Jon Crocker  03-31-2019
05:32 UT
|
My wife picked up a book from the library the other day, “Brief Answers
to the Big Questions” by Stephen Hawking. I was reading one of the
sections, “How did it all begin?” talking about the formation of the
universe(s) and came across this part:
“M-theory, which is our
best candidate for a complete unified theory, allows a very large number
of possible histories of the universe. Most of these histories are
quite unsuitable for the development of intelligent life. Either they
are empty, or too short lasting, or too highly curved, or wrong in some
other way. Yet, according to Richard Feynman’s multiple-histories idea,
these uninhabited histories might have quite a high probability.”
Don’t
ask me to explain M-theory, I can’t – but that section struck me as
being very similar to a quick overview of paratime – a very large number
of possible histories, all those different levels, and so many
uninhabited fifth-level timelines. Maybe Piper was on to something!
|
David "PiperFan" Johnson 03-30-2019
04:42 UT
|
~
John "Calidore" Anderson wrote:
> He would say, "Hell, you think you're right and I think
> I'm right, and we're never going to agree. So let's
> call a truce and have a drink."
>
> (Looks, smiles.) "Make it several."
Hear, hear! ;)
Cheers,
David
--
"And
there were the Australians, picking themselves up bargains in
real-estate in the East Indies at gun-point, and there were the Boers,
trekking north again, in tanks instead of ox-wagons. And Brazil, with a
not-too-implausible pretender to the Braganza throne, calling itself the
Portuguese Empire and looking eastward." - Lee Richardson (H. Beam
Piper), "The Answer"
~
|
Calidore 03-29-2019
18:07 UT
|
David “PiperFan” Johnson wrote (about the dating events),
>I’ve mentioned this before, but we have a basic disagreement here between the
>dating of the succession of Venus (and thus the dating of WWIV). You prefer the
>date in the ~Empire~ Chronology for the succession of Venus (174 AE) and I prefer
>the date shown in Beam’s “The Future History” for WWIV (106-109 AE). I don’ know
>where the date in the ~Empire~ Chronology comes from but there is plenty of internal
>evidence in Beam’s work to support the WWIV dates in “The Future History.” Indeed,
>you can see me making a guess at the dates of WWIV (circa 101-108 AE) based
>upon the internal evidence in Beam’s work back on the old PIPER-L mailing list here:
>https://web.archive.org/web/20080310091549...-l&T=0&F=&S=&P=3632
>That guess, from May 2003, was made three and a half years ~before~ I got my hands
>on a copy of “The Future History” from Peter Weston (and posted it shortly thereafter
>on Zarthani.net.
Yes,
it is an excellent guess. Congratulations; you have successfully
paralleled what I believe were the excellent ‘guesses’ (deductions) made
by John Carr and Jerry Pournelle that the secession of Venus occurs in
AE 174 and the Second Federation begins in AE 183.
However,
your statement that our disagreement involves “the succession of Venus
(and thus the dating of WWIV)” is incorrect. Our disagreement is when
the secession of Venus occurs. You believe it roughly coincides with
WWIV; I believe it happens much later. Your “plenty of internal
evidence in the Future History” consists of several vague sentences by
Piper that cover the fifty-year period before WWIV, and roughly seventy
years after; a total of over a century. That is hardly definitive
enough to conclusively connect the secession of Venus, which is not even
mentioned by name in “The Future History”, with WWIV.
>Putting the dates aside for the moment, it seems to me like post-Revolution America
>is a poor model for the Future History Venus. Venus is described throughout the
>Federation era as a corrupt and seemingly backward place, sort of a Federation version
>of what used to be called a “banana republic.” That seems rather different from the
>American experience, at least through the period when Beam was writing…
And,
>This again is conjecture, unrelated to anything we can find in Beam’s actual work.
>The chronically corrupt Member Republic of Venus seems to be a poor analog to
>the post-Revolutionary history of the United States. (There’s also nothing in Beam’s
>work—certainly not the single French Canadian on the ~Cyrano ~ expedition any
>more than the Andean Martian in ~Uprising~--to suggest that the Martian colonies
>are somehow modeled on British-controlled Canada.
Here,
as in a previous case, I believe you are misconstruing ‘parallel’ for
‘equivalence’. There are simply similar historical forces at work,
which result in a parallel revolution. This is also true of the System
States War, in which the parallel of ‘America’ is now the Federation
itself, while the Alliance parallels the Confederacy. So the culture of
Venus is a side issue. There will certainly be similarities with the
early US; as in Venus being a rough, jungle-covered frontier planet
compared to Terra, like America was a rough, forest-covered frontier
continent compared to Britain. (And Venus is a warmer planet than Mars,
just as America has a warmer climate than Canada.) But there will also
be differences, as in Venus being more swampy and ‘tropical’ in climate
than the average topography and climate in eastern America.
These
differences probably play a role in the development of Venusian
culture, which will contribute toward making its society different from
that of the early US (and thereby likely explaining the perennial
corruption). The differences also include the fact that it is a
different time period (so we have interplanetary spaceships rather than
intercontinental sailing ships), which also contribute to a different
culture, and I don’t think Piper would exactly copy the model anyway.
The important point is that the ‘general shape’ of the historical
situation is the same, which is why we end up with a parallel of the
American Revolution in the early Federation’s history, and later a Civil
War parallel.
>Even without your attempt to use the American Revolution as the historical model—
>and when you want to date that using your ‘key’ and the ~Empire~ Chronology date—
>it’s clear from Beam in “The Future History” that the “First Federation begins to crack
>under the strains of colonial claims and counter-claims of member states.” This seems
>to be a broader-based problem rather than something focused on Venus specifically.
>Furthermore, the unfolding of “colonial claims and counter-claims by member states
>is something rather different from the revolt of the American Colonies against the British
>Empire. But, in general, we agree that the succession of Venus from the “first” Federation
>--whenever it occurs—is part of the process of disintegration and transformation from
>the U.S.-led “first” Federation to the Southron-led “second” Federation.
Right;
we do agree that the secession is closely connected with the transition
from the First to the Second Federation. In the first part of your
paragraph, however, you seem a bit confused about what I said. I am not
the one who is connecting the secession of Venus with the colonial
claims and counter-claims of the First Federation’s member states.
That’s your scenario. The competing claims are certainly one of the
main factors which lead to WWIV, during which forces of the various
North Terran nations try to conquer each other’s off-world colonies (and
which I believe is modeled on Queen Anne’s War). But I think it’s a
bit of a stretch to interpret ‘competing claims and counter-claims’ to
include a ‘secession’, which seem to refer to different events; nor do I
believe that Venus is yet unified enough to do so.
The
secession of an entire planet is much more likely, in my opinion, to
happen sometime after WWIV, which results in one of the “wars of
colonial pacification and consolidation”. Venus ‘consolidates’ itself
and secedes, and the Federation attacks it. So very much like the
Americas in the colonial period, I believe that Mars and Venus (and
probably the other celestial bodies in the Solar System) are divided
into many smaller political units at the time of WWIV, and the nations
of North Terra are struggling to gain supremacy over them. A subset of
their struggle for supremacy over Terra itself.
>I don’t think there is any “treaty” marking the transition from “first” Federation to “second.”
>As Beam puts it in “The Future History” (and describes in several places in his Future
>History yarns), WWIV results in the “complete devastation of [the] Northern Hemisphere
>of Terra. There is no one left in the North to make any treaties (though there may be
>rump elements of the U.S. and some other Northern states in the Southern Hemisphere
>or even, perhaps, among the remnants of their former off-world colonies).
Again,
you seem to be talking more about your own scenario than mine. My
interpretation of the evidence in Piper has Venus secede from the
completely unified Terra long after WWIV. So the deduced treaty would
be between the now Southern-dominated Federation (paralleling unified
Britain), and the now-unified Venus (paralleling the united colonies, or
US). This ‘Treaty of Venus’ officially ends the war between Terra and
Venus, as the Treaty of Paris officially ended the war between Britain
and America; but does not necessarily document that the First Federation
has ended, and the Second has begun. It just occurs at that time,
because the result of the war—presumably a defeat for Terra, assuming
that Venus wins like the Americans did—has a strong political effect on
Terra, causing a major change in how the Federation is constituted.
>As Beam further explains in “The Future History,” rather than being formed by a
>war-ending treaty, the “Second Federation [is] organized by South Africa, Australia
>and New Zealand, Brazil, the Argentine, etc.” What Beam has described here is
>something rather different from what historians had in mind in the transition from
>”first” to “second” British Empires. It’s also a process where the role of the rebellious
>Venus is secondary at best. Indeed, Beam’s very next sentence says there are
>”wars of colonial pacification and consolidation; the new [Terran Federation] imposes
>a System-wide pax.” These are the Southrons bringing to heel those off-world colonies,
>including Venus, which had “cracked” and “strained” the “first” Federation, leading
>to WWIV and the destruction of civilization in the Northern Hemisphere of Terra.
As
I have admitted before, “The Future History” does seem to suggest that
the Second Federation is formed soon after WWIV. But again, Beam does
not explicitly state this, and “The Future History” is very ambiguous
about the time both before and after WWIV, a period covering many
decades. His reference to South Africa and the other countries can
certainly be taken to mean what you say, and I get why you prefer that
interpretation. But it could also mean that the people of South
Terra—in which former nations such as South Africa and Brazil are now
states or provinces of the global nation—have had enough of the First
Federation (which I believe has become somewhat ‘tyrannical’ by this
time, a tyranny which provoked the Venusians to secede) and are
replacing it with something better.
To support this contention of
uncertainty regarding Piper’s statements, let’s take a closer look.
Right before WWIV, he gives us four sentences summarizing many events.
These are separated by subject matter. Two sentences of socio-politico
developments (exploration of the Solar System and tensions due to
overlapping claims) followed by two sentences describing technological
developments and their economic consequences (collapsium, financial
dislocations). Are we to assume that the technological and economic
developments happen *after* the socio-political ones? Maybe; but it is
much more likely that they occur concurrently, since Beam is simply
giving a general description of events that happen in the “First Century
A.E.”
After WWIV, we see the same thing. Piper gives us two
sentences describing politico-military events (the creation of the
Second Federation and colonial wars) followed by two sentences
describing technological advance (the development and first use of
hyperdrive). This makes it *look* like the System-wide pax is achieved
before the development of hyperdrive theory, particularly since this
time Beam provides a few dates. But none of the politico-military
events are dated, and since Piper again separated them by subject, we
can’t be certain that they occur in a linear fashion. More likely, they
happen concurrently, as with the political and technological
developments before WWIV. Thus, while hyperdrive theory *may* be
developed after the System-wide pax is established, it could just as
easily occur during the wars of pacification and consolidation. And my
‘key’ shows that’s exactly what happens. The development of hyperdrive
theory (AE 172) occurs before the secession of Venus (AE 174), and the
subsequent war associated with it.
Even the order of stated
events in this part of “The Future History” is not certain. Under the
First Century heading, Piper says “Contragravity, direct conversion of
nuclear energy to electric current, and collapsed matter for radiation
shielding.” This seems to suggest that contragravity is developed
before collapsium, and—because they are mentioned after the first
landing on Mars—that it also occurs sometime after 1996 (AE 53). But in
the non-THFH story “The Mercenaries”, Beam has Kato Sugihara make the
first breakthrough in developing collapsed matter in 1965, and this is
necessary in order to insulate the first spaceship to Luna (presumably a
nuclear-powered rocket) against cosmic radiation. (Worlds, pp. 36, 37,
38)
Contragravity is not mentioned in the story, and probably
has not been developed yet since the characters are still using
ground-cars to get around, rather than aircars. So here we see
collapsium being invented before contragravity, not after. Moreover,
the year 1965 is AE 22, which is well within the First Century, and
therefore agrees with the development of contragravity in “The Future
History”. So that begs a couple of questions. In the THFH proper, is
collapsium really developed after contragravity, or does it happen
before? And is it invented after AE 53 as “The Future History” seems to
suggest, or before WWIII, to help shield the Kilroy on its trip to
Luna? All we can really say for certain is that it happens sometime in
the First Century. Furthermore, if the undated events before WWIV are
not necessarily in the correct order, then the undated ones following
WWIV (including the formation of the Second Federation and colonial
wars) might not be either.
This is why I believe we should be
careful when applying “The Future History”. As a summarizing document,
it is prone to errors being introduced, due to the compression of many
events over many years into a few sentences.
>I don’t disagree that there are some dating problems with “The Future History.”
>In particular, there often seems to be the sort of mistake that would be made by
>someone “who remembered too late that there was no C.E. Year Zero.” (The
>problems with ~Four-Day Planet~ also exist within that novel itself!) Whether this
>was Beam’s confusion or an error in Weston’s transcription—or perhaps both—is
>something we’ll likely never know but I am much more reluctant to throw out the
>dates shown in “The Future History” for WWIV, particularly because there is so
>much internal evidence in Beam’s work—as my old 2003 guess on the PIPER-L
>list makes clear—which also points to those dates.
>That internal evidence—and “The Future History”—puts the secession of Venus
>circa 105 AE, which, using your “key,” would have us looking for the historical
>model circa 1706, well before the American Revolution. This is, as you’ve mentioned,
>the period of the War of the Spanish Succession—and the Great Northern War—which,
>considered together, seem like a pretty good model for a global war which results
>in the end of civilization in the Northern Hemisphere.
This
time you seem to be confusing Piper’s statements in “The Future
History” and elsewhere with your own interpretation of them. The date
of the secession is simply unknown, and the internal evidence is
inconclusive. These colonial wars could follow right after WWIV as
you’ve suggested, but since Beam provided no dates, they could just as
easily occur several decades later. Numbered examples from British
history would include the First and Second Afghan Wars (separated by 36
years) and the First and Second Boer Wars (separated by 18 years). So
the Second and Third Interplanetary Wars—or however many there are—could
similarly follow the First Interplanetary War (WWIV) by many years.
And I think it far more likely that they do, rather than happening in
rapid succession, as you appear to believe.
>Here, I think, is the better model for the secession of Venus. Rather than being
>modeled on the American Revolution, I think the tertiary theaters of the War of
>Spanish Succession where European powers battled for control of colonies in
>North America, South America, South Asia and Southeast Asia are more like
>what was probably happening on Terran colonies throughout the Solar system
>during WWIV.
But
Queen Anne’s War did not involve a ‘secession’, which implies a
declaration of independence, whether officially proclaimed or not. It
simply involved fighting between the forces of the European states, plus
colonial militias, which were trying to conquer each other overseas
territories. This suggests that during the First Interplanetary War,
the forces of the various North Terran nations (plus armed colonists)
try to conquer each other’s off-world colonies. That’s it; no secession
included.
>There is much conjecture here which rests on a foundation that rejects the dates
>provided for WWIV by Beam in “The Future History.” It’s conjecture—rather than
>deduction or extrapolation—because there isn’t anything tied to Beam’s work which
>suggests there was some additional conflict beyond WWIV. (Interesting that you’ve
>chosen to dump Beam’s dates for that conflict but keep his mention of the “wars of
>colonial pacification and consolidation.” That seems like some heavy-handed cherry-
>picking to me, especially since Beam seems to suggest in the same paragraph that
>these wars are completed and a “System-wide pax” imposed within ten years, i.e.
