Calidore  06-22-2021
06:01 UT
|
David Sooby wrote,
>To give credit where it's due, John, your rather lengthy reply to my earlier post
>(and I for one appreciate longer, detailed comments with citations backing up
>the points made) has me at least half-convinced that you are correct to say the
>Martians did try again later and wound up colonizing Freya. Your points regarding
>the commonality of languages between Martian and Freyan are new to me, and
>at least somewhat persuasive.
>(As an aside, I also appreciate your comments about the "Garden of Eden"
>parallel with ancient Mars as the cradle of civilization. Those concepts are
>also new to me, and also worthy of rumination.)
Thank
you for your kind words, David. According to Jerry Pournelle, “Beam,
though not formally educated, had read more books than most professors”,
and the more I researched Piper, the more intriguing his references
became. His mention of ‘Cyrano’ in “Omnilingual” led me to read Cyrano
de Bergerac, whose tale about finding the Garden of Eden on the Moon
suggested that Piper was using the spaceship name to imply that
Terro-Humanity was returning to its Extra-Terrestrial Paradise (in this
case Mars, rather than Luna). This made sense, since Piper was against
organized religion, and would have rejected a religious creation in a
mythical Terran Eden; in addition, an extra-terrestrial paradise made
more sense in his science fictional setting. The reference to
‘Schiaparelli’ in “Omnilingual” supported this line of reasoning, since
Giovanni Schiaparelli established the definitive names of Martian
regions still in use today—and “Eden” just happened to be one of them.
Then, the Old Martian words in “Omnilingual” seemed very similar to the
Freyan words Beam provided in “When in the Course—”, suggesting that the
Freyans were expatriate Martians.
And of course, the story
“Genesis” provided several subtle connections to “Omnilingual”. Olva’s
words “maybe, in a hundred thousand years, our descendants will build a
spaceship and go to Doorsha [Mars]”, which is fulfilled by the Cyrano
Expedition in 1996; Kalvar Dard’s observation that “Some day, an even
mightier civilization than the one he had left [on Mars] would rise here
[on Terra]”, which happens soon after “Omnilingual”, when the Terran
Federation becomes a successful interstellar civilization, surpassing
what Old Mars ever did. “Genesis” would then be the story of how
Martians originally came to Terra, while “Omnilingual” chronicles their
descendants’ return trip to Mars, where they begin translating the
ancient common language of Martio- and Terro- (and Freyo-!) Humanity.
The evidence is admittedly circumstantial, but (to me at least) it is also compelling.
>John, both of us are trying to make the various apparently contradictory
>indications of the Terro-Human (and Freyan) racial origins in Pipers' two
>series fit together, and to consider if perhaps both series are actually one.
>Both of us are using Occam's Razor, trying to find a way to reconcile those
>contradictions with the fewest assumptions not supported by the canon.
Agreed.
In fairness, your method seems to require fewer assumptions than mine.
However, yours goes outside canon by introducing a new element not
found elsewhere in Piper (a superior alien race), while mine uses
elements already found in Piper. Not saying that your method is wrong;
Beam kept things vague enough that he could have gone in any direction
he wished.
>In short, before reading your points about the commonality of language, I had
>rejected the idea that the Martians colonized Freya themselves, because
>(a) there's nothing in either "Genesis" nor "Omnilingual" to suggest the Martians
>developed interstellar travel, and (b) even with interstellar travel, colonizing a
>nearby planet such as Terra would involve far, far fewer resources than colonizing
>a planet around a distant star. From that viewpoint, it makes no sense that the
>Martians would try to colonized a planet many light-years away, when the much,
>much nearer Terra was available for colonization.
>However, with your evidence about the common language elements supporting
>that scenario, we can certainly come up with reasons why the Martians would
>colonize Freya. Perhaps it was some sort of freak accident with an experimental
>space drive which threw them many light-years away
That’s
a good possibility, since Beam never said what exactly happened in the
Federation’s early interstellar voyages during the AE 190s. One would
think the technology was still in its infancy then, and therefore prone
to odd occurrences and accidents. But by the time of “When in the
Course” (circa AE 234, or forty years later), the technology has
improved enough to become very reliable. The Stellex is described as an
old, second-hand vessel with not many more jumps left in her Dillingham
engines, but still manages to explore six systems before arriving at
the Eta Stellex system and Freya.
