them developing in the future.

Time Away And Time Of Return

There is an obvious point to make about the quotations in the previous post. A sea voyage takes time so that wives left behind await the return whereas a time traveller could return to the moment of departure so that no waiting would be necessary. As it happens, Henry DeTamble has no control over his moments of departure or arrival which is why Clare does often have to wait.

Life is different for a Time Patroller:

"As a field agent, I'd go through days, weeks, or months between saying good-bye to her in the morning and returning for dinner..."

-Poul Anderson, "The Sorrow of Odin the Goth" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, December 2010), pp. 333-465 AT 1935, p. 345.

One Time Patroller expects another not to stay away from home unnecessarily:

"'Didn't you return to your place in New York in '88 when you were through? I mean, you didn't let it stand months vacant, did you?'"

-Poul Anderson, The Shield of Time (New York, 1991), PART FOUR, 1990 A. D., p. 180.

We have been drawn back into the intricacies of time travel but maybe we should now return to the conflicted characters of Anderson's The Winter Of The World and reread their narrative to its conclusion.

Time And The Sea

"...his shipmates, his friends - they died and their kin mourned them, as would be the fate of seafarers for the next several thousand years...and afterward spacefarers, timefarers..."

-Poul Anderson, "ivory, and Apes, and Peacocks" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, December 2010), pp. 229-331 AT p. 325.

"Long ago, men went to sea, and women waited for them, standing on the edge of the water, scanning the horizon for the tiny ship. Now I wait for Henry. He vanishes unwillingly, without warning. I wait for him."

-Audrey Niffenegger, The Time Traveller's Wife (London, 2005), Prologue, p. 1.

This is all that I have time for in what is left of this evening but it is something. On p.1, the time traveller's wife compares him to a seafarer and that comparison was made in a very different context by Poul Anderson.

Time and the sea are very different but what have they in common? 

Diverse Time Travellers

See The Logic Of Time Travel: Part I.

In what I call a single discontinuous timeline, it is possible that someone with time travel capacity arrives/appears from nowhen, then prevents the potential future in which he would otherwise have originated. So far, this person is not a time traveller. He is an uncaused macroscopic quantum event. He becomes a time traveller only if he makes at least one temporal journey with both a departure moment and an arrival moment, not necessarily in that order. In a single continuous timeline, there are no uncaused events. Any arriving/appearing time traveller either has departed from an earlier time or will depart from a later time in that timeline. 

The continuous timeline might be regarded as the only genuine time travel narrative. The time traveller always does arrive in the past or the future of the timeline in which he began his journey and the author has to ensure that the narrative remains internally consistent. Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series is set either in a single discontinuous timeline or in a mutable timeline. The texts are ambiguous. 

Anderson presents continuous timelines in three novels. Audrey Niffenegger has presented a complex continuous timeline narrative in a single novel which we, editorially speaking, might reread. Henry DeTamble and Jack Havig are very different mutant time travellers and both are literary successors of HG Wells' Time Traveller but these three works demonstrate how completely dissimilar time travel narratives can be.

Flags Of Truce

"Positioned, the artillery cut loose. Guns roared, rockets whooshed, explosives detonated in racket, smoke, and flinders. Slowly the Old Keep crumbled. At last from the wreckage stepped a Merseian waving a white flag."

-Poul Anderson, Mirkheim IN Anderson, Rise Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, March 2011), pp. 1-291 AT XX, p. 274.

We kind of like the idea that an alien, in this case a hairless, green-skinned, gator-tailed Merseian, understands, accepts and uses a human surrender sign. Incidentally, this Merseian does not represent the Roidhunate of Merseia. Instead, he is a mercenary who has been recruited into the Baburite space navy. Still later, other beings of Merseian descent will be loyal citizens of the Terran Empire. 

However, I cite the Merseian waving a white flag in order to contrast him with the Rogavikians in Anderson's The Winter Of The World:

"'When my herald finished, they put an arrow through him. Under his flag of truce, sir!'" (XIV, p. 125)

Terrestrials who do not acknowledge a flag of truce! Later, this besieged group is invited to emerge and told that they will be allowed to go free if they carry a message of peace. They agree, emerge, then attack with knives and in return are slaughtered to the last child.

That Merseian sounded more like our kind of guy.

Leadership And Initiative

The Winter Of The World, XII.

"...'leadership' must be a wrong term, in a society where nothing compelled the individual except the individual's own self. 'Initiative?'" (p. 109)

I suggest that "leadership" and "initiative" are exactly the right terms if the leaders/initiators do not and cannot compel. Rulers compel. Leaders lead, "give a lead," by example and advice. I think that this meaning of leadership is transparent but it seems that it is not obvious to everyone because we also call our rulers "leaders." 

A ruler stands or sits back and orders others forward into danger whereas a leader steps forward and sometimes risked not being followed. They are opposites.

A Mirror To Complex Conflicts

Fiction definitely reflects life. Looking at life while rereading Poul Anderson's The Winter Of The World, we, or at least I, currently see complex conflicts in both. The fictional conflicts are easier to discuss. They cannot be as complex and we are not directly involved in them although the author might engage our emotions in supporting one side as against another. Anderson reflects real life complexities as far as an author can:

two generations ago, a Barommian dynasty took control of the Rahidian Empire;

the Empire has conquered Arvennath from where it it invades the Rogavikian territories;

an Arvannethan criminal Brotherhood seeks alliance with the Rogaviki;

the Killmaraichans have sent a spy who works with the Rogaviki but then thinks that they cannot be relied on, then is unsure.

And how often do we wonder which side to support? (Many of us don't wonder. We just get stuck in!)