>by 119 AE—smack-dab in the middle of the period of a “completely unified world”
>foreseen by Chalmers in “Edge” too.)
Nowhere
have I rejected Beam’s date for WWIV; I gladly accept it. What I do
‘dump’, if you will, is your connection of WWIV with the Secession of
Venus. There doesn’t seem to be anything conclusive in Piper which
makes your deduction that they are closely connected events any more
certain than mine that they are not; and my ‘key’ provides good reason
to believe they are separated by several decades.
This is
supported by comparing Beam’s socio-political sentences in “The Future
History” for the pre- and post-WWIV eras. His pre-WWIV references to
the exploration of the Solar System and competing claims of member
states suggest that these events happen over many years, not necessarily
within ten years after the first landing on Mars. Particularly because
the ‘cracking’ of the First Federation almost certainly refers to the
tensions which precede the outbreak of WWIV in AE 106. In the same
manner, the post-WWIV references to the formation of the Second
Federation and colonial wars could easily mean that these events happen
over many years, not necessarily “within ten years” of WWIV. That is
simply your surmise, your deduction.
As for an “additional
conflict beyond WWIV”, I assume you mean “on Terra”. If so, this is
true, and the main reason I did not insist that the French and Indian
War is the model for an off-world colonial war between WWIV and the
Secession of Venus. That event is not certain (and I said it was not),
since Beam was vague about whether “the revolt of the colonies on Mars
and Venus” is the same as the secession of Venus, or a different
conflict.
>One of the things you’ve done in dumping Beam’s dates from “The Future History”
>for WWIV is to miss their alignment with the “completely unified world” that Chalmers
>”foresees” in the period 2050-70 AD (108-128 AE). This is the period immediately
>following WWIV, when the Southrons are establishing the “second” Federation and
>imposing that “System-wide pax.” This is a bit of what I mean when I say that there
>is internal evidence in Beam’s work which fits well with the dates he’s provided in
>”The Future History.” You’ve overlooked—or dismissed—this by choosing the date
>from the ~Empire~ Chronology for the secession of Venus.
I
have not dismissed or dumped what Beam has said; I simply interpret
what he has said differently than you. I do ‘dismiss’ certain dates in
“The Future History”, but that is because they are contradicted by
statements he makes in some of his stories. Nor have I missed the
alignment of WWIV with Terran unification. My original post agrees that
the completely unified world occurs right around the time of WWIV (and I
believe is modeled on the unification of Britain which occurred during
the War of Spanish Succession). That seems certain, given the evidence
in Piper which consists of actual dates. But again, it is your
interpretation of what Beam says next that I disagree with. I have not
overlooked or dismissed his date for the secession of Venus, for the
very good reason that he never provided one. It is you who have assumed
that this occurs around the time of WWIV. You have every right to make
that assumption, and to base your scenario on it. I just happen to
disagree with it, because my research has led me to different
conclusions.
>Here, I think, is a highlight of something which has been nagging at me about your
>”key” thesis. Too often it seems you’re committed to the “key” being the only connection
>between the models you find in actual history and Beam’s fiction. I think you can do
>better than that by looking not solely to the “key” but also more closely at the ~substance~
>of what Beam has left us. When something Beam has written doesn’t fit your “model”
>(or your “key”), the solution shouldn’t be to pitch out Beam’s “error.” The solution should
>be to take a second—and third, if necessary—look at your models.
With
all due respect, my friend, I believe I have looked at the substance of
what Beam has left us at least as much as you have. I accept the vast
majority of it, particularly with regard to dates, and greatly wish he
had provided more. I only ‘pitch out’ Beam’s errors when they become
obvious, as in his mid-IV century date for Four-Day Planet, which is
refuted by the story itself. Where there are contradictions, ambiguous
references or downright omissions, I try to deduce which is the best or
most likely answer. And I believe the ‘key’ provides a great means to
do just that, at least for the early Federation period.
In the
case of “The Future History”, it is evident that I take it with a larger
grain of salt than you. That is, I view it more skeptically, given its
errors and ambiguous statements, the latter of which—despite what you
would have us believe—don’t necessarily mean what you think they do, and
can be interpreted in more than one way. Given my analysis of its
summarized content as provided above, perhaps it is you who should take
another look.
I understand why you do not find my ‘key’
thesis convincing; in turn, I don’t find your counter-arguments
persuasive. But I certainly thank you for reviewing the models and
giving me feedback, which (as in other instances) has actually helped my
thinking on several points. Perhaps I am taking the ‘key’ too
seriously, but it seems to me that events line up too well, and explain
too much, to be mere coincidence.
>That's what Beam would have done.
Maybe
he would. But since none of us ever had the good fortune to meet
Piper, now it is you who are engaging in conjecture (and it is
conjecture). So permit me to respond with what I THINK Beam would have
done.
He would say, “Hell, you think you’re right and I think
I’m right, and we’re never going to agree. So let’s call a truce and
have a drink.”
(Looks, smiles.) “Make it several.”
John
|
David "PiperFan" Johnson 03-23-2019
17:13 UT
|
~
John "Calidore" Anderson wrote (more about the Thirty Days' War and WWIV):
> the future histories I had read seemed to use historical
> models in a random manner (such as Asimov) or not at
> all (Niven). So if Piper had used an actual timeline, it
> would make his Future History a huge improvement over
existing ones, or at least the ones I was aware of. It would
> 'feel' like a real history, because its course was based on
> real history.
I
think sci-fi "future historians" don't do this because it unnecessarily
constrains their dramatic ends. It seems like you're beginning to
recognize that Beam often chose his historical models "in a random
manner" too--because what he was trying to do was to write good yarns
rather than trying to craft a "history of the future" which "would feel
like a real history" in the manner you've suggested.
> Piper's official Future History began with Uller Uprising,
> published in 1952. Since this was at a 'hot' point in the
> Cold War (the Korean War was then raging), I believe
> the ideological component was not only present, but
> paramount. In 1952, everyone was convinced that a
> nuclear war with the Communist Bloc was inevitable,
> and could happen at any time.
Again,
these are assumptions you're making about the "real world" Beam was
living in, not details you're pulling from his work. Sure, this was
what was happening in Beam's world, but there's ~none~ of this in his
fiction.
One of the things that makes ~Uller Uprising~ so
remarkable is precisely the way it "tramples on" the ordinary
expectations of Beam's readers at the time he was writing. No one
picking up a copy of ~The Petrified Planet~ in 1952--or of the ~Space
Science Fiction~ serial in which "Ullr Uprising" appeared in 1953--would
have expected a story (less than a decade after WWII had come to an
end) with a hero and a heroine who were descendants of Nazis and Vichy
French! (Even today this remains a jarring turn.) Beam was all about
turning the ideological sensibilities of his time upside-down and
inside-out in his fiction (particularly in ~Uller Uprising~).
> So in creating his Future History, I don't think Beam
> would have ignored the most important geopolitical fact
> of that time.
If
Beam were interested in conforming to the "important geopolitical
facts" of his time, he would ~not~ have written a yarn which featured
the descendants of Nazis and French collaborationists as hero and
heroine!
> While he was not explicit (perhaps he felt he didn't
> need to be), the Eastern Axis almost certainly refers to
> the Communist Bloc, in my opinion.
I
agree it's reasonable to assume that the "Eastern Axis" included Russia
and China--though the addition of India gives it an interesting
twist--but it's not obvious at all that Beam envisioned the conflict
which led to the Thirty Days' War as essentially ~ideological~. When
Beam tells us that the Eastern Axis was at the UN trying to get the U.S.
Lunar Base "demilitarized" and "internationalized"--ideas swirling
around about Antarctica at the time "Edge" was being written (with the
U.S. and Britain on opposite sides)--he's writing about good old
~realpolitik~, not an ideological struggle. (This is an important point
to keep in mind when trying to understand what happens in ~WWIV~ too.)
> The postwar, bipolar world was East versus West, so
> we get the Eastern Axis against the 'Western Allies', or
> Terran Federation.
This
doesn't fit with the withdrawal of Canada from the British
Commonwealth. With that tidbit Beam is showing us the beginnings of a
rift between the United States and Britain. The Canadian on the
~Cyrano~ expedition tells us that Canada ends up in the U.S.-led Terran
Federation. So where does Britain--and the rest of the
Commonwealth--end up in the Thirty Days' War? What does the rift
between the U.S. and Britain mean for Western Europe? Does
France--which began the first steps in its withdrawal from NATO's
military structure in the period between the time when Beam wrote
"Ministry of Disturbance" and "Oomphel in the Sky"--stick with the
Americans or join with the British?
These are all questions we
would never even consider if we tried to understand the conflict which
leads to the Thirty Days' War simply in terms of the "real world" Cold
War.
> The great ideological struggle of the Twentieth Century
> (which could be called the 'Wars of Ideology') therefore
> parallels the great religious struggle of the Seventeenth
> Century (the Wars of Religion).
Perhaps,
but it's not at all clear from what Beam left us that what he was
writing about in the conflict which led to the Thirty Days' War was the
same thing as the "great ideological struggle of the Twentieth Century."
> The moonbase concept is a kind of 'planetary excalibur',
That is a marvellous metaphor! It should have been "Operation Excalibur" instead of "Operation Triple Cross." ;)
> Thus, there is no parallel for the moonbase in the Thirty
> Years War.
Here is Beam writing his future history "in a random manner," like Asimov. ;)
> But the US lunar base changes the equation, allowing
> the US/Federation to destroy the Soviet Union (and
> perhaps the whole Eastern Axis), which is (are) "utterly
> overwhelmed under the rain of missiles from across
> space".
That's
what we get from Beam. This, I think, is why we don't see any
Chinese--or Russians--in later Future History yarns. The vast majority
of them were killed in the Thirty Days' War--and to the extent there was
any post-War recovery it was undone by the destruction of the Northern
Hemisphere in the Fourth World War (leaving only the "Eurasian
barbarians" that the young "second" Terran Federation officer Reginald
Fitzurse campaigned against).
> This secures 'world supremacy' for the US-led Terran
> Federation.
You're
forgetting Britain and its Commonwealth (from which Canada withdrew to
join the U.S.-led Terran Federation). Yes, the Eastern Axis--Russia,
China and India--are destroyed in the Thirty Days' War but the United
States ~also~ "suffers grievously." If Britain and its
Commonwealth--and perhaps a few other nations, like France--managed to
"sit out" the Thirty Days' War then it may not be the case that the
U.S.-led Terran Federation "secures world supremacy" in its aftermath.
> but the rest of your question again takes us into the
> full overview section, where I show my method for
> identifying the parallels between the modern nations
> involved in WWIII and WWIV, and their historical models
> in the Thirty Years War and War of Spanish Succession.
> Basically, in both of these eras, France was the most
> populous nation in Europe. This means its parallel in
> WWIII and WWIV should be the most populous nation
> in the world, which is China. That this aligned the
> "Sun King" with the leader of China, traditionally called
> the "Son of Heaven", seemed a point in its favor.
I
think China is decimated in the Thirty Days' War. India (and Russia)
too. Given the destruction also suffered by the United States, the most
powerful bloc in the post-Thirty Days' War world may be the British
Commonwealth--augmented by the French Union. I don't know whether or
not your effort to draw an analogy between the historical French "Sun
King" and some post-Communist Chinese "Son of Heaven" works but it does
seem like your premise might benefit from a bit closer attention to what
Beam left us in his work.
> The second part of your statement is actually an
> argument in favor of my scenario. For if Red China is
> the main enemy in WWIV, its total destruction means
> that few Terran Chinese will survive, particularly those
> with Mandarin names.
We're
agree on what happens to China in Beam's Future History; we just
disagree on which War it happens in. The fact remains there's nothing
in what Beam left us which would indicate that China was a principal
adversary in the Fourth World War. On the other hand, we do get bits
from Beam which suggests that Britain may have managed to stay out of
the Thirty Days' War and a great deal which makes clear that former
British Commonwealth nations in the Southern Hemisphere "come out on
top" in the aftermath of the Fourth World War (in no small part by
"managing to stay out" of the Atomic Wars), which means some other
nation (or bloc), a Northern Hemisphere nation (or bloc), must have been
a principal combatant in the Fourth World War.
Beam doesn't tell us which nation (or bloc) that might be, but he leaves us some clues. None of them point to China.
> That's a keen observation. As an American ally and
> former Security Council member of the disbanded UN,
> Nationalist China probably becomes an early and
> important member of the Terran Federation.
On this point we are agreed.
> And in the overview section, I show that during the
> Thirty Days' War, Federation forces from Taiwan
> (Nationalist Chinese, Americans) do invade the
> mainland. Its model is the Spanish invasion of
> eastern France in the Thirty Years War. This
> invasion was subsequently defeated, however,
> suggesting that the Nationalist/American invasion
> of eastern China is ultimately a failure.
I
doubt there's time in the Thirty Days' War for any large-scale ground
action. But it seems likely that "first" Terran Federation forces--in
which the Nationalist Chinese (and perhaps even the Japanese and the
South Koreans) likely would play a prominent role--would undertake
post-War occupation and reconstruction in eastern Asia. Thus, it seems
unlikely that a potential adversary to the U.S.-led "first" Terran
Federation would arise in eastern Asia--devastated in the War, occupied
by the "first" Federation in its aftermath--in the period between the
Thirty Days' War and WWIV.
> Moving on to WWIV, the major Western or democratic
> powers of the Terran Federation now parallel the
> 'democratic' powers of the Grand Alliance in the War of
> Spanish Succession
Except
that, if you take away the British Commonwealth (and possibly France,
and therefore, likely much of northwestern Europe), then the U.S.-led
Terran Federation ~isn't~ a bloc of "the major Western or democratic
powers." It is instead, a bloc of member-states like Japan (where
Sachiko Koremitsu was born) and West Germany (where one of Selim von
Ohlmhorst's parents was born) which are still very, very new to
democracy at the time Beam was writing, member-states like Turkey (where
von Ohlmhorst's other parent was born) and Pakistan and Iran,
member-states like Nationalist China and South Korea and, perhaps,
Indonesia, and perhaps even member-states like Portugal and Spain and
Greece, all of which had authoritarian governments with little or no
experience of democracy at the time Beam was writing.
Then
consider the U.S. itself in the aftermath of the Thirty Days' War. It's
suffered "grievously," with major cities nuked into oblivion by the
nuclear missiles of the Eastern Axis. Much of the nation probably ends
up under martial law with substantial "emergency powers" in place for an
extended period after the War. The post-War U.S. is a ~de facto~, if
not ~de jure~, non-democratic state.
Bottom line is, the
post-Thirty Days' War "first" Terran Federation--the U.S. and its
allies--looks very different from the U.S. (and its major allies) at the
time Beam was writing. It's both less "Western" ~and~ less
"democratic," especially in comparison to Britain and the Commonwealth
nations of the Southern Hemisphere. . . .
> the Franco-Spanish Alliance in the WSS becomes the
> model for an 'absolute' or totalitarian 'Sino-Hindic Axis'
> in WWIV.
There
is nothing from Beam which suggests that China (or India) might be the
WWIV adversary to the U.S.-led "first" Federation. Nor is it clear from
what Beam has left us that the post-Thirty Days' War "first" Federation
is the paragon of democracy our Cold War sensibilities might lead us to
assume.