The parallel here would be
air travel. Within a few decades of the Wright brothers, air travel had
vastly improved, became global in extent and statistically the safest
way to travel.
Thus, assuming the Old Martians developed a
prototype hyperdrive, it was probably an imperfect technology.
Moreover, their planet and civilization were already in decline, and
apparently collapsed (possibly through war; see below) before they could
get past the initial stage of testing for the Martian hyperdrive to
become a reliable technology.
>perhaps they decided that trying to colonize Terra in the middle of an ice age was
>a bad idea, and in their interstellar explorations looking for an alternative world,
>Freya was the first one they stumbled across.
I
don’t think they objected to the Ice Age, because their chosen landing
site in “Genesis” (assuming this story applies in the THFH) was not far
south of the polar glacier. “There’s a pretty big Arctic ice-cap, but
it’s been receding slowly, with a wide belt of what’s believed to be
open grassland to the south of it, and a belt of what’s assumed to be
evergreen forest south of that. We plan to land somewhere in the
northern hemisphere, about the grassland-forest line.” (Worlds, p. 149)
If the Martians are planning to land at the northern edge of
the evergreen forest, just south of the glacial-fed grasslands, one
would think that is their preferred climate, probably because it is
closest to the one they knew on Mars. Mars is farther from the Sun than
Terra, and so even when it possessed an atmosphere as in “Genesis”, it
should have been somewhat cooler than Terra, as it receives less solar
radiation.
A northern landing site on Terra can also explain why
the older civilization on Freya is “at the northern corner of the
continent” (Federation, p. 206) There, the expatriate Martians also
chose to land in a cooler, more northerly climate. Their descendants
slowly spread south into the warm river valley, where they create a new
civilization which still builds fireplaces even though they are no
longer needed. This southward migration parallels how the barbarian
descendants of the Martian survivors on Terra slowly spread southward
from Europe and Central Asia, establishing new civilizations in the warm
river valleys of the Nile, Tigris-Euphrates and Indus-Ganges; as well
as eastward in the Yellow-Yangtze region.
But to answer
your question, I think the Freyans’ ancestors were the losers in a war
over declining resources. After the time of “Genesis”, Mars will
continue to slowly decline, particularly in its available supplies of
air and water. Less air and water means less vegetation, fewer animals
and fewer Martians, and I assume that not many Martians would be willing
to sacrifice their lives so that others might live. Increasing
desperation, plus their natural instinct to survive will inevitably lead
to the Martians fighting each other.
The postulated war could
therefore be over who will control the ice-caps, the greatest source of
fresh water, which of course contains breathable oxygen that can be
separated from the hydrogen. And for the proto-Freyans to be able to
leave Mars, the war must occur when the Old Martians still possessed
spacefaring capability. This in turn means that the proto-Freyans would
have to reckon with the possibility they could be pursued across space
by their enemies. What good will it do them if they successfully make
it to Terra, in say one small ship, and start setting up a colony, only
to be visited a few years later by two or three ships, filled with the
Martians who defeated them and drove them off-world? Destruction and/or
enslavement is the likely result.
The same objection would go
for Venus. While it is much farther from Mars than Terra, it is still
potentially reachable, particularly since a ship heading inward from
Mars would be assisted by the Sun’s gravity. But if the proto-Freyans
can reach it, so can their Martian enemies. Moreover, as a swampy,
hothouse jungle planet (the main 1950s view), Venus probably wouldn’t
make a very good home anyway. It’s too hot and too wet, and with its
dense cloud-cover impenetrable by telescopes, the Martians can’t even be
sure there is any dry land to set foot on (the lesser 1950s view of
Venus as an ocean planet). So it is possible that the proto-Freyans
considered both Terra and Venus, and rejected them. They shoot for the
stars as the only sure way (though not very sure) that their enemies can
never find them.