As he did in ~Uller Uprising~ with his hero von
Schlichten and his heroine Quinton, it may be that Beam had something
rather different in mind for the combatants and the nature of the
conflict in WWIV from what readers of his era--or those of us today
still making similar assumptions--would expect to be the case.
Cheers,
David
--
"It
is not . . . the business of an author of fiction to improve or inspire
or educate his reader, or to save the world from fascism, communism,
racism, capitalism, socialism, or anything else. [The author's] main
objective is to purvey entertainment of the sort his reader wants. If
he has done this, by writing interestingly about interesting people,
human or otherwise, doing interesting things, he has discharged his duty
and earned his check." - H. Beam Piper, "Double: Bill Symposium"
interview
~
|
David "PiperFan" Johnson 03-23-2019
16:27 UT
|
~
Jon Crocker wrote:
> An alternate theory is that all those A-bombs disturbed
> the spacetime continuum enough that it ruined
> Chalmers' ability to see the future. Then by the time
> the eddies subsided, Chalmers had passed away from
> old age.
That
would do it! (Though what this might forebode for all those
"planetbusters" as the Old Federation came to end boggles the mind.)
> But, there were rumours that Chalmers wrote a number
> of manuscripts of his visions of the future...
That's
a wonderful story idea. It could begin with a prologue where Chalmers
is locked away at Northern State, writing furiously . . . and some nurse
or orderly who was an aspiring amateur historian. . . .
Cheers,
David
--
"And don't let anybody else see any of it. Keep it safe for me." - Edward Chalmers (H. Beam Piper), "The Edge of the Knife"
~
|
Jon Crocker 03-23-2019
03:25 UT
|
An alternate theory is that all those A-bombs disturbed the spacetime
continuum enough that it ruined Chalmers' ability to see the future.
Then by the time the eddies subsided, Chalmers had passed away from old
age.
But, there were rumours that Chalmers wrote a number of manuscripts of his visions of the future...
|
David "PiperFan" Johnson 03-21-2019
14:30 UT
|
~
John "Calidore" Anderson wrote (about "The Edge of the Knife"):
> I’m glad you like the idea that Professor Chalmers is
> modeled on Nostradamus. The parallels between the
> two men are quite extensive, as the overview section
> will show. And we know that Piper modeled people
> as well as historical events. “Jerry Pournelle still
> remembers many an evening spent with Piper
> discussing _historical figures_ and events and
> how they might apply to the future.” (John Carr,
> Introduction to Federation, p. xix, emphasis added)
> As a well-known historical figure, Nostradamus is
> almost an obvious choice for a science-fiction author
> to model a character on, but as far as I’m aware, Piper
> is the only one who has done it.
I
want to be clear that what I like is the way your suggestion of a
parallel between Chalmers and Nostradamus resolves the troublesome
aspects of Chalmers' "foresight" in a Future History which has no other
indications of such capabilities existing (or even that recognizes
Chalmers to have existed). I'm not at all convinced though that
Nostradamus actually was used by Piper as a model for Chalmers. (We
have nothing from Pournelle to suggest this specific link either.) If
Beam had modelled Chalmers on Nostradamus, he wouldn't have been
tentative in "The Future History" about including "Edge" as a Future
History yarn. And, even more likely, he would have dropped a hint or
two into a later Future History yarn which referred to the
"prognosticating professor." But he didn't do that. We're still
talking about Nostradamus centuries after he lived, so why aren't folks
in the Future History still talking about Chalmers?
(It doesn't
work to say, here, something like, "Well, Chalmers is different because
he was 'hiding' or because records of his 'foresight' were destroyed in
the Thirty Days' War," because in doing so you've veered away from the
very model you're trying to use. That sort of "cherry-picking" would
undercut your proposition.)
I think it works to claim that
Chalmers was "sort of like" Nostradamus, in the sense that he was
someone who claimed he could see the future but who remained
controversial for doing so, without anyone ever able to conclusively
prove--or disprove--his claims. That allows Chalmers to "fit" into an
otherwise "harder science-fiction" Future History, but doing more than
that--like your effort to guess at Chalmers' future based upon the later
part of the life of Nostradamus--wanders into speculation, without some
concrete confirmation in Beam's other Future History works. Is it
possible? Yes. Is it likely? Not very.
> > Future History (much less in Beam's larger body of
> > work). Beam's uncertainty about "Edge" suggests he
> > understood it to be a stand-alone work, or at least
> > had the potential to be read that way. That seems
> > an odd observation for him to make if he'd crafted
> > the story using a meta-fictional "key" which tied
> > it to the other yarns.
>
> Piper’s mention of the Terran Federation in “Edge”
> indicates that this is a THFH tale.
Only
if we ignore Beam's comments about the yarn in "The Future History."
Besides, Beam "mixed-and-matched" all the time, as with the Philadelphia
Project which appears both in "Edge" and in the non-Terro-human Future
History "Hartley" yarns, or with the "Islamic Caliphate" and the
"Islamic Kaliphate," similar names, yet different things in different
universes.
And let's not even try to consider the Freyan Hostigi in "When in the Course--"! ;)
We
have to remember that what Beam was doing was trying to make a living
as a writer, not trying to build some entirely-consistent,
tightly-connected fictional universe(s). He re-used ideas when it
suited his dramatic--and commercial--purpose to do so, not (necessarily)
to connect the different yarns in which he used them.
> Otherwise, it would be part of the Paratime series,
> in which no such Federation is mentioned (and the
> evidence suggests that he kept the two series separate);
> or his non-THFH future history stories, which use the
> United Nations or Reunited Nations for the near-future
> global state.
That
isn't the case at all. I'm repeating myself, but it could easily be a
"stand-alone" yarn, like "Dearest" or "The Answer" or "Hunter Patrol."
> So in this case, I think you’re being a little too strict in
> applying Piper’s statements.
I
think, here, we have a fundamentally different philosophical approach.
I look at what Beam has left us as a sort of metaphorical "box." It's a
complicated "box" will all sorts of "pockets" and "extensions" and
internal "sub-boxes" and even the occasional "dead end." But when we're
trying to make sense of his work we have to "live within" ~all~ of that
"box." We can't "discard" something he's left us merely because we
don't understand how it "fits" into the "box." If there's a
short-coming it's almost always ~ours~, not ~Beam's~.
From this
perspective, there is no such thing as being "too strict" in paying
attention to what Beam left us. What Beam left us is what he left us,
all of it. We should abandon it only in the most extreme circumstances.
> Particularly ones from “The Future History”, which we
> know contain a number of errors.
Yes,
there are places where there are apparent contradictions in what Beam
has left us. But even there we have to be very careful in deciding
what's "wheat" and what's "chaff." If we "throw out" something we have
to "throw out" the smallest bit possible and do it in a way that still
"fits" with everything else that's left. We can't start "tearing out"
whole components of the "box" he's left us just because it fits some
idea we have or some model we've constructed ourselves.
> Beam seems to have been somewhat confused when he
> wrote the piece, possibly because it was a rush job to
> placate Peter Weston so he could get back to writing
> saleable stories. I don’t take his “possible inclusion” too
> seriously; I consider Chalmers as unquestionably part
> of the THFH. Especially because, if we leave Chalmers
> out, then we must also throw out nearly everything we
> know about the beginning of the Terran Federation,
> information about which comes almost exclusively
> from “The Edge of the Knife”.
There
is nothing Beam told us in "The Future History" about "The Edge of the
Knife" which contradicts what we find in the yarn itself. The
"confusion" you're trying to attribute here to Beam is actually a "made
up" conflict between what Beam wrote in "The Future History" and the
model ~you've~ "deduced" and want to apply to Chalmers. That's a very,
very different exercise from one that's trying to resolves a genuine
conflict in what Beam left us (like, say, when the events of ~Four-Day
Planet~ take place).
What you're doing here is finding some
(apparent) contradictions in one bit of "The Future History" and then
using them as an excuse to "throw out" other parts of "The Future
History" that ~aren't~ contradictions of what Beam has left us (but
rather merely don't fit your model well).
> If we take as a given that Chalmers is in the Future
> History,
We
can't "take this as a given." It is a direct contradiction of Beam's
own tentativeness on this point. Beam was tentative because he
recognized that Chalmers' "foreseeing" doesn't fit well with the "harder
science-fiction" of the rest of his Future History works. There's
nothing ~contradictory~ in that that uncertainty. It's accurate and
reflects a genuine aspect of the story he told in "Edge."
> and assuming he is modeled on Nostradamus,
As
I've mentioned, even though I ~like~ this assumption (or at least the
idea of the fictional Chalmers being "explainable" in terms similar to
those which explain the actual Nostradamus), it's not at all likely that
a direct modelling is actually what Beam was doing. Just because we
might like (what) the assumption (does) doesn't make it so.
> then the AE 1 = 1601 AD equation explains
> Pottgeiter’s reference that Nostradamus is “about a
> century late” for him. The statement is true to the
> character, as Pottgeiter is a professor of medieval
> history, but it’s also a subtle hint that Piper’s
> Nostradamus, Ed Chalmers, appears in the THFH
> ‘about a century late’.
I
understand what you're trying to do here. I'm merely suggesting you've
wandered well into shaky ground. You've made two big leaps ~away~ from
what Beam has left us in an effort to "shoe-horn" your model into
place. I'm pointing out that in doing so, it's gotten more and more
difficult to accept what you're doing as being reasonable extrapolation.
Is it possible? Yes. Is it likely? Not very.
> Rather than conjecture, the word I would use is
> ‘deduction’ or ‘extrapolation’.
We seem to have rather divergent understandings of the specific meanings of those terms. . . .
> The ‘disappearance’ angle is an excellent point. But
> unlike the rosy-future endings of The Cosmic
> Computer and Space Viking, the end of “Edge” is
> hardly a happy or hopeful one.
This
is an interesting point. I'm not sure I agree--Chalmers' quick
planning with Pottgeiter at the end is clearly intended to leave the
reader with a hopeful expectation of his future--but I agree the
hopefulness is much more muted than is the case at the end of ~Junkyard
Planet~ and ~Space Viking~.
That doesn't mean I'm ready to accept
your claim that Chalmers' future can be modelled on that of Nostradamus
in his later life but it does leave me willing to entertain the
possibility that Chalmers doesn't die in that mental institution (either
during the War or in its aftermath).
But if Chalmers doesn't end
his days in the mental institution then he becomes, like Merlin,
another "great mystery." We never get another indication in any other
Future History yarn that Chalmers survives. We have no evidence that he
was somehow able to "take advantage" of his ability to "foresee" the
future.
That leaves lots of room for "dreaming" about Chalmers'
future, but if we're going to engage in that exercise then we need to
find ways to connect that "dreaming" with other parts of what Beam has
left us. From what I've seen so far of your effort to model Chalmers'
future on the later life of Nostradamus, there's been very little
indication of that sort of connection. You're not able to point to
something Beam left us in the rest of his Future History and say, "Here
is evidence that Chalmers survived and became influential."
> so Chalmers should do his best work after AE 31
> (WWIII). That he resumes this work is suggested at the
> end of “Edge” (late AE 30). Becoming an advisor to the
> US and/or Federation governments after WWIII should
> enable Chalmers to help secure the postwar peace, by
> providing accurate forecasts (based on his real
> knowledge of future events) which enable government
> leaders to adopt good and effective policies to deal with
> what’s ahead.
Perhaps,
but where are the connections to what Beam left us? We can't just make
them up. There has to be some connection from Beam himself, like the
way the ~Hubert Penrose~ in "Naudsonce" connects to "Omnilingual" or the
way Lord Koreff in "Ministry of Disturbance" connects to ~Space
Viking~. Beam was ~great~ at this, so where is the indication in a
subsequent Future History work that Chalmers may have survived and come
to use his "foresight" for "good"?
> And if Ed’s advisory job is with the secretive Politico-
> Strategic Planning Board (which he never worked for in
> “Edge”, but could be invited to join after WWIII due to the
> wartime deaths of some of its members), his
> contributions could remain “pretty hush-hush” as Major
> Cutler says (Empire, p. 48).
>
> Thus, by entering the ‘clandestine world’, Chalmers might
> indeed disappear from the Future History, even while
> helping it.
Sorry,
but this doesn't work. It is suggesting there ~aren't~ any connections
that Beam left us, so let's "make up" whatever we want. Here, I would
offer, is a pretty clear distinction between "conjecture" and
"deduction" or "extrapolation."
Cheers,
David
--
"Ideas
for science fiction stories like ideas for anything else, are where you
find them, usually in the most unlikely places. The only reliable
source is a mind which asks itself a question like, 'What would happen
if--?' or, 'Now what would this develop into, in a few centuries?' Or,
'How would so-and-so happen?' Anything at all, can trigger such a
question, in your field if not in mine." - H. Beam Piper, "Double: Bill
Symposium" interview
~
|
David "PiperFan" Johnson 03-19-2019
04:55 UT
|
~
John "Calidore" Anderson wrote (about Venus):
> OVERVIEW OF HISTORICAL MODELS IN THE EARLY
> FUTURE HISTORY
> WWIV obviously occurs after WWIII in AE 31, and
> probably sometime before the Secession of Venus in AE
> 174 (timeline in Empire).
I've
mentioned this before, but we have a basic disagreement here about the
dating of the succession of Venus (and thus the dating of World War IV).
You prefer the date in the ~Empire~ Chronology for the succession of
Venus (174 AE) and I prefer the date shown in Beam's "The Future
History" for WWIV (106-109 AE). I don't know where the date in the
~Empire~ Chronology comes from but there is plenty of internal evidence
in Beam's work to support the WWIV dates in "The Future History."
Indeed, you can see me making a guess at the dates of WWIV (circa
101-108 AE) based upon the internal evidence in Beam's work back on the
old PIPER-L mailing list here:
https://web.archive.org/web/20080310091549...-l&T=0&F=&S=&P=3632
That
guess, from May 2003, was made three and half years ~before~ I got my
hands on a copy of "The Future History" from Peter Weston (and posted it
shortly thereafter at Zarthani.net).
So, we'll have to keep
these different ideas about the dates in mind as I respond to your
historical models for the Venus secession.
> The timeline in Empire places the secession of Venus in
> AE 174, and adding 1600 makes its historical model
> 1774 AD; that is, the American Revolution.
Putting
the dates aside for the moment, it seems to me like post-Revolution
America is a poor model for the Future History Venus. Venus is
described throughout the Federation era as a corrupt and seemingly
backward place, sort of a Federation version of what used to be called a
"banana republic." That seems rather different from the American
experience, at least through the period when Beam was writing. . . .
> Piper similarly relates the Secession of Venus to the
> end of the First and beginning of the Second Terran
> Federations. “And after Venus seceded from the First
> Federation, before the Second Federation was
> organized.” [9]
[Moving reference up from below here, for context.]
> [9] H. Beam Piper, Space Viking (New York, NY: Ace
> Books, 1963), p. 13
> The secession therefore seems to be the catalyst for the
> fall of the First Terran Federation, an interplanetary
> organization confined to the Solar System, and centered
> on normal-space trade between the ‘great island’ of Terra
> and its ‘continental’ Venusian and Martian colonies, as
> well as with such minor celestial ‘islands’ as Ceres,
> Callisto, Ganymede and Titan; followed by the rise of
> the Second Terran Federation, which in the following
> (Third) century AE begins its interstellar expansion of
> colonization and hyperspace trade to eventually become
> a vast empire spanning at least 500 worlds spread over
> “a space-volume of two hundred billion cubic light-years.”
[10]
[Again, relocating the reference for context.]
> [10] Ibid., p. 32
Even
without your attempt to use the American Revolution as the historical
model--and when you want to date that using your "key" and the ~Empire~
Chronology date--it's clear from Beam in "The Future History" that the
"First Federation begins to crack under the strains of colonial claims
and counter-claims of member states." This seems to be a broader-based
problem rather than something focused on Venus specifically.
Furthermore, the unfolding of "colonial claims and counter-claims by
member states" is something rather different from the revolt of the
American Colonies against the British Empire. But, in general, we agree
that the succession of Venus from the "first" Federation--whenever it
occurs--is part of the process of disintegration and transformation from
the U.S.-led "first" Federation to the Southron-led "second"
Federation.
> The timeline in Empire placed the end of the First
> Federation, and rise of the Second Federation, in AE 183.
> This is exactly right, as adding 1600 results in 1783,
> the very year the Treaty of Paris was signed, and which
> historians typically use as the date marking the end of
> the First British Empire and the beginning of the Second.
> [11] Wars are usually concluded by treaties, so it seems
> likely that the Treaty of Paris, which officially ended
> hostilities in 1783, is paralleled by a similar document
> in AE 183 (which I tentatively dubbed the ‘Treaty of Venus’),
> that in Piper’s Future History marks the end of the First
> Terran Federation and the beginning of the Second.
I
don't think there is any "treaty" marking the transition from "first"
Federation to "second." As Beam puts it in "The Future History" (and
describes in several places in his Future History yarns), WWIV results
in the "complete devastation of [the] Northern Hemisphere of Terra."
There is no one left in the North to make any treaties (though there may
be rump elements of the U.S. and some other Northern states in the
Southern Hemisphere or even, perhaps, among the remnants of their former
off-world colonies).
As Beam further explains in "The Future
History," rather than being formed by a war-ending treaty, the "Second
Terran Federation [is] organized by South Africa, Australia and New
Zealand, Brazil, the Argentine, etc." What Beam has described here is
something rather different from what historians had in mind in the
transition from "first" to "second" British Empires. It's also a
process where the role of the rebellious Venus is secondary at best.
Indeed, Beam's very next sentence says there are "wars of colonial
pacification and consolidation; the new [Terran Federation] imposes a
System-wide pax." These are the Southrons bringing to heel those
off-world colonies, including Venus, which had "cracked" and "strained"
the "first" Federation, leading to WWIV and the destruction of
civilization in the Northern Hemisphere of Terra.
> So what does this mean for the early Federation? First,
> the equation supports the dates in the Empire timeline
> for the Secession of Venus and the rise of the Second
> Federation as essentially correct. Piper’s short
> chronology of “The Future History”, which implies that
> the Second Federation is formed right after WWIV, [12]
> is therefore in error. This is not a major obstacle, since
> that document contains several other provable mistakes,
> most notably an almost 150-year error in the dating of
> Four-Day Planet.
I
don't disagree that there are some dating problems with "The Future
History." In particular, there often seems to be the sort of mistake
that would be made by someone "who remembered too late that there was no
C.E. Year Zero." (The problems with ~Four-Day Planet~ also exist
within that novel itself!) Whether this was Beam's confusion or an
error in Weston's transcription--or perhaps both--is something we'll
likely never know but I am much more reluctant to throw out the dates
shown in "The Future History" for WWIV, particularly because there is so
much internal evidence in Beam's work--as my 2003 guess on the old
PIPER-L list makes clear--which also points to those dates.
That
internal evidence--and "The Future History"--puts the secession of Venus
circa 105 AE, which, using your "key," would have us looking for the
historical model circa 1706, well before the American Revolution. This
is, as you've mentioned, the period of the War of the Spanish
Succession--and the Great Northern War--which, considered together, seem
like a pretty good model for a global war which results in the end of
civilization in the Northern Hemisphere.
> k) AE 106-109 = 1706-1709 AD. WWIV is also called
> “the First Interplanetary War”. [17] This means that its
> extraterrestrial theater is modeled on Queen Anne’s War,
> which was the “North American theater of the War of
> Spanish Succession.” [18] Queen Anne’s War “produced
> few memorable hostilities”, [19] so the battles on colonial
> Venus and Mars are presumably minor compared to
> the major fighting taking place all over North Terra.
Here,
I think, is the better model for the secession of Venus. Rather than
being modeled on the American Revolution, I think the tertiary theaters
of the War of Spanish Succession where European powers battled for
control of colonies in North America, South America, South Asia and
Southeast Asia are more like what was probably happening on Terran
colonies throughout the Solar system during WWIV.
> o) circa AE 156-163 = AE 1756-1763. In addition to
> the secession of Venus mentioned by Otto Harkaman,
> Professor Chalmers foresees “the revolt of the colonies
> on Mars and Venus.” [27] This may be the same event.
> However, since Harkaman does not mention the
> secession of Mars, it could actually refer to a separate
> conflict. And between Queen Anne’s War and the
> American Revolution, there was another major colonial
> war in North America. This was the French and Indian
> War (1756-1763), which could therefore be paralleled
> by a ‘Sino-Colonial’ war on Venus and Mars (circa AE
> 156-163). If so, this would be the Second
> Interplanetary War, and one of the “Wars of colonial
> pacification and consolidation” mentioned by Piper.
> [28] The effects of the French and Indian War led to
> the American Revolution, so the effects of the deduced
> ‘Sino-Colonial War’ may similarly lead to the Secession
> of Venus.
There
is much conjecture here which rests on a foundation that rejects the
dates provided for WWIV by Beam in "The Future History." It's
conjecture--rather than deduction or extrapolation--because there isn't
anything tied to Beam's work which suggests there was some additional
conflict beyond WWIV. (Interesting that you've chosen to dump Beam's
dates for that conflict but keep his mention of the "wars of colonial
pacification and consolidation." That seems like some heavy-handed
cherry-picking to me, especially since Beam seems to suggest in the same
paragraph that these wars are completed and a "System-wide pax" imposed
within ten years, i.e. by 119 AE--smack-dab in the middle of the period
of a "completely unified world" foreseen by Chalmers in "Edge" too.)
(I've
already questioned your proposal of China as a major combatant in any
war after the Thirty Days' War and I'll comment on your responses to
that separately.)
> p) circa AE 174-181 = 1774-1781 AD. The
> Secession of Venus, possibly the Third
> Interplanetary War, is modeled on the American
> Revolution. The Thirteen Colonies banded together
> against the tyrant King George, and declared their
> united independence, almost exactly sixty years
> after Great Britain itself was unified. Similarly, the
> formerly-loyal colonies on Venus unite, roughly
> sixty years after Terra is completely unified, and
> secede from a First Federation which has become
> ‘tyrannical’.
One
of the things you've done in dumping Beam's dates from "The Future
History" for WWIV is to miss their alignment with the "completely
unified world" Chalmers "foresees" in the period 2050-70 AD (108-128
AE). This is the period immediately following WWIV, when the Southrons
are establishing the "second" Federation and imposing that "System-wide
pax." This is a bit of what I mean when I say that there is internal
evidence in Beam's work which fits well with the dates he's provided in
"The Future History." You've overlooked--or dismissed--this by choosing
the date from the ~Empire~ Chronology for the secession of Venus.
> The fledgling American Republic is paralleled by
> a ‘Venusian Republic’, while the Martian colonies
> parallel the Canadian colonies (Nova Scotia,
> Newfoundland, St. John and Quebec) which did
> not revolt against the British.
This
again is conjecture, unrelated to anything we can find in Beam's actual
work. The chronically corrupt Member Republic of Venus seems to be a
poor analog to the post-Revolutionary history of the United States.
(There's also nothing in Beam's work--certainly not the single
French-Canadian on the ~Cyrano~ expedition any more than the Andean
Martian in ~Uprising~--to suggest that the Martian colonies are somehow
modeled on British-controlled Canada.)
I think there are better
models for Venus in the various European colonies which "changed hands"
during the War of the Spanish Succession. And if you're willing to
abandon your commitment to the dates in the ~Empire~ Chronology for
those provided by Beam in "The Future History" the model aligns nicely
with your "key" too.
Here, I think, is a highlight of something
which has been nagging at me about your "key" thesis. Too often it
seems you're committed to the "key" being the only connection between
the models you find in actual history and Beam's fiction. I think you
can do better than that by looking not solely to the "key" but also more
closely at the ~substance~ of what Beam has left us. When something
Beam has written doesn't fit your "model" (or your "key") the solution
shouldn't be to pitch out Beam's "error." The solution should be to
take a second--and third, if necessary--look at your models.
That's what Beam would have done.
Cheers,
David
--
"There
had been the time he'd mentioned the secession of Canada from the
British Commonwealth. . . ."- Edward Chalmers (H. Beam Piper), "The Edge
of the Knife"
~
|
Calidore 03-19-2019
01:30 UT
|
Thanks again to David "Piperfan" Johnson for his comments on Part One; here is my second set of replies.
>Was there something other than the similarity of names which led you to see the
>Thirty Years’ War as a model for the Third World War? “Thirty Days’ War” seems
>chosen specifically to indicate that a global nuclear war would be very, very, different
>from previous, modern, conventional wars. “Twenty Day’ War” doesn’t quite seem like
>long enough and “Forty-Five Days’ War” would have been a lot more awkward to
>write, so “Thirty Days’ War” may have simply been a convenient dramatic choice.
>The connection you’ve proposed here, based simply on the similarity in the naming
>conventions, does not seem to be compelling in and of itself.
And,
>Was there something other than the affinity with the “key” dates which led you to
>see the War of Spanish Succession as a model for the Fourth World War?
The
equation more or less came first, and the affinity is that the Terran
Federation is modeled on the British Empire. So I started with a
general or overall view, then got down to the specific details. The
inspiration arose from John Carr’s and Jerry Pournelle’s introductions
to Federation, back in 1981. John described how Beam apparently modeled
the Terran Federation on the British Empire, and Jerry wrote that “Beam
firmly believed that history repeated itself; or at least that one can
use real history to construct a future history.” (Preface to Federation,
p. viii) At some point over the following years, the thought occurred
to me that the easiest and best way to do that would be to use an
actual timeline. Though no expert on the field of science fiction, the
future histories I had read seemed to use historical models in a random
manner (such as Asimov) or not at all (Niven). So if Piper had used an
actual timeline, it would make his Future History a huge improvement
over existing ones, or at least the ones I was aware of. It would
‘feel’ like a real history, because its course was based on real
history.
The British Empire model got a boost around
1990, when I read Dr. Bayly’s Atlas of the British Empire. This gave
me the idea that the First and Second Terran Federations were modeled on
the First and Second British Empires. Writing these ideas down in the
summer of 2000, I soon realized that this meant the Secession of Venus
was modeled on the American Revolution. So it was by back-projecting
from that event that the models for WWIII and WWIV were revealed. The
Terran Federation is modeled on the British Empire, so the Federation in
AE 174 (the Secession of Venus in the Empire timeline) would align with
Britain in the 1770s (the American Revolution), and the Federation in
AE 31 (the Thirty Days’ War, a major conflict) would align with Britain
in the 1630s, which was in the middle of the Thirty Years War (another
major conflict). Finally, the Federation in AE 114 (WWIV, as I thought
at the time) ‘almost’ aligned with Britain in the next major European
war, the War of Spanish Succession (1701-1713).
Thus, it appeared
that Piper had aligned the great wars of the Federation’s first two
centuries with the great European wars of the Seventeenth and Eighteen
Centuries. The similarity of names (Thirty Days’ War, Thirty Years War)
was actually something of a ‘eureka’ moment, as it suggested that my
line of reasoning was on the right track. This was supported by other
events which seemed to align; the unification of Terra in 2050-2070
(50-70 years before the Secession of Venus) with the unification of
Britain in 1707 (almost exactly 70 years before the American
Revolution), and the Cyrano’s voyage to Mars (AE 53) with Cyrano de
Bergerac’s Voyage to the Moon (1650s AD).
My
first thought for a specific date was that AE 174 paralleled the iconic
1776, so that the original ‘key’ equation was a couple years different.
But it didn’t take long before I realized the events lined up best by
using AE 1 = 1601 AD. It’s a more elegant solution, and as I said in my
original post, WWIV’s alignment with the War of Spanish Succession
became perfect eight years later, when I read “The Future History” in
John Carr’s biography of Piper. To me, this confirmed the correctness
of my research.
So you are right, though
perhaps not precisely in the way you meant, that “ “Thirty Days’ War”
seems chosen specifically to indicate that a global nuclear war would be
very, very, different from previous, modern, conventional wars”. What
took thirty years to destroy in the Seventeenth Century only takes
thirty days in the nuclear-armed Twentieth. And that Piper would
purposely echo the name ‘Thirty Years War’ in the Thirty Days’ War is
supported by his use of the Confederate States of America (CSA) as the
model for the System States Alliance (SSA). On at least some occasions,
he didn’t just model the historic event or organization, but its name.
>The parallel you’ve drawn between the Thirty Days’ War and the actual Thirty Years
>War is interesting but is there anything about the _character_ of that conflict that you
>believe gives us some insight into the Thirty Days’ War? You’ve suggested a traditional
>ideological component but Beam never mentions an ideological struggle in his work.
>Sure, many of us bring a bundle of ideological assumptions to Beam’s work ourselves
>based upon our memories (and experience) of the U.S.-Soviet Union Cold War, but
>the Eastern Axis itself seemed much more worried about the genuine security threat
>posed to them by the missiles of the U.S. Lunar Base. What’s the Thirty Years’ War
>analog for that?’
Piper’s
official Future History began with Uller Uprising, published in 1952.
Since this was at a ‘hot’ point in the Cold War (the Korean War was then
raging), I believe the ideological component was not only present, but
paramount. In 1952, everyone was convinced that a nuclear war with the
Communist Bloc was inevitable, and could happen at any time. Indeed,
the Korean War could have exploded into just that, which was why
President Truman tried to contain the conflict. Piper himself appears
to have been convinced of this, and when Barry Goldwater lost the
presidential election in 1964, he grew despondent, believing that the US
would lose the inevitable war with Russia. (This was a contributing
factor in his suicide.) So in creating his Future History, I don’t
think Beam would have ignored the most important geopolitical fact of
that time. While he was not explicit (perhaps he felt he didn’t need to
be), the Eastern Axis almost certainly refers to the Communist Bloc, in
my opinion.
The name ‘Eastern Axis’ would then be modeled
on two factors. One, the fascist Axis of WWII, in which Germany
(Central Europe) was the main foe, just as it had been the leader of the
Central Powers of WWI. Two, the old ‘central’ element was updated to
reflect the new main foe in ‘eastern’ Europe (the communist Soviet Union
and Warsaw Pact) and the Far East (Red China, North Korea, North
Vietnam). The postwar, bipolar world was East versus West, so we get
the Eastern Axis against the ‘Western Allies’, or Terran Federation.
The great ideological struggle of the Twentieth Century (which could be
called the ‘Wars of Ideology’) therefore parallels the great religious
struggle of the Seventeenth Century (the Wars of Religion).