This would roughly parallel the Alliance
refugees who, after losing the System States War, left the Terran
Federation for the unknown depths of interstellar space. “Ten thousand
men and women on Abigor, refusing to surrender, had taken the remnant
of the System States Alliance navy to space, seeking a world the
Federation had never heard of and wouldn’t find for a long time.” (Space
Viking, p. 10)
I assume 10,000 refugees means around 10 ships
make the trip, or roughly 1000 people per vessel. This would parallel
the Martian colony ship in “Genesis”, which contained a “thousand-odd
colonists”, but “fifteen hundred” people in all (Worlds, pp. 148, 155);
presumably by adding in the crew and military personnel like Col. Dard.
But this appears to be why the Alliance refugees are able to
successfully establish a new civilization on Excalibur. With ten ships
or so, they have enough people and equipment to make a go of it. But if
the proto-Freyans leave Mars in only one ship (as in “Genesis”), it
would be much harder to maintain a high-tech civilization; particularly
if they are using a new engine, such as a prototype hyperdrive (or
improved normal-space drive, see below), which is an unproven technology
likely prone to odd glitches and accidents.
>Even less likely explanations are possible; it's not impossible that the Martians
>developed some sort of matter transmitter which worked at interstellar distances,
>and exploring with that, they happened upon a habitable world by random chance,
>which happened to be Freya. That is to say, since we have no evidence that Martians
>developed hyperdrive, it may be that they invented some sort of method of interstellar
>travel which didn't involve spacecraft; a method not discovered by any other race in
>the THFH universe.
That’s
possible, though on the face of it, a matter transmitter would seem to
be an even more advanced technology than hyperdrive. But even
hyperdrive is not necessary. Perhaps in order to correct the mistakes
which resulted in the destruction of the first colony ship to Terra, the
Old Martians came up with a more advanced normal-space drive. Getting
to Terra faster could help lessen the chance of running into
obstructions like the meteors which destroyed the first ship. In that
case, the proto-Freyans traveling in such a vessel might have been able
to constantly accelerate until they were traveling fairly close to the
speed of light. Their voyage to Freya at relativistic speed would only
seem to take a few months, or perhaps a couple of years, even though in
real time it actually took decades.
>In that scenario, it seems best to explain (in light of modern genetics) the Freyan
>racial differences as genetic drift in a small population, presumably indicating that
>only a few hundred Martians survived the attempt to colonize Freya.
I
agree, although with the example of “Genesis”, I have always assumed
that the number would be fewer than that. But the specific number is
less important than what happened when they reached Freya. Even if
their ship survives the trip, a large number of colonists might not be
able to maintain a high-tech civilization, if they cannot find the
necessary natural resources. I assume the ship does not survive the
trip, forcing the colonists to revert to barbarism, as in “Genesis”.
And
if they were the losers in a war over the ice-caps, that could make the
Freyans the descendants of northerly or ‘polar’ Martians, which would
explain why they are all fair-haired, Nordic types. They all came from
the same Martian region. In that regard, it is interesting that on
Schiaparelli-era maps, one of the northern Martian regions is named
“Scandia”. I consider this the possible Martian homeland of the
Freyans.
>Regarding whether or not Piper actually *intended* that the THFH series was directly
>connected to the Piperverse series, I regard Piper's own statement in his "The Future
>History" article that only those stories listed, with the possible addition of "Edge of the
>Knife", are part of the THFH, as definitive. We fans are of course free to attempt to fit
>the two series together, but Piper rather clearly did not intend that, and Piper certainly
>isn't the only writer to use similar concepts in stories which are not otherwise connected.
>In short: Even if we could "prove" to everyone's satisfaction that "Genesis" indicated
>a common origin for Humans in both Paratime and THFH, that would not in the least
>convince me that the two series actually do occur in the same universe. It would only
>prove that similar events occurred in different and distinct universes. And given the
>widely diverse nature of Paratime, it should hardly be surprising if that were so. In fact,
>Piper stipulates that interstellar travel does exist on some Paratime timelines. We could,
>as someone did a few comments ago, even go so far as to assert that every possible
>universe we can imagine is part of Paratime, because no matter how low the possibility,
>it will happen *somewhere* one some timeline.
I
agree. Beam kept the two series separate, even though his Future
History could easily be considered a Fourth Level, Europe-American
timeline. But as you say, this very separateness does not mean he
couldn’t have used the same Martian colonization premise in the THFH as
in Paratime.