The
moonbase concept is a kind of ‘planetary excalibur’, in that whoever
builds it becomes king of the world. The Cold War was about whether
democratic capitalism or communism would become the prevalent
politico-economic system, so in light of this, the Space Race becomes of
vital importance. Because whoever gets to the Moon first can annex it,
and build the Lunar fortress, thereby gaining “world supremacy” over
the planet below. (Worlds, p. 30) The security threat goes both ways;
if Russia gets there first, it gains world supremacy, and vice-versa.
So both sides are compelled to make a maximum effort to win. We can
debate whether the importance of a Lunar nuclear missile base was
actually a good assumption for Beam to follow (in hindsight, I would),
but beginning with the movie Destination Moon in 1950, this became
another one of those Cold War ideas that seemed to make perfect sense.
Thus,
there is no parallel for the moonbase in the Thirty Years War. As I
will show in the overview section, the Thirty Years War ended with
neither a Protestant nor a Catholic victory, meaning that the Thirty
Days’ War should end with neither a Proletarian nor a Capitalist
victory. And in the real world, a no-win general Atomic War is
certainly the most likely outcome. But the US lunar base changes the
equation, allowing the US/Federation to destroy the Soviet Union (and
perhaps the whole Eastern Axis), which is (are) “utterly overwhelmed
under the rain of missiles from across space”. This secures ‘world
supremacy’ for the US-led Terran Federation. That was possibly a change
Piper had to make, because his Future History is partly based on
Toynbee’s concepts, including the ‘universal state’. And its victory in
WWIII enables the Terran Federation to become the first universal state
in the THFH.
>Putting aside that France tried to forge “one preponderating empire” not by taking
>over Spain directly but rather by seeking to place a friendly monarch on the Spanish
>throne, what is there in Beam’s work which leads you to make the leap to a Chinese
>Fourth World War combatant?
I
would argue that King Louis’ goal was not that limited, but the rest of
your question again takes us into the full overview section, where I
show my method for identifying the parallels between the modern nations
involved in WWIII and WWIV, and their historical models in the Thirty
Years War and War of Spanish Succession. Basically, in both of these
eras, France was the most populous nation in Europe. This means its
parallel in WWIII and WWIV should be the most populous nation in the
world, which is China. That this aligned the “Sun King” with the leader
of China, traditionally called the “Son of Heaven”, seemed a point in
its favor.
But there is also a geographic component. To
the northeast of China is Korea, split between the communist North and
democratic South. This parallels the Low Countries northeast of France,
which were split between the Protestant north (Holland) and Catholic
south (the Spanish Netherlands, which became Belgium). Also, India is a
peninsula southwest of China, separated by the Himalayas, just as Spain
is a peninsula southwest of France, separated by the Pyrenees.
(Pakistan parallels Portugal.) So the Sun King’s effort to consolidate
France and Spain into one preponderating empire is paralleled by a new
Son of Heaven, who similarly tries to consolidate China and India (the
two most populous nations) into a superpower.
>Beam hardly mentions anything about China in any of his Future History works.
>There’s no explicit indication that China is part of the “Eastern Axis” in “The Edge
>of the Knife” but more importantly there are hardly any Chinese-surnamed characters
>which appear in the yarns of the post-Atomic Wars era. (Harry Quong, specifically
>identified as a “Chinese-Australian,” spells his surname in a variant way that is found
>in Australia but differs from the more common Mandarin spelling of the Chinese mainland.
>He is obviously meant to illustrate the “Southron” character of post-Atomic Wars Terran
>civilization rather than to suggest a surviving remnant of the Chinese nation.
Based
on the historical model, it is possible that Red China is not an
official member of the Eastern Axis (see below), but the enemy alliances
in previous world wars had three main members. For the Central Powers
in WWI, these were Imperial Germany, Austria-Hungary and Turkey. For
the fascist Axis in WWII, it was Nazi Germany, Italy and Japan. So the
Eastern Axis most likely has three main members. The Soviet Union is
the obvious leader, and mainland China became communist even before Beam
began creating his Future History. Piper then projected that India
would fall to communism sometime in the late 1960s or early 70s (it is
communist in the 1973 of “Edge”), which would make a triad of the Soviet
Union, Red China and Communist India.
Another reason to
include it is that throughout the 1950s and to the end of Piper’s life,
Red China was part of the Communist Bloc, and allied to Russia. The
Sino-Soviet split didn’t occur until the late 1960s. So I believe Red
China’s membership in the Eastern Axis is almost a given, being an
underlying assumption that didn’t need to be made explicit. Piper made
it explicit in his non-THFH story “Hunter Patrol”, in which documents of
the “Pan-Soviet” forces (alternate version of the Eastern Axis, or
Communist Bloc) are “tri-lingual, Russian, Hindi and Chinese.” (Worlds,
pp. 79, 97) In “The Mercenaries”, the Fourth Komintern (Communist
International) plays this role, being one of “the four great
power-blocs” of the world. (ibid., p. 30)
The
second part of your statement is actually an argument in favor of my
scenario. For if Red China is the main enemy in WWIV, its total
destruction means that few Terran Chinese will survive, particularly
those with Mandarin names. And if I’m right that “the revolt of the
colonies on Mars and Venus” is modeled on the French and Indian War,
then the deduced ‘Sino-Colonial War’ will see the defeat and/or
destruction of the old Red Chinese colonies on Mars and Venus, which
several decades after WWIV revolt against their old foe, the (formerly
North American-dominated, now South Terran-centered) First Federation.
This can explain why so few Chinese characters (or Indian characters,
for that matter) are found in the post-Atomic Wars era.
>(We should also keep in mind that throughout the period when Beam was writing the
>”Nationalist” government on Taiwan was recognized by the U.S. and most of its allies
>as the legal government of all of China. The non-Communist Republic of China, for
>example, held the UN Security Council seat throughout this period. It was not obvious
>to someone of Beam’s era that China would continue/come to be dominated by the
>Communist government. Given this, it could even be that Beam saw the U.S.-allied
>non-Communists making gains on the Chinese mainland in the aftermath of the Thirty
>Days’ War.)
That’s
a keen observation. As an American ally and former Security Council
member of the disbanded UN, Nationalist China probably becomes an early
and important member of the Terran Federation. And in the overview
section, I show that during the Thirty Days’ War, Federation forces from
Taiwan (Nationalist Chinese, Americans) do invade the mainland. Its
model is the Spanish invasion of eastern France in the Thirty Years War.
This invasion was subsequently defeated, however, suggesting that the
Nationalist/American invasion of eastern China is ultimately a failure.
>I recognize that identifying the combatants of the Fourth World War remains one of
>the more inscrutable puzzles in Beam’s work but it does seem problematic to propose
>a “Chinese component” when there is virtually nothing from Beam to suggest it.
>If there’s something about the War of the Spanish Succession itself which points to
>China as one of the major combatants in the Fourth World War it would be good to
>learn about that. But barring that sort of pointer, are there other elements of the War
>of the Spanish Succession model which might help us to identify other potential
>candidates for a Fourth World War combatant?
>What’s interesting to me about the War of the Spanish Succession as a potential model
>for the Fourth World War is the way it pits France, the hegemonic Continental power of
>the era, against Britain, the rising revisionist power, and the way, as you’ve suggested here,
>that conflict also unfolds in the two nations’ respective colonial holdings in the Americas
>(and Asia). That does seem to be a good model for the “interplanetary”—and “colonial”—
>elements of the Fourth World War. But the key insight seems to remain in being able to
>identify who the principal combatants might be. It seems fairly reasonable to assume that
>the U.S.-led (first) Terran Federation was one of them. What can the War of the Spanish
>Succession model tells us about the other?
You’re
absolutely right about that being the key insight (or the “sixtifor”,
as Prince Trevannion might say), and it was one of the problems which
gave me the most trouble in the early part of my research. This will
probably require a separate post, in which my method can be revealed in
detail. There is some interpretation involved as to which nation
parallels which, so alternate scenarios are certainly possible.
But
to give you a brief ‘preview’ of the overview, once again I started
with general concepts and then got down to specifics. First, the Terran
Federation in the Thirty Days’ War parallels the Catholic League of the
Thirty Years War, while the Eastern Axis parallels the Protestant
Union. This seems right, because in the 17th Century, Catholicism was
the long-established faith, whose abuses led to the rise of
Protestantism. Similarly, by the 20th Century Capitalism was the
long-established politico-economic ‘faith’, whose abuses led to the rise
of Proletarianism, or Communism. Next, the major powers of the
Protestant Union were Denmark (a peninsula) and Sweden (a great northern
power); these are paralleled by Communist India (essentially a
peninsula) and the Soviet Union (a great northern power). Another great
power was France (the most populous nation in Europe at the time),
which although Catholic, fought on the Protestant side in the Thirty
Years War. This means that Red China (the most populous nation) fights
on the Communist side in the Thirty Days’ War. Since France was not
part of the Protestant Union, Red China may not be a member of the
Eastern Axis. However, France was Catholic, not Protestant, while Red
China was Proletarian, not Capitalist. For this reason (and those
mentioned previously), I believe that it is part of the Eastern Axis.
Moving
on to WWIV, the major Western or democratic powers of the Terran
Federation now parallel the ‘democratic’ powers of the Grand Alliance in
the War of Spanish Succession (these were Britain, a constitutional
monarchy; Austria, with its elected Holy Roman emperors; and the Dutch
Republic). The Grand Alliance's enemy was the Franco-Spanish (or
Bourbon) Alliance, led by the Absolutist monarch, Louis XIV. Since
France in the Thirty Years War was paralleled by Red China in the Thirty
Days’ War, the Franco-Spanish Alliance in the WSS becomes the model for
an ‘absolute’ or totalitarian ‘Sino-Hindic Axis’ in WWIV.
John
|
Calidore 03-16-2019
18:01 UT
|
David “Piperfan” Johnson paid me several compliments in his first reply
to Part One of the Overview, for which I thank him, and am very
grateful. He said I gave him a lot to digest; in turn, he has given me a
lot to reply to. Here’s the first group of responses, and a second set
will follow on Monday.
>2) The parallel drawn between Ed Chalmers and Nostradamus. What a wonderful
>way to ground the seemingly-fantastical-and-therefore-ill-fitting Chalmers in terms
>of an actual historical figure!
I’m
glad you like the idea that Professor Chalmers is modeled on
Nostradamus. The parallels between the two men are quite extensive, as
the overview section will show. And we know that Piper modeled people
as well as historical events. “Jerry Pournelle still remembers many an
evening spent with Piper discussing _historical figures_ and events and
how they might apply to the future.” (John Carr, Introduction to
Federation, p. xix, emphasis added) As a well-known historical figure,
Nostradamus is almost an obvious choice for a science-fiction author to
model a character on, but as far as I’m aware, Piper is the only one who
has done it.
>3) The idea that the revolt of the colonies on Mars and Venus is a secondary
>element of the more general Fourth World War, as Queen Anne’s War was a
>secondary aspect of the War of Spanish Succession.
A
slight correction here. The parallel of Queen Anne’s War is the
extraterrestrial theater of the Fourth World War. The revolt of the
colonies on Mars and Venus is either the same as the Secession of Venus
(Piper is unclear on this point), or a separate conflict between WWIV
and the Secession (my deduced ‘Sino-Colonial War’), which is modeled on
the French and Indian War.
>The parallel drawn between the Boers’ Great Trek and Barron’s intention
>to use Freyan “free companies” to colonize the other continents of Freya.
>(I do have to disagree with—and even object to—the suggestion that Beam
>would ever draw a parallel between Africans and chimp-like Freyan ~kholphs~.
>There is nothing anything like that in any of his work and much else that makes
>it clear this is not the sort of idea he would entertain.)
I’m
also glad you like the Boer/Freyan connection. Your objection to the
kholphs’ model may not be warranted. I’m not suggesting Piper was some
sort of racist; the kholphs are primitive in relation to the Freyan
mercenaries simply because the African tribes were primitive in relation
to the Boers. The degree of difference is of lesser concern. Also, I
don’t think Beam described the kholphs as “chimp-like”, except in their
level of mentation. In Little Fuzzy, they are the subject of studies
along with Terran chimpanzees, and seem to have the same high degree of
sub-sapience, but the other test subjects include Terran dogs and cats,
as well as Mimir black slinkers. (LF, pp. 50, 96, 153) And it is my
belief that the sub-sapient slinkers are the same as Mimir’s “race of
semi-intelligent quasi-rodents, murderous, treacherous, utterly vicious”
mentioned by Carlos von Schlichten. (UU, p. 16) Thus, since the
mentation subjects on Zarathustra including simians, canines, felines
and (presumably) quasi-rodents, the kholphs could be something else
entirely; perhaps an avian or amphibian species.
On the other
hand, if Piper did describe the kholphs as primates somewhere, please
let me know and provide the reference. I have no problem admitting I’m
wrong if so.
In any event, I think Beam was simply drawing a
parallel, not an equivalence. This is also true of his other alien
races, such as the Ullerans. I don’t believe he was comparing the
people of northern India to merciless, hermaphroditic lizards by using
the Sepoy Mutiny as the model for the Uller Uprising. He was just using
the Mutiny to create a similar “historic situation, at least in general
shape” for his Future History (Empire, p. 55), within which his
imagination could supply the science-fictional details. In the case of
Uller, these were inspired by Dr. Clark’s essay.
When the
Second British Empire began colonizing far lands in the Eastern
Hemisphere, they often came in contact with primitive peoples. So when
the Second Terran Federation begins colonizing far worlds beyond the
Solar System, they will likewise encounter primitive alien races. In
keeping with the differing evolutionary rates and processes of each
world, some of these aliens will be sapient, some not. Among the
sapient ones, the vast majority will probably be humanoids (thus, the
Fuzzies “have all the physical characteristics shared by other sapient
races—lower limbs specialized for locomotion, upper limbs for
manipulation, erect posture, stereoscopic vision, color perception…hand
with opposing thumb—all the characteristics we consider as prerequisite
to the development of sapience.”, LF, pp. 56-57), but not necessarily
descended from primates. In First Cycle, the humanoid Hetairans evolve
from feline ancestors; in “Naudsonce”, the humanoid Svants seem to have
evolved from a chicken-like creature; and in “Ministry of Disturbance”
we learn that the Thorans are of canine ancestry. So I do believe that
the kholphs, whatever their physical form and level of mentation,
parallel (but do not equate to or reflect upon the innate intelligence
of) the black tribes of South Africa.
>"Nothing else, with the possible exception of a novelette called
>'The Edge of the Knife,' Amazing, May 1957, belongs to the History
>of the Future. This was a story, time 1973 CE, about a history professor,
>who got his past and future confused, and had a lot of trouble as a result."
>Beam's uncertainty about its "fit" here indicates that he was aware
>that "Edge" might be something a bit different from what he was doing
>in the rest of his Future History yarns. That insight suggests that he
>did not see himself as writing in a single, large "meta-universe" where
>different yarns in seemingly different settings were nevertheless connected
>because they occurred on different timelines in the same multi-universe.
And,
>Pottgeiter's reference to Nostradamus is keenly observed, and it seems
>apparent that Beam himself is trying to draw a connection between
>Chalmers and Nostradamus here, but I don't think that means that this
>allusion is part of some larger pattern hidden throughout the Terro-human
>Future History (much less in Beam's larger body of work). Beam's uncertainty
>about "Edge" suggests he understood it to be a stand-alone work, or at least
>had the potential to be read that way. That seems an odd observation for
>him to make if he'd crafted the story using a meta-fictional "key" which tied
>it to the other yarns.