>While that argument is perhaps impossible to refute, it's also utterly pointless. With
>that argument, one can assert that every possible imaginable earth-like world, or at
>least everything in fiction which has no overt fantasy elements, is "part of Paratime".
>By that argument, both Heinlein's Future History series and Asimov's Empire/ Foundation
>universe, and countless others, are "part of Paratime".
>One might, Gentle Reader, argue that Niven's Known Space is part of Paratime, but
>you'll never convince me or any other true Niven fan that this is so. Nor should we true
>Piper fans find such an argument convincing merely because Piper wrote both series.
I
agree here as well. Even though Paratime should contain just about
every conceivable outcome, Piper was a gentleman who respected his peers
in the science fiction field. He admitted to enjoying Robert
Heinlein’s writing, even while criticizing him for “wasting plots”.
(Carr, Piper Biography, p. 114) So I feel certain Beam would never have
claimed that, for example, Heinlein’s ‘juvenile’ novels like Rocket
Ship Galileo or Asimov’s near-future robot stories could be found
somewhere in Paratime. Even though *conceptually* they should, that
would be treading on other writer’s toes, not to mention trespassing in
their universes.
Unless, that is, Beam could have persuaded
Heinlein or Asimov to collaborate on a Paratime or THFH story…which
alas, must remain a fascinating “what if”.
John
|
David "PiperFan" Johnson 06-09-2021
03:50 UT
|
~
Jon Crocker wrote:
> My guess is, it just wasn't important to the plot.
Perhaps.
There was a "Civil Administration" comprised of a "Fiscal Secretary," a
"Commercial Secretary," a "Personnel Chief" and the "Banking Cartel's
lawyer" though it's not clear whether these were actual "civilians" or
(perhaps "dual-hatted") Company officials.
> Given that UU happened a couple centuries before
> Little Fuzzy, one could argue that in the wake of the
> Uller uprising, as a concession to the cartels that
> lost out on a lot of dividends, the Federation
> mandated the existence of colonial legislatures so
> that the people on the spot could see trouble
> coming that much better.
Perhaps.
It seems like one difference on Uller was that there wasn't any
territory which wasn't under the control of the local sophonts, so the
company must have had some sort of "concession" from local landholders,
similar to what we see being negotiated on Freya in "When in the
Course--." While on Zarathustra, once the company's charter was
nullified there were large tracts of formerly Company-owned land that
was not obviously--to the pre-Indigenous sensibilities of the era in
which Beam was writing--under the control of any Fuzzies.
Everyone
on Uller was either under the Company's authority or under the
authority of Ulleran landholders but on Zarathustra, post-Pendarvis
Decision there are people (and more expected to arrive) who are neither
under the Company's authority nor under the authority of any Fuzzies.
These seem to be the folks the Colonial Legislature is meant to
represent.
> Zarathustra also never had a Lieutenant Governor
> appointed, where we specifically saw one in UU.
> I guess they had fallen out of fashion by that point,
> or again were not important to the plot.
Perhaps.
Or maybe there would be one once the Colonial Legislature was in place
and the military-appointed Governor General was replaced with one
"confirmed" in some manner by the Legislature, along with a bundle of
other executive officials (besides the Native Affairs Commissioner
perhaps a Fiscal Secretary and a Commercial Secretary. . .).
> I don't think anyone was worried that the fuzzies
> would roll the Lt. G in a puddle of thermoconcentrate
> fuel and torch the guy, the way the Ullerans did.
;) In another universe, the Ullerans would have fit in well on the Lone Star Planet!
Don't Let New Texas Go to the Dogs!
David
--
"Capella
IV had been settled during the first wave of extrasolar colonization,
after the Fourth World--or First Interplanetary--War. Some time around
2100." - H. Beam Piper and John J. McGuire, ~Lone Star Planet~
~
|
jimmyjoejangles 06-09-2021
01:06 UT
|
What I said is that everything Piper imagined is all in one universe. I
never said anything about other writers or series being in the
Piperverse.
Paratime was about a civilization that uses
timelines to take from other civilizations. THFH is about a
civilization that has some of the same tech and ideas that the
Paratimers have. Verkan Val's entire purpose was to make sure those
timelines never knew that they were being mined for resources.
|
David Sooby 06-08-2021
04:07 UT
|
Sorry for this belated reply to John Calidore's very thought-provoking
and informative response to my earlier comment, but perhaps it's for the
best that I let some time pass before replying. The recent conversation
certainly has produced a lot of very good discussion!
John Calidore wrote:
> ...to me the evidence certainly suggests that he used the same ‘Martian origins’
> premise in the THFH that he did in Paratime. In this scenario, a few Martians made
> it to Terra but met with disaster, as in “Genesis”. But unlike Paratime, the Old
> Martians in the THFH did not give up trying to emigrate after their first attempt
> failed, and a later group settled Freya before they became extinct on Mars.
>
> I believe that is also the opinion of Wolfgang Diehr (and possibly others), while
> David Johnson and David Sooby (and possibly others) believe that parallel evolution
> and an ancient alien race of seeders are the explanation.
To
give credit where it's due, John, your rather lengthy reply to my
earlier post (and I for one appreciate longer, detailed comments with
citations backing up the points made) has me at least half-convinced
that you are correct to say the Martians did try again later and wound
up colonizing Freya. Your points regarding the commonality of languages
between Martian and Freyan are new to me, and at least somewhat
persuasive.
(As an aside, I also appreciate your comments about
the "Garden of Eden" parallel with ancient Mars as the cradle of
civilization. Those concepts are also new to me, and also worthy of
rumination.)
John, both of us are trying to make the various
apparently contradictory indications of the Terro-Human (and Freyan)
racial origins in Pipers' two series fit together, and to consider if
perhaps both series are actually one. Both of us are using Occam's
Razor, trying to find a way to reconcile those contradictions with the
fewest assumptions not supported by the canon.
My suggestion for
"ancient astronauts" ferrying Martians to Freya was my attempt to
explain, with the fewest non-canonical assumptions, how Martians could
have wound up on Freya. However, your points about the commonality of
language certainly throw my suggestion of a much older start to the
Freya colony into serious doubt. Several thousands of years, at least,
would be required to produce the sort of genetic diversity suggested in
"When in the Course--", so I had the colonization put back that far in
time. However, your points about a commonality of language elements
provides what appears (at least to me) to be rather strong evidence that
the Freyan colonization happened not many centuries distant from the
end of the Martian civilization.
In short, before reading your
points about the commonality of language, I had rejected the idea that
the Martians colonized Freya themselves, because (a) there's nothing in
either "Genesis" nor "Omnilingual" to suggest the Martians developed
interstellar travel, and (b) even with interstellar travel, colonizing a
nearby planet such as Terra would involve far, far fewer resources than
colonizing a planet around a distant star. From that viewpoint, it
makes no sense that the Martians would try to colonized a planet many
light-years away, when the much, much nearer Terra was available for
colonization.
However, with your evidence about the common
language elements supporting that scenario, we can certainly come up
with reasons why the Martians would colonize Freya. Perhaps it was some
sort of freak accident with an experimental space drive which threw them
many light-years away, or perhaps they decided that trying to colonize
Terra in the middle of an ice age was a bad idea, and in their
interstellar explorations looking for an alternative world, Freya was
the first one they stumbled across. Even less likely explanations are
possible; it's not impossible that the Martians developed some sort of
matter transmitter which worked at interstellar distances, and exploring
with that, they happened upon a habitable world by random chance, which
happened to be Freya. That is to say, since we have no evidence that
Martians developed hyperdrive, it may be that they invented some sort of
method of interstellar travel which didn't involve spacecraft; a method
not discovered by any other race in the THFH universe.
In that
scenario, it seems best to explain (in light of modern genetics) the
Freyan racial differences as genetic drift in a small population,
presumably indicating that only a few hundred Martians survived the
attempt to colonize Freya.
* * * *
On a different subject:
Regarding
whether or not Piper actually *intended* that the THFH series was
directly connected to the Piperverse series, I regard Piper's own
statement in his "The Future History" article that only those stories
listed, with the possible addition of "Edge of the Knife", are part of
the THFH, as definitive. We fans are of course free to attempt to fit
the two series together, but Piper rather clearly did not intende that,
and Piper certainly isn't the only writer to use similar concepts in
stories which are not otherwise connected.