Piper’s
mention of the Terran Federation in “Edge” indicates that this is a
THFH tale. Otherwise, it would be part of the Paratime series, in which
no such Federation is mentioned (and the evidence suggests that he kept
the two series separate); or his non-THFH future history stories, which
use the United Nations or Reunited Nations for the near-future global
state.
So in this case, I think you’re being a little too strict
in applying Piper’s statements. Particularly ones from “The Future
History”, which we know contain a number of errors. Beam seems to have
been somewhat confused when he wrote the piece, possibly because it was a
rush job to placate Peter Weston so he could get back to writing
saleable stories. I don’t take his “possible inclusion” too seriously; I
consider Chalmers as unquestionably part of the THFH. Especially
because, if we leave Chalmers out, then we must also throw out nearly
everything we know about the beginning of the Terran Federation,
information about which comes almost exclusively from “The Edge of the
Knife”.
If we take as a given that Chalmers is in the Future
History, and assuming he is modeled on Nostradamus, then the AE 1 = 1601
AD equation explains Pottgeiter’s reference that Nostradamus is “about a
century late” for him. The statement is true to the character, as
Pottgeiter is a professor of medieval history, but it’s also a subtle
hint that Piper’s Nostradamus, Ed Chalmers, appears in the THFH ‘about a
century late’. The reason for this will be more fully discussed in the
overview section, which is ready to be posted.
>This seems to be conjecture without any specific tie to Beam’s work
>(or his writing about his work). It is also at odds with the recurring trope
>which Beam uses throughout his Future History yarns, from Conn Maxwell
>to Lucas Trask musing about a “League of Civilized Worlds.”
>Those yarns end with those hopeful aspirations—just as Chalmers hopes
>to escape the mental institution in the chaos of the coming apocalypse—
>but, alas, we never again hear of Poictesme (or Merlin) in the Future History
>and Trask’s League, if it is ever born, is quickly subsumed by the empire
>which arises on Marduk, with Tanith also lost to history.
>Unfortunately, I suspect Chalmers’ future is more likely akin to that of
>Maxwell’s Poictesme and Trask’s Tanith. Rather than rising to the
>dynamism seemingly foreshadowed at the end of “Edge”, Chalmers
>likely disappears into history as well.
Rather
than conjecture, the word I would use is ‘deduction’ or
‘extrapolation’. Assuming the hypothesis that Chalmers is modeled on
Nostradamus is correct, then we can use the details of Nostradamus’
later life to deduce or extrapolate details of Ed’s life after “Edge”.
And when we know Piper’s historical models (which I believe the AE 1 =
1601 AD equation reveals), this method can help us fill in the missing
details of Beam’s early Future History—precisely those areas he did not
write about.
The ‘disappearance’ angle is an excellent point.
But unlike the rosy-future endings of The Cosmic Computer and Space
Viking, the end of “Edge” is hardly a happy or hopeful one. Chalmers is
committed to a mental institution, Leonard Fitch, who believes
wholeheartedly in Ed, is “going to be frightfully let down” at the
verdict of Dr. Hauserman, the authoritarian Dean Whitburn is seemingly
vindicated in his erroneous belief that Chalmers was insane all along,
Stanley Weill leaves for Reno probably convinced Ed has succumbed to “a
system of fantasies” resulting in “mental incompetence”, just as he
warned him, and even Max Pottgeiter has a moment of doubt. (Empire, pp.
24, 53, 56, 58) Moreover, Chalmers knows that WWIII is going to occur
in less than a year, in which tens of millions will die, but does
nothing to try and stop it, or at least alleviate its effects, or even
warn people. He leaves his friend Fitch, his other Blanley College
colleagues, and all his young students—who have their whole adult lives
ahead of them—to their horrific fate (and does even Whitburn really
deserve to die in an H-bomb blast?), when he was able to, and should
have done, much more to save the day. Piper’s ‘self-reliant man’ has
not won the battle here; all he does is save himself and the two people
closest to him, Max Pottgeiter and Marjorie Fenner.
But,
as counter-intuitive as it may sound, Ed can still win the battle AFTER
the war. And by following the Nostradamus model, we find that’s pretty
much what should happen. Nostradamus really began his successful
career as a prognosticator after 1531, so Chalmers should do his best
work after AE 31 (WWIII). That he resumes this work is suggested at the
end of “Edge” (late AE 30). Becoming an advisor to the US and/or
Federation governments after WWIII should enable Chalmers to help secure
the postwar peace, by providing accurate forecasts (based on his real
knowledge of future events) which enable government leaders to adopt
good and effective policies to deal with what’s ahead. And if Ed’s
advisory job is with the secretive Politico-Strategic Planning Board
(which he never worked for in “Edge”, but could be invited to join after
WWIII due to the wartime deaths of some of its members), his
contributions could remain “pretty hush-hush” as Major Cutler says
(Empire, p. 48).
Thus, by entering the ‘clandestine world’,
Chalmers might indeed disappear from the Future History, even while
helping it. And assuming he dies circa AE 60 (paralleling Nostradamus’
death in 1560), by this time the future does look rosy. The whole world
is superficially united in the Terran Federation (which as “some kind
of a world empire” is presumably much better than the old UN at world
peace and collective security), Mars is beginning to be colonized, and
Venus is probably soon to follow. But in keeping with Piper’s
self-reliant theme, although Ed may have helped win this battle, the war
is lost, as this hopeful future will eventually be disrupted by the
even worse nuclear nightmare of WWIV.
John
|
David "PiperFan" Johnson 03-11-2019
03:46 UT
|
~
John "Calidore" Anderson wrote (about the Third and Fourth World Wars):"
> A simple equation; AE 1 = 1601 AD.
>
> In other words, just add 1600 to Piper's Atomic Era
> dates to get the historical model. The Third World War
> occurs in AE 31; adding 1600 would then equal 1631
> AD, a date almost precisely in the middle of the Thirty
> Years War, which ran from 1618 to 1648. This gave
> new meaning to Beam's other name for WWIII, "the Thirty
> Days' War", [1] and in hindsight it is a glaring clue.
Was
there something other than the similarity of names which led you to see
the Thirty Years' War as a model for the Third World War? "Thirty
Days' War" seems chosen specifically to indicate that a global nuclear
war would be very, very different from previous, modern, conventional
wars. "Twenty Day' War" doesn't quite seem like long enough and
"Forty-Five Days' War" would have been a lot more awkward to write, so
"Thirty Days' War" may have simply been a convenient dramatic choice.
The connection you've proposed here, based simply on the similarity in
the naming conventions, does not seem to be compelling in and of itself.
[Rearranging a bit, to keep similar parts together.]
> e) AE 31 = 1631 AD. The Thirty Days' War (AE 31) is
> modeled on the Thirty Years War (1618-1648). The
> Wars of Religion in the Seventeenth Century, which
> pitted Catholics against Protestants, are paralleled by
> the ‘Wars of Ideology' in the Twentieth Century, with
> Capitalists versus ‘Proletarians', or Communists. The
> Protestant Reformation is therefore paralleled by the
> Communist (Proletarian) Revolution, while the Catholic
> Counter-Reformation has its parallel in the Anti-
> Communist Crusade of the capitalist nations.
The
parallel you've drawn between the Thirty Days' War and the actual
Thirty Years War is interesting but is there anything about the
_character_ of that conflict that you believe gives us some insight into
the Thirty Days' War? You've suggested a traditional ideological
component but Beam never mentions an ideological struggle in his work.
Sure, many of us bring a bundle of ideological assumptions to Beam's
work ourselves based upon our memories (and experience) of the
U.S.-Soviet Cold War, but the Eastern Axis itself seemed much more
worried about the genuine security threat posed to them by the missiles
of the U.S. Lunar Base. What's the Thirty Years' War analog for that?'
- - -
> Again adding 1600, AE 114 equated to 1714 AD.
> Though this was one year outside the range, I felt
> certain that the historical model for the Fourth World
> War was the War of Spanish Succession, which ran from
> 1701-1713. A conviction effectively confirmed eight
> years later, when Mr. Carr's biography of H. Beam Piper
> was published. Because Appendix B is "The Future
> History", a short summary written by Beam, which gives
> the date for WWIV as AE 106-109. [4] Adding 1600
> would make that range 1706-1709; right in the
> middle of 1701-1713.
Was
there something other than the affinity with the "key" dates which led
you to see the War of the Spanish Succession as a model for the Fourth
World War?
> j) AE 106-109 = 1706-1709 AD. The Fourth World
> War is modeled on the War of Spanish Succession
> (1701-1713). Louis XIV, the "Sun King", whose
> Absolutist regime tried to unite France and Spain
> into "one preponderating empire" able to dominate
> Europe and thus the world, [16] is the model for a
> new "Son of Heaven", or Chinese leader, whose
> 'absolute' or totalitarian regime tries to unite China
> and India into a single empire able to dominate Terra,
> and thus the whole Federation.
Putting
aside that France tried to forge "one preponderating empire" not by
taking over Spain directly but rather by seeking to place a friendly
monarch on the Spanish throne, what is there in Beam's work which leads
you to make the leap to a Chinese Fourth World War combatant?
Beam
hardly mentions anything about China in any of his Future History
works. There's no explicit indication that China is part of the
"Eastern Axis" in "The Edge of the Knife" but more importantly there are
hardly any Chinese-surnamed characters which appear in the yarns of the
post-Atomic Wars era. (Harry Quong, specifically identified as a
"Chinese-Australian," spells his surname in a variant way that is found
in Australia but differs from the more common Mandarin spelling of the
Chinese mainland. He is obviously meant to illustrate the "Southron"
character of post-Atomic Wars Terran civilization rather than to suggest
a surviving remnant of the Chinese nation.)
I recognize that
identifying the combatants of the Fourth World War remains one of the
more inscrutable puzzles in Beam's work but it does seem problematic to
propose a "Chinese component" when there is virtually nothing from Beam
to suggest it.
(We also should keep in mind that throughout the
period when Beam was writing the "Nationalist" government on Taiwan was
recognized by the U.S. and most of its allies as the legal government of
all of China. The non-Communist Republic of China, for example, held
the UN Security Council seat throughout this period. It was not obvious
to someone of Beam's era that China would continue/come to be dominated
by the Communist government. Given this, it could even be that Beam
saw the U.S.-allied non-Communists making gains on the Chinese mainland
in the aftermath of the Thirty Days' War.)
If there's something
about the War of the Spanish Succession itself which points to China as
one of the major combatants in the Fourth World War it would be good to
learn about that. But barring that sort of pointer, are there other
elements of the War of the Spanish Succession model which might help us
to identify other potential candidates for a Fourth World War combatant?
> k) AE 106-109 = 1706-1709 AD. WWIV is
> also called "the First Interplanetary War". [17] This
> means that its extraterrestrial theater is modeled
> on Queen Anne's War, which was the "North American
> theater of the War of Spanish Succession." [18]
> Queen Anne's War "produced few memorable
> hostilities", [19] so the battles on colonial Venus and
> Mars are presumably minor compared to the major
> fighting taking place all over North Terra.
What's
interesting to me about the War of the Spanish Succession as a
potential model for the Fourth World War is the way it pits France, the
hegemonic Continental power of the era, against Britain, the rising
revisionist power, and the way, as you've suggested here, that conflict
also unfolds in the two nations' respective colonial holdings in the
Americas (and Asia). That does seem to be a good model for the
"interplanetary"--and "colonial"--elements of the Fourth World War. But
the key insight seems to remain in being able to identify who the
principal combatants might be. It seems fairly reasonable to assume
that the U.S.-led (first) Terran Federation was one of them. What can
the War of the Spanish Succession model tells us about the other?
Cheers,
David
--
"Britain
was a great nation, once; the last nation to join the Terran
Federation. . . ." - Lord "Dranigo" Dranigrastan (H. Beam Piper), "The
Keeper"
~
|
David "PiperFan" Johnson 03-10-2019
23:40 UT
|
~
New Piper Academic Research
I've just posted a link at Zarthani.net to some new research which looks at Beam's "Omnilingual." Here's the abstract:
The
article will focus on H. Beam Piper's classical story Omnilingual
(1957). This Piper-esque writing has entered the records of the science
fiction prose for the 'Martian' periodic table of elements, being
synonymous with a scientific 'Rosetta-like stone' in the decipherment
area. The work, while having a search potential in text analysis and
stylistics, may add in a parallel fashion some lustre to the validity of
science as a communicative channel in non-conventional circumstances.
In order to capture stylistic features of the novelette, a number of
quantitative indicators are drawn in. The study will concentrate on
vocabulary-richness indexes (TTR, entropy, RR, RRMc, G, ATL,
HL, MATTR, and Lambda), a complex assessment of activity (Busemann’s
coefficient, the chi-square testing classification), and a sketch of the
Belza chain analysis. The goal of the article is to find distinctive
features of the piece in question, and point out ways for further
research.
Sounds like interesting stuff (with perhaps more to come). The link is near the bottom the page here:
http://www.zarthani.net/h_beam_piper_reviews.htm
Cheers,
David
--
"It
is not . . . the business of an author of fiction to improve or inspire
or educate his reader, or to save the world from fascism, communism,
racism, capitalism, socialism, or anything else. [The author's] main
objective is to purvey entertainment of the sort his reader wants. If
he has done this, by writing interestingly about interesting people,
human or otherwise, doing interesting things, he has discharged his duty
and earned his check." - H. Beam Piper, "Double: Bill Symposium"
interview
~
|
David "PiperFan" Johnson 03-10-2019
08:45 UT
|
~
John "Calidore" Anderson wrote:
> d) AE 30 = 1630 AD. Professor Edward Chalmers, who
> foreknows the future, is modeled on the seer, physician,
> scholar and professor Michel de Nostredame, better
> known as Nostradamus.
As
I've mentioned, I like how this idea helps the seemingly-fantastical
Chalmers to better "fit" into the "harder sci-fi" Terro-human Future
History, but here is Beam writing about "The Edge of the Knife" in his
essay "The Future History":
"Nothing else, with the possible
exception of a novelette called 'The Edge of the Knife,' ~Amazing~, May
1957, belongs to the History of the Future. This was a story, time 1973
CE, about a history professor, who got his past and future confused,
and had a lot of trouble as a result."
Beam's uncertainty
about its "fit" here indicates that he was aware that "Edge" might be
something a bit different from what he was doing in the rest of his
Future History yarns. That insight suggests that he did not see himself
as writing in a single, large "meta-universe" where different yarns in
seemingly different settings were nevertheless connected because they
occurred on different timelines in the same multi-universe.
> Both men foresee very similar events; such as rockets to
> the moon, cities destroyed by great fires, world wars and
> the sudden death of current leaders. Chalmers organizes
> his future knowledge in file folders by 'century' (such as
> the Twentieth Century file), and Nostradamus organized
> his visions into 'The Centuries'; groups of one hundred
> quatrains pertaining to various future events.
> Nostradamus actually lived from 1503-1566, not 1603-
> 1666; meaning that Chalmers appears "about a century
> late" in the Future History, as suggested by Max Pottgeiter.