In short: Even if we
could "prove" to everyone's satisfaction that "Genesis" indicated a
common origin for Humans in both Paratime and THFH, that would not in
the least convince me that the two series actually do occur in the same
universe. It would only prove that similar events occurred in different
and distinct universes. And given the widely diverse nature of Paratime,
it should hardly be surprising if that were so. In fact, Piper
stipulates that interstellar travel does exists on some Paratime
timelines. We could, as someone did a few comments ago, even go so far
as to assert that every possible universe we can imagine is part of
Paratime, because no matter how low the possibility, it will happen
*somewhere* one some timeline.
While that argument is perhaps
impossible to refute, it's also utterly pointless. With that argument,
one can assert that every possible imaginable earth-like world, or at
least everything in fiction which has no overt fantasy elements, is
"part of Paratime". By that argument, both Heinlein's Future History
series and Asimov's Empire/ Foundation universe, and countless others,
are "part of Paratime".
Again, it may be impossible to refute
that argument, but it is an argument utterly without value. One might,
Gentle Reader, argue that Niven's Known Space is part of Paratime, but
you'll never convince me or any other true Niven fan that this is so.
Nor should we true Piper fans find such an argument convincing merely
because Piper wrote both series.
There is usefulness -- utility
-- in making distinctions between different fictional series, and the
distinct universes in which those various series occur. We talk about
the "canon" of different series, because we as fans find such
distinctions useful. There is no utility, no usefulness, in saying that
the THFH is merely one timeline in Paratime. There is no utility in
claiming that all canons are just part of a larger whole.
Language
is only useful where it is used to convey meaning, and that usefulness
is lost when words are used in a way that conveys so much ambiguity that
any distinction vanishes.
* * * * *
David Sooby
|
Jon Crocker 06-07-2021
23:30 UT
|
I suppose all of Uller Uprising could have happened when the legislature was in recess, but that seems a weak answer.
My guess is, it just wasn't important to the plot.
Given
that UU happened a couple centuries before Little Fuzzy, one could
argue that in the wake of the Uller uprising, as a concession to the
cartels that lost out on a lot of dividends, the Federation mandated the
existence of colonial legislatures so that the people on the spot could
see trouble coming that much better.
Zarathustra also never had a
Lieutenant Governor appointed, where we specifically saw one in UU. I
guess they had fallen out of fashion by that point, or again were not
important to the plot.
I don't think anyone was worried that the
fuzzies would roll the Lt. G in a puddle of thermoconcentrate fuel and
torch the guy, the way the Ullerans did.
|
David "PiperFan" Johnson 06-06-2021
15:08 UT
|
~
Does Uller have a Colonial Legislature?
Once the Fuzzies are
recognized as sapient, Zarathustra is reclassified from Class-III,
uninhabited but inhabitable, to Class-IV, inhabited, the Chartered
Zarathustra Company's exclusive ownership is invalidated, and the
Class-III Colonial Government is disestablished, Commodore Alex Napier,
the local Terran Federation military commander, appoints a Class-IV
Civil Government headed by a Governor-General. This appointed government
is obliged to hold elections to establish a popularly-elected Colonial
Legislature.
Uller is also a Class-IV planet with a
Governor-General but it doesn't seem to have a Colonial Legislature.
Instead, it seems to continue to be governed, on a ~de facto~ if not ~de
jure~ basis, but the Chartered Uller Company. While the
Governor-General appointed by Napier on Zarathustra is a "civilian" the
Governor-General on Uller seems to be an Uller Company official. (I
suppose it could have been possible for Napier to have appointed a
Zarathustra Company official as Governor-General too but he chose not to
so so.)
But unlike Zarathustra, Uller doesn't seem to have a
Colonial Legislature. Why is this? (Or is there one but it's not
mentioned because it's mostly an institution which simply "rubber
stamps" Company edicts?)
(Is it perhaps that when Beam was
writing ~Uprising~ he was using the old East India Company as his model
for the Uller Company while by the time he was writing ~Little Fuzzy~ a
decade later he had a more complex model in mind, similar to the odd mix
of post-"Sepoy Mutiny" East India Company and colonial "British Raj"?)
Kwannon
also has a Governor-General who heads a Civil Government but it's not
clear whether or not there is a Colonial Legislature on Kwannon. The
head of the Colonial Office expedition to Svantovit hopes to be
appointed Governor-General though again there doesn't seem to be any
mention of a potential Colonial Legislature.
On the other hand, Poictesme, which is not a colony but a Federation Member Republic, has a Parliament (and a President).
Pwink,
David
--
"As
for the other five, one had been an all-out hell-planet, and the rest
had been the sort that get colonized by irreconcilable minority-groups
who want to get away from everybody else. The Colonial Office wouldn't
even consider any of them." - Mark Howell (H. Beam Piper), "Naudsonce"
~
|
David "PiperFan" Johnson 06-03-2021
04:01 UT
|
~
John "Calidore" Anderson wrote:
> In Lord Kalvan, the different timelines and sectors
> are caused by the usual alternate probabilities.
Agreed.
Beam did not introduce a new explanation for the variations between
~individual~ timelines in "Gunpowder God"; these continue to be caused
by whatever (unnamed) mechanism as was the case when he was previously
attributing the differences between Levels to differences in the outcome
of the "ancient Martian colonization" attempt.
> This is not a genetic variation, it’s an alternate
> probability. Someone making a different choice
> based on different causal factors.
Agreed.
It also has nothing to do with different outcomes of the "ancient
Martian colonization" attempt Beam used to explain differences in
Paratime Levels in his early yarns.
> Yes, it is new and different, but it also doesn’t make
> much sense.
Thank
you for admitting that your views here are not based strictly on the
-evidence~ from Beam but rather also on your ~own~ judgments about the
"reasonableness" of that evidence! (I've previously encouraged you to be
more straightforward about this when you do it, so it's good to see you
doing it here.)
> Because what Beam is actually saying in Lord Kalvan
> is that four of the five Paratime levels devolved from
> low-probability genetic accidents, while Fourth Level
> (presumably) evolved to the maximum genetic
> variation. But since in Fourth Level, the various
> sectors, subsectors and timelines are still caused by
> alternate probabilities, the same should be true of the
> other four levels, which “devolved” from it.
A
fair critique. I think you are beginning to illustrate one of the
reasons why the Paratime setting has never been my favourite part of
Beam's work. It may make for great individual stories--"Crossroads of
Destiny" is one of many excellent examples--but as a coherent general
setting it quickly breaks down in many ways.
> Seen as a whole, this system seems unnecessarily
> complex; a strange amalgam of two different
> concepts, with genetic accidents or variations
> creating the different levels, and alternate probabilities
> creating the different subdivisions within them.
Agreed. Sticking with the original "ancient Martian colonization" heuristic does not resolve this shortcoming.
It is, nevertheless, the setting--or settings, if we consider both the "Martian" and "genetics" forms--Beam left us.
> Okay, for the sake of argument, let’s grant it anyway.
> But what genetic accidents create the other four levels?
> They should be major ones, if they create four entirely
> different outcomes.
Yep.
The same questions exist if we posit differences due to differences in
the outcomes of the "ancient Martian colonization" attempts. (Yes, Beam
generally describes the differences in the various outcomes but not in
any detail which enables us to make coherent sense of the differences
between any two Sectors on different Levels.)
> In Kalvan Subsector, there doesn’t seem to be any
> genetic difference between the Fourth Level
> characters Calvin Morrison and Princess Rylla, and
> the First Level characters Verkan Vall and Hadron
> Dalla. On the contrary, they all seem to be the same
> sort of people, and get along like gangbusters.
I
think what was happening in ~Lord Kalvan~ was driven--as was always the
case--primarily by Beam's dramatic purposes, which in this instance was
about getting his readers of a certain American socio-cultural era to
identify with his protagonists.
Beam did sometimes grapple with
these difference in other yarns, like "Last Enemy" where Verkan was
cosmetically altered and given a "Venusian back-story" to better fit in
on the local timeline. (But Beam was obviously using excessive amounts
of "paratemporal lipstick" on the "Paratime pig" by the time of ~Lord
Kalvan~.)
But, again, none of this is resolved by reverting to the "ancient Martian origins" heuristic.
> Or did Beam mean genetic variations of all organic life?