> [14]
[snip]
> [14] Piper, Empire, p. 59
Pottgeiter's
reference to Nostradamus is keenly observed, and it seems apparent that
Beam himself is trying to draw a connection between Chalmers and
Nostradamus here, but I don't think that means that this allusion is
part of some larger pattern hidden throughout the Terro-human Future
History (much less in Beam's larger body of work). Beam's uncertainty
about "Edge" suggests he understood it to be a stand-alone work, or at
least had the potential to be read that way. That seems an odd
observation for him to make if he'd crafted the story using a
meta-fictional "key" which tied it to the other yarns.
> f) circa AE 32-60 = 1632-1660 AD. The future years of
> Prof. Chalmers are modeled on the second half of
> Nostradamus' life (actually 1532-1560). Queen Catherine
> de Medici made Nostradamus a Councilor of King Charles
> X of France, which means Ed Chalmers eventually becomes
> a close advisor to the leaders of the United States and/or
> Terran Federation, probably in regard to postwar recovery
> and planning for the future.
This
seems to be conjecture without any specific tie to Beam's work (or his
writing about his work). It also is at odds with the recurring trope
which Beam uses throughout his Future History yarns, from Conn Maxwell
looking to Poictesme's bold future guided by the "Merlin/Maxwell Plan"
to Lucas Trask musing about a "League of Civilized Worlds." Those yarns
end with those hopeful aspirations--just as Chalmers hopes to escape
the mental institution in the chaos of the coming apocalypse--but, alas,
we never again hear of Poictesme (or Merlin) in the Future History and
Trask's League, if it is ever born, is quickly subsumed by the empire
which arises on Marduk, with Tanith also lost to history.
Unfortunately,
I suspect Chalmers' future is more likely akin to that of Maxwell's
Poictesme and Trask's Tanith. Rather than rising to the dynamism
seemingly foreshadowed at the end of "Edge," Chalmers likely disappears
into history as well.
Cheers,
David
--
"I was trying
to show the results of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire after the
First World War, and the partition of the Middle East into a loose
collection of Arab states, and the passing of British and other European
spheres of influence following the Second." - Edward Chalmers (H. Beam
Piper), "The Edge of the Knife"
~
|
David "PiperFan" Johnson 03-08-2019
13:40 UT
|
~
John "Calidore" Anderson wrote many remarkable things under the heading:
> OVERVIEW OF HISTORICAL
> MODELS IN THE EARLY FUTURE
> HISTORY
>
> PART ONE
There
is a lot to digest here and I may have more to say about it in the
future but I wanted first to mention some of the things I liked.
1)
The recognition of the interplanetary nature of the "first" Federation
era and the interstellar nature of the "second" Federation era in the
parallels to the "First" and "Second" British Empires. The model
illustrates the two fictional eras quite well.
2) The parallel
drawn between Ed Chalmers and Nostradamus. What a wonderful way to
ground the seemingly-fantastical-and-therefore-ill-fitting Chalmers in
terms of an actual historical figure!
3) The idea that the revolt
of the colonies on Mars and Venus is a secondary element of the more
general Fourth World War, as Queen Anne's War was a secondary aspect of
the War of the Spanish Succession.
4) The parallel drawn between
the Boers' Great Trek and Barron's intention to use Freyan "free
companies" to colonize the other continents of Freya. (I do have to
disagree with--and even object to--the suggestion that Beam would ever
draw a parallel between Africans and chimp-like Freyan ~kholphs~. There
is nothing anything like that in any of his work and much else that
makes clear this is not the sort of idea he would entertain.)
This
handful of examples only begins to scratch the surface of this work but
they are the ideas that most quickly jumped out for me.
I'm not
sure I'm convinced by the overall "key" premise--in particular, as we've
discussed before, I'm much less willing to choose dates from the
~Empire~ Chronology over those we get directly from Beam in "The Future
History" when they conflict--but I can only admire the depth and scale
of your work here.
I may have some questions and quibbles about
bits here and there in the future but for now let me simply thank you
for your extensive contributions to the appreciation of Piper's work.
Cheers,
David
--
"I
was born in Antarctica, on Terra. The water's a little too cold to do
much swimming there. And I've spent most of my time since then in
central Argentine, in the pampas country." - Glenn Murell (H. Beam
Piper), ~Four-Day Planet~
~
|
Calidore 03-01-2019
17:41 UT
|
Three months ago, David “Piperfan” Johnson wrote,
>>Oh my. Talk about a teaser! I can't help but wonder what this "key" can possibly be.
>>Could it be that Beam's fabled "notes" on the Terro-human Future History actually were
>>in the "trunk" that Mike Knerr took from Beam's apartment after his death? Knerr died in
>>1999 after having some years before sold at auction copies of several of Beam's manuscripts
>>previously believed to have been burned by Beam shortly before his suicide. Beam's "trunk"
>>apparently ended up with Knerr's widow. Is it possible you somehow managed to have a
>>look at what remained inside in the summer of 2000? Do tell!
That
would indeed have been wonderful! But alas, not the case. Yet I dare
to think this may be the next best thing. For the following is what I
believe Piper was really up to for the early Federation. Sorry for the
length of this post, but I'm hopeful you will find the content worth it.
OVERVIEW OF HISTORICAL MODELS IN THE EARLY FUTURE HISTORY
PART ONE
John Anderson
February 28, 2019
1. THE FIRST KEY
Back
near the end of the Twentieth Century, on 1 July 2000, I began
seriously researching the works of H. Beam Piper. I was trying to
figure out his Terro-Human Future History, as daunting and doubtful a
task as that seemed. However, since John Carr had written in one of his
early newsletters that he and Jerry Pournelle had discovered Beam’s
overall historical template, I thought that it had to at least be
possible. The timing must have been right, because after writing down
the handful of thoughts that had occurred to me over the years,
inspiration arrived, and ideas began to flow in ever greater numbers.
And before summer’s end, I discovered what I believe to be one of its
‘keys’.
A simple equation; AE 1 = 1601 AD.
In
other words, just add 1600 to Piper’s Atomic Era dates to get the
historical model. The Third World War occurs in AE 31; adding 1600
would then equal 1631 AD, a date almost precisely in the middle of the
Thirty Years War, which ran from 1618 to 1648. This gave new meaning to
Beam’s other name for WWIII, “the Thirty Days’ War”, [1] and in
hindsight it is a glaring clue.
The AE 1
= 1601 AD formula also revealed the model for the Fourth World War.
Piper mentioned this major event in several places (Four-Day Planet,
Uller Uprising and Crisis in 2140), but provided very little information
about it. WWIV obviously occurs after WWIII in AE 31, and probably
sometime before the Secession of Venus in AE 174 (timeline in Empire).
In the summer of 2000, the only matching event that I could see involved
“the old U.S. [nuclear] data that General Lanningham brought to South
America after the debacle in the United States in A.E. 114”. [2] That
date was between AE 31 and AE 174, and the departure of Lanningham for
the Southern Hemisphere appeared to be related to “the end of
civilization in the Northern Hemisphere and the rise of the new
civilization in South America and South Africa and Australia.” [3] A
catastrophic decivilizing of half the globe could only be the result of
an Atomic War, which therefore must have occurred around AE 114.
Again
adding 1600, AE 114 equated to 1714 AD. Though this was one year
outside the range, I felt certain that the historical model for the
Fourth World War was the War of Spanish Succession, which ran from
1701-1713. A conviction effectively confirmed eight years later, when
Mr. Carr’s biography of H. Beam Piper was published. Because Appendix B
is “The Future History”, a short summary written by Beam, which gives
the date for WWIV as AE 106-109. [4] Adding 1600 would make that range
1706-1709; right in the middle of 1701-1713.
The
equation also works for the next two major events in the Future
History. The timeline in Empire places the secession of Venus in AE
174, and adding 1600 makes its historical model 1774 AD; that is, the
American Revolution. As discovered by Carr, Piper appears to have
modeled the Terran Federation on the British Empire. The Federation has
a British-style Parliament, “the Federation government most closely
approaches that of Georgian England—a representative government with
colonies and member states”, its chartered planetary companies parallel
entities like the British East India Company, and the Uller Uprising is
modeled on the Sepoy Mutiny. [5]
Thus,
it occurred to me that the First and Second Terran Federations are
actually based on the First and Second British Empires. “The concept of
a first and second British Empire was developed by historians in the
late 19th century, and is a concept usually used by advanced scholars.”
[6] I presumed that Beam, a largely self-taught scholar who loved
history and “had read more books than most professors”, was familiar
with this distinction. [7]
The reason
advanced scholars divide the British Empire in two is the American
Revolution. As a major historical event, the Revolution was the
catalyst for “The Fall of the First British Empire”, a limited realm
centered on transatlantic trade between Great Britain and its North
American colonies and Caribbean islands; and the subsequent “Rise of the
Second [British] Empire”, which in the following (Nineteenth) century
gained control over the whole world’s oceans and became a global
superpower ruling vast stretches of Asia, Oceania and Africa. [8]
Piper
similarly relates the Secession of Venus to the end of the First and
beginning of the Second Terran Federations. “And after Venus seceded
from the First Federation, before the Second Federation was organized.”
[9] The secession therefore seems to be the catalyst for the fall of
the First Terran Federation, an interplanetary organization confined to
the Solar System, and centered on normal-space trade between the ‘great
island’ of Terra and its ‘continental’ Venusian and Martian colonies, as
well as with such minor celestial ‘islands’ as Ceres, Callisto,
Ganymede and Titan; followed by the rise of the Second Terran
Federation, which in the following (Third) century AE begins its
interstellar expansion of colonization and hyperspace trade to
eventually become a vast empire spanning at least 500 worlds spread over
“a space-volume of two hundred billion cubic light-years.” [10]
The
timeline in Empire placed the end of the First Federation, and rise of
the Second Federation, in AE 183. This is exactly right, as adding 1600
results in 1783, the very year the Treaty of Paris was signed, and
which historians typically use as the date marking the end of the First
British Empire and the beginning of the Second. [11] Wars are usually
concluded by treaties, so it seems likely that the Treaty of Paris,
which officially ended hostilities in 1783, is paralleled by a similar
document in AE 183 (which I tentatively dubbed the ‘Treaty of Venus’),
that in Piper’s Future History marks the end of the First Terran
Federation and the beginning of the Second.
With
the equation AE 1 = 1601 AD in mind, further research revealed answers
as to who Professor Chalmers is modeled on, why the first spaceship to
Mars is named the Cyrano (including its implications for the human
remains found there, and why one of the crewmembers is French-Canadian),
the possible model for General Lanningham, the model for global Terran
unification around the time of WWIV, why Freya has three continents but
only one is currently inhabited, who the sub-sapient kholphs are modeled
on, and the appearance of Lt. Ranjit Singh in Four-Day Planet. The
‘key’ even seems to work for Beam’s non-THFH tale Lone Star Planet, as
well as the rise of the Free Scientists in “The Mercenaries”.
My
conclusion was that Piper was working with TIMELINES, rather than
individual historical models at random. This made sense, for two
reasons. First, because it would keep cause and effect relationships
intact, allowing his Future History to progress just like real history.
And second, because almost his entire published literary opus was
concerned with historical timelines. The Terro-Human Future History
itself was a timeline of Man’s expansion into the Galaxy, while his
Paratime series literally involved a near-infinity of timelines, all of
which were based on alternate probabilities of various historical (and
para-historical) events.
So what
does this mean for the early Federation? First, the equation supports
the dates in the Empire timeline for the Secession of Venus and the rise
of the Second Federation as essentially correct. Piper’s short
chronology of “The Future History”, which implies that the Second
Federation is formed right after WWIV, [12] is therefore in error. This
is not a major obstacle, since that document contains several other
provable mistakes, most notably an almost 150-year error in the dating
of Four-Day Planet. Furthermore, the 63 years between WWIV and the
development of hyperdrive theory are covered in just two vague
sentences. The Secession of Venus and its date are not even mentioned.
[13]
Second, by analyzing the
historical models, I was able to deduce previously-unknown details about
these Federation events; such as the participants, courses and outcomes
of WWIII and WWIV. It also revealed the models for new events;
including a possible colonial war between WWIV and the Secession of
Venus; and much later, two wars between Terra and Freya, probably during
the breakup of the Federation. The following is an overview of my
findings. Section 2 lists the future events and their parallels in
chronological order, often with a short description. Section 3, to be
released in the coming weeks and months, goes into more detail, fleshing
out these events with details derived from their historical models.
2. LIST OF PIPER’S FUTURE EVENTS AND THEIR HISTORICAL MODELS
(AE 1 = 1601 AD)
a)
AE 31-183 = 1631-1783 AD. The First Terran Federation, whose end in
AE 183 is related to the Secession of Venus, is modeled on the First
British Empire, which ended in 1783 due to the results of the American
Revolution.
b) circa AE 3-22 = 1603-1622 AD. Although not part
of the THFH, the bands of Free Scientists described in “The
Mercenaries”, which arise after WWII and last until at least 1965,
apparently really are modeled on the condottiere bands of the Italian
Renaissance, as great condottiere leaders lasted until about 1680. The
Free Scientists should therefore last until around AE 80, or 2023 AD.
c)
AE 28 = 1628 AD. In AE 28, the iconic first landing of Americans on
the Moon, an airless ‘rock’ and the first ‘new world’ visited by Man,
roughly parallels the no-less-iconic landing in ‘1628’ (actually 1620)
by the Pilgrim Fathers at Plymouth Rock, in the New World.
d)
AE 30 = 1630 AD. Professor Edward Chalmers, who foreknows the future,
is modeled on the seer, physician, scholar and professor Michel de
Nostredame, better known as Nostradamus. Both men foresee very similar
events; such as rockets to the moon, cities destroyed by great fires,
world wars and the sudden death of current leaders. Chalmers organizes
his future knowledge in file folders by ‘century’ (such as the Twentieth
Century file), and Nostradamus organized his visions into ‘The
Centuries’; groups of one hundred quatrains pertaining to various future
events. Nostradamus actually lived from 1503-1566, not 1603-1666;
meaning that Chalmers appears “about a century late” in the Future
History, as suggested by Max Pottgeiter. [14]
e) AE 31 =
1631 AD. The Thirty Days’ War (AE 31) is modeled on the Thirty Years
War (1618-1648). The Wars of Religion in the Seventeenth Century, which
pitted Catholics against Protestants, are paralleled by the ‘Wars of
Ideology’ in the Twentieth Century, with Capitalists versus
‘Proletarians’, or Communists. The Protestant Reformation is therefore
paralleled by the Communist (Proletarian) Revolution, while the Catholic
Counter-Reformation has its parallel in the Anti-Communist Crusade of
the capitalist nations.
f) circa AE 32-60 = 1632-1660 AD.
The future years of Prof. Chalmers are modeled on the second half of
Nostradamus’ life (actually 1532-1560). Queen Catherine de Medici made
Nostradamus a Councilor of King Charles X of France, which means Ed
Chalmers eventually becomes a close advisor to the leaders of the United
States and/or Terran Federation, probably in regard to postwar recovery
and planning for the future.
g) AE 53 = 1653 AD. The Cyrano
Expedition to Mars is modeled on Cyrano de Bergerac’s interplanetary
‘expedition’, his ostensibly-autobiographical novel Voyage to the Moon.
The real de Bergerac can be considered an early science-fiction author,
whose Voyage was written around 1650, though not published until 1657,
two years after his death. The midpoint between 1650 and 1657 would be
the years 1653-1654, and are paralleled by AE 53-54, the years the
Cyrano travels to Mars and remains in orbit around it.
Incidentally,
this parallel supports Old Mars as the birthplace of Terro-Humanity, as
will be shown in the overview section.
h) circa AE 53-153 =
1653-1753 AD. In addition to Cyrano, the initial exploration of Old
Martian ruins by Federation archaeologists is modeled on the 17th
Century British (and other European) expeditions which began studying
the ruins of Ancient Greece, and collecting its art and artifacts.
These later expanded to investigate all the ancient civilizations of the
Near East. And after “Omnilingual”, the Terran archaeologists will
similarly expand their activities to the ancient ruins across the rest
of Mars.
This parallel also supports
an Old Martian origin for Terro-Humanity. For Ancient Greece and the
Near East were the sources of European civilization, meaning that in
their various excavations the European archaeologists were really
rediscovering the ancient precursors of their own culture. Likewise,
when the Terran archaeologists excavate the ruins of Old Mars, they are
really rediscovering their own history, the ancient source of
Terro-Human civilization. (More in the overview section.)
i)
circa AE 57-105 = 1657-1705 AD. The competing national claims to the
various ‘new worlds’ of the Solar System, which threaten to break up the
First Federation, [15] are modeled on the competing claims by European
nations to the New World (particularly North America), which threatened
to cause major wars.
j) AE 106-109 = 1706-1709 AD. The Fourth
World War is modeled on the War of Spanish Succession (1701-1713).
Louis XIV, the “Sun King”, whose Absolutist regime tried to unite France
and Spain into “one preponderating empire” able to dominate Europe and
thus the world, [16] is the model for a new “Son of Heaven”, or Chinese
leader, whose ‘absolute’ or totalitarian regime tries to unite China and
India into a single empire able to dominate Terra, and thus the whole
Federation.
k) AE 106-109 = 1706-1709 AD. WWIV is also called
“the First Interplanetary War”. [17] This means that its
extraterrestrial theater is modeled on Queen Anne’s War, which was the
“North American theater of the War of Spanish Succession.” [18] Queen
Anne’s War “produced few memorable hostilities”, [19] so the battles on
colonial Venus and Mars are presumably minor compared to the major
fighting taking place all over North Terra.
l) AE 106-119 =
1706-1719 AD. The end of the Fourth World War does not signal the end
of hostilities on North Terra; there are “minor wars for ten years
after”. [20] The thirteen years covered by WWIV and its aftermath,
which causes the “Complete devastation of [the] Northern Hemisphere of
Terra”, [21] could then be called the ‘Great Northern Hemispheric War’.
Thus, this period also seems to parallel the Great Northern War, as AE
106-119 equates to 1706-1719, which falls within that war’s range of
1700-1721.
m) circa AE 107 = 1707 AD. The unification of Terra
circa “2050 to 2070” (AE 107-127) [22] is modeled on the unification of
Britain by the Acts of Union (1707 AD). The Acts politically united
Scotland (northern Britain) and England (southern Britain) “into One
Kingdom by the name of Great Britain”. [23] Similarly, Piper’s
“abolition of all national states” is presumably by an act of the
Federation Parliament, through which the Terrans of the Northern and
Southern Hemispheres “made one nation out of all our people”. [24] And
due to the devastating effects of WWIV, the Federation Parliament moves
from the Northern to the Southern Hemisphere, becoming the first
parliament to rule a unified Terra. This parallels the effects of
British unification, in which the Scottish Parliament traveled south to
unite with the English Parliament in London, becoming the first combined
Parliament of a unified Britain.
n) AE 114 = 1714 AD. General
Lanningham, who may have been a major Federation commander in WWIV,
could be modeled on the British Duke of Marlborough, the greatest
military commander of the War of Spanish Succession. After WWIV, and
due to some sort of “debacle in the United States”, General Lanningham
moves to South America in AE 114. [25] And after his achievements in
the War of Spanish Succession, the Duke of Marlborough fell out of favor
with the Court in London, and went south into exile on the (European)
Continent, from 1712-1714. [26]
o) circa AE 156-163 = AE
1756-1763. In addition to the secession of Venus mentioned by Otto
Harkaman, Professor Chalmers foresees “the revolt of the colonies on
Mars and Venus.” [27] This may be the same event. However, since
Harkaman does not mention the secession of Mars, it could actually refer
to a separate conflict. And between Queen Anne’s War and the American
Revolution, there was another major colonial war in North America. This
was the French and Indian War (1756-1763), which could therefore be
paralleled by a ‘Sino-Colonial’ war on Venus and Mars (circa AE
156-163). If so, this would be the Second Interplanetary War, and one
of the “Wars of colonial pacification and consolidation” mentioned by
Piper. [28] The effects of the French and Indian War led to the
American Revolution, so the effects of the deduced ‘Sino-Colonial War’
may similarly lead to the Secession of Venus.
p) circa AE
174-181 = 1774-1781 AD. The Secession of Venus, possibly the Third
Interplanetary War, is modeled on the American Revolution. The Thirteen
Colonies banded together against the tyrant King George, and declared
their united independence, almost exactly sixty years after Great
Britain itself was unified. Similarly, the formerly-loyal colonies on
Venus unite, roughly sixty years after Terra is completely unified, and
secede from a First Federation which has become ‘tyrannical’. The
fledgling American Republic is paralleled by a ‘Venusian Republic’,
while the Martian colonies parallel the Canadian colonies (Nova Scotia,
Newfoundland, St. John and Quebec) which did not revolt against the
British. (This parallel suggests that Piper’s Future History was
heavily influenced by Robert Heinlein’s ‘juvenile’ novel Between
Planets. More in the overview section.)
q) AE 183 = 1783 AD.
The First Terran Federation ends in AE 183, and the Second Terran
Federation begins; this parallels the end of the First British Empire in
1783, and the beginning of the Second. The historical Treaty of Paris
is presumably paralleled by a ‘Treaty of Venus’. The Treaty of Paris
recognized American independence, making the US an ‘equal’ but separate
nation from Britain. Thus, the deduced ‘Treaty of Venus’ should
recognize Venus as an equal of Terra. However, since Venus does not
become an independent planet, it must become equal within the
Federation. That would seem to make this the point at which Federation
Member Republics begin, with the Venusian Republic becoming the first
one.
r) AE 192 into the Third Century = 1792 into the
Nineteenth Century AD. The end of the First Federation in AE 183
coincides with the development of the Dillingham hyperdrive, which leads
the Second Federation in a new direction—out to the stars, beginning in
AE 192. [29] This is modeled on the ‘swing to the east’ of the Second
British Empire, which, after the First Empire lost Britain’s western
colonies in 1783, embarked on a new direction of colonization in the
Eastern Hemisphere. [30] The Second Terran Federation’s new direction
could therefore be called a ‘swing to the stars’.
s) AE 192 into
the early Third Century = 1792 into the early Nineteenth Century AD.
The Second Federation’s early extraterrestrial colonies, particularly
those with native sapient races like Thor, Loki and Yggdrasil, parallel
the Second British Empire’s early overseas possessions in Africa, India,
the East Indies and Australia.
t) circa AE 206-234 = 1806-1834
AD. One of the earliest acquisitions of the Second British Empire was
the Cape Colony, formerly a Dutch possession populated by the
non-British Boers. And one of the earliest acquisitions of the Second
Terran Federation is Freya, populated by a group of non-Terran humans.
Piper mentions the Freyans in relation to the Boers, so although he did
not reveal the date of “When in the Course—”, the Terran annexation of
Freya presumably occurs sometime in the early Third Century AE, and is
modeled on the British annexation of the Dutch Cape Colony in the early
Nineteenth Century AD (1806).
u) circa AE 235 = 1835 AD. The
Great Trek, beginning in 1835, is paralleled by a ‘great trek’ on Freya,
presumably beginning circa AE 235. This results from Roger Barron’s
decision “to collect a lot of free-companies and use them in colonizing
the other continents.” [31] Taking these mercenaries great distances
across the sea, and settling them on the two uninhabited continents of
Freya, is therefore modeled on the Great Trek; during which many Boers
left the Cape Colony, traveled a long distance and founded two new Boer
nations in South Africa, the Orange Free State and Transvaal. This
explains why Freya has three continents but only one is inhabited when
the Terrans first arrive. For when the British took over the Cape, the
Orange Free State and Transvaal did not yet exist.
v) circa AE
235 = 1835 AD. The Freyan kholphs, who are sub-sapient and yet “are
smart…They use tools”, [32] would then be modeled on the primitive black
tribes of South Africa. The kholphs do not appear in “When in the
Course—”, probably meaning they are discovered when the Freyan
mercenaries colonize the other two continents. This would parallel the
black tribes encountered by the Boers during the Great Trek; such as the
Xhosa and Zulus. Piper might then have derived the name kholph (kolf)
from ‘kaffir’, the collective (and derogatory) name for black Africans
used by white South Africans.
w) AE 250 = 1850 AD. Lone Star
Planet roughly parallels the Mexican-American War (1846-1848). Although
like “The Mercenaries” it does not belong in the THFH, the
Piper-McGuire novel takes place in “Anno Domini 2193”. [33] This
equates to Atomic Era 250, which when ‘translated’ by the equation (add
1600) becomes 1850 AD. Though the exact date is not quite right, the
novel’s historical model is revealed to be in the correct era; the
mid-Nineteenth Century.
At about
this point in the Terro-Human Future History, the AE 1 = 1601 AD
equation no longer applies, as the close numerical parallels seem to
end. (It could actually end with “When in the Course—”, as the story’s
date is not certain. My current best estimate is AE 234.) Piper’s next
tale, Four-Day Planet, contains references to Moby-Dick and illegal
off-planet slavery; the latter strongly opposed by the Terran
Federation, which sends a Space Navy destroyer to transport the captured
ringleader. This places the story in a parallel of the first half of
the Nineteenth Century—the era of Moby-Dick, when whaling was widespread
but the slave trade was slowly being stamped out, mainly by the Royal
Navy of Great Britain.
Four-Day
Planet should therefore occur not long after “When in the Course—”;
sometime around AE 240, paralleling 1840. (Parenthetically, this date
explains the appearance of Lt. Ranjit Singh, whose model is the real
Ranjit Singh, maharaja of the Punjab from 1801-1839. If the Fenrisian
mob of monster-hunters had decided to attack, Lt. Singh would therefore
have died around AE 240, paralleling the death of Maharaja Singh just
before 1840.) However, internal evidence reveals that the story
actually takes place circa AE 495, and adding 1600 to this date results
in 2095 AD. That means Four-Day Planet occurs about two and a half
centuries later than it should in Piper’s Future History.
Also,
the Uller Uprising is known to be modeled on the Sepoy Mutiny in India,
[34] which occurred in 1857-58. Using the AE 1 = 1601 AD formula, 1857
should parallel AE 257, but the Uprising actually occurs in AE 526.
Beam apparently just flipped the first two numbers and subtracted one
from the last (257 became 527 then 526), yet this means Uller Uprising
occurs about three centuries late.
Furthermore,
the System States War is modeled on the US Civil War, but the Civil War
began in 1861, which using the equation should parallel AE 261. The
System States War actually begins almost six centuries later; in AE 842.
(A number which may have been purposely chosen to evoke ‘1842’; again,
the mid-Nineteenth Century.) In addition, the Sepoy Mutiny broke out
only four years before the Civil War began, so the Uller Uprising should
happen only four years before the System States War begins. But in
fact, 315 years separate the two events.
Thus,
Piper appears to have ‘stretched out’ his timeline for the later
Federation events. Why would he do that? Because he was not just
modeling British history for the Federation, but Roman history as well.
A two-tiered system, or creative combination, of historical models.
The British Empire lasted about 350 years, but the Terran Federation
lasts for over a thousand; clearly a much closer parallel with the
millennium-spanning Roman Republic and Empire. The Roman layer will be
discussed elsewhere; for the rest of the current paper, let’s take a
look at each of the early Federation events in more detail, based on
their British and/or European models.
ENDNOTES
1. THE FIRST KEY
[1] H. Beam Piper, Empire (New York, NY: Ace Books, 1981), p. 30
[2] H. Beam Piper, Uller Uprising (New York, NY: Ace Books, 1983), p. 169
[3] Ibid., p. 150
[4] John F. Carr, H. Beam Piper: A Biography (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2008), p. 212
[5] H. Beam Piper, Four-Day Planet/Lone Star Planet (New York, NY: Ace Books, 1961), p. 193;
John F. Carr, Introduction to Federation (New York, NY: Ace Books, 1981), p. xxix; and
Piper, Empire, p. 28
[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historiograp..._the_British_Empire
[7] Jerry Pournelle, Preface: Piper’s Foundation, Federation, p. vii
[8]
Dr. Christopher Bayly, general editor, Atlas of the British Empire
(London, England: The Hamlyn Publishing Group, 1989), pp. 65, 66
[9] H. Beam Piper, Space Viking (New York, NY: Ace Books, 1963), p. 13
[10] Ibid., p. 32
[11] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historiograp..._the_British_Empire
[12] Carr, Piper Biography, p. 212
[13]
Ibid. “The Future History” places Four-Day Planet in the “Mid-IV
Century”. This is incorrect, as internal evidence indicates the story
occurs in the late Fifth Century (circa AE 495), meaning that when Beam
wrote the summary, he was wrong about his own Future History by about a
century and a half. Even if we grant that he was simply confused about
the century in which Four-Day Planet occurs (his “Mid-IV Century”
possibly intended to mean ‘mid-400s AE’ rather than mid-300s), he was
still almost a half century off.
The
other errors are admittedly minor. The date for the first moon landing
is given as AE 27, or 1970. But in “The Edge of the Knife”, Professor
Chalmers says that the first unmanned rocket to Luna “would be launched
some time in 1971”, making the correct date AE 28. (Piper, Empire, p.
22) Similarly, “The Future History” says that WWIII occurs in AE 32, or
1975; but in “Edge”, Chalmers twice mentions that the current year is
1973, and the Third World War will happen in the next year, or 1974.
(ibid, pp. 13, 17, 36, 55)
2. LIST OF PIPER’S FUTURE EVENTS AND THEIR HISTORICAL MODELS
[14] Piper, Empire, p. 59
[15] Carr, Piper Biography, p. 212
[16] Edward S. Creasy, Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World (1851), sourced from
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/4061/4061-...-h.htm#link2HCH0011
[17] Carr, Piper Biography, p. 212
[18] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_Anne’s_War
[19] Colin McEvedy, The Penguin Atlas of North American History (London, England: Penguin Books, 1988), p. 50
[20] Carr, Piper Biography, p. 212
[21] Ibid.
[22] Piper, Empire, p. 21
[23] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acts_of_Union_1707
[24] Piper, Uller Uprising, p. 64
[25] Ibid., p. 169
[26] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Churchi...Duke_of_Marlborough
[27] Piper, Empire, p. 47
[28] Carr, Piper Biography, p. 213
[29] Ibid.
[30] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historiograp..._the_British_Empire
[31] H. Beam Piper, Federation (New York, NY: Ace Books, 1981), p. 275
[32] H. Beam Piper, Little Fuzzy (New York, NY: Ace Books, 1962), p. 36
[33] Piper, Four-Day/Lone Star, p. 269
[34] Piper, Empire, p. 28
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