FWIW,
I think this assumption gives the greatest amount of explanatory power
within the confines of what Beam has left us. A genetic accident could
lead to variations in ecological regions--a less successful locust
species might prevent a grassland from becoming a desert, for example,
leading to different advantages and disadvantages for ancient humans
(whether they be indigenous hominids or devolved Martians).
> In that case, there should be a wide variety of plant
> and animal species on the other levels and sectors,
> not found on our own Fourth Level timeline.
Yep. More illustration of the shortcomings of the Paratime setting.
> But that does not seem to be the case. All the
> Paratime levels appear to have the exact same types
> of organic life, including humans (except for Fifth Level).
Well,
hang on. It doesn't seem to be the case on the Paratime timelines that
the First Level civilization has ~encountered~. But perhaps there are
~other~ timelines where it is the case--most likely "beyond" the
arbitrarily-identified "Fifth Level." (John Carr has tried to "close
off" the possibility of a "Sixth Level" in his follow-on work but his is
not the only possible choice here.)
> They even have the same weather.
Yep,
yet another problem. As with Verkan's "para-peeping" in his first
Paratime yarn, this seems to be an idea that even Beam began to realize
was problematic. It's a clever trope in a single yarn which falls apart
across an entire fictional setting.
But again, nothing about a
"Martian origin" resolves this. The weather would not be the same on a
Third Level timeline which had had a series of atomic wars. . . .
> Piper was very specific on the five different outcomes
> of the Martian colonization premise. Yet he was
> indeed quite vague on the “genetic accident” premise.
Don't
be silly. There is nothing about the "ancient Martian origins"
heuristic which explains, for example, why Akor-Neb has stumbled upon
"discarnation." Beam gives us some broad, general differences in the
different outcomes of the "ancient Martian colonization" attempts but he
draws no lines from there to any specific differences on Second, Third
or Fourth Levels.
> You even admitted that in your response to Tim Tow.
> (“I think they're arbitrary, mostly just subjective choices
> (both in-setting and out) about the differences in
> variation (which is likely why Beam never discussed
> this point in detail).”)
I
was speaking about ~both~ possibilities: "genetic accidents" ~and~
"ancient Martian colonization." Apologies if that wasn't clear.
What
you're illustrating here is not how one heuristic--"genetic accidents"
or "Martian origins"--better "fits" what Beam left us but rather how the
Paratime setting generally is riddled with internal inconsistencies.
> If Piper was firmly resolved to get rid of the Martian
> origin, as you believe,
All
I believe Beam was "firmly resolved" about was selling his fiction. He
wasn't trying to "fix" his body of Paratime work with the changes he
introduced in "Gunpowder God." He was simply trying to write a yarn
which was more likely to be purchased by an editor because it made
better sense ~at that time~, a decade after his last Paratime yarn had
been published, to that editor's paying readers.
Maybe, if he'd
lived to revisit his work--like Asimov or Poul Anderson--he'd have done
something differently and worked harder to resolve the
contradictions--but he was just trying to sell that -one~ novel when he
wrote the first part of ~Lord Kalvan~ that he pitched as "Gunpowder
God."
> To me, it just doesn’t add up.
It doesn't "add
up" to me either, considered comprehensively ~post hoc~ as we are doing.
But that's not how Beam was writing it. He was trying to make a
distinct sale ~each time~, over a period of decades. The expectations of
his audience changed over that time. Beam's understanding of what made
more or less sense changed too. And then, each time, he had to write
something that someone ~else~, who didn't give a hoot about the internal
consistency of the overall setting. would buy.
And he never got the chance to "go back" and make it all "fit together."
Given that, we should not be surprised that it doesn't all "fit together" like some sophisticated, three-dimensional puzzle.
> The genetics premise seems odd, is in disharmony
> with the alternate probabilities of the sectors,
> subsectors and timelines, and is very nebulous
> compared with the Martian origins premise.
Honestly,
I don't see how either heuristic resolves the contradictions which are
inherent in the Paratime setting. The problem isn't what "causes" the
initial Levels; the problem is the (unnamed) mechanism which
subsequently gives rise to individual timelines.
For example,
dramatically, we can see how a "para-peeping" Verkan Vall is
problematic, but rationally there's no way to explain why there is only a
single "First Level" timeline.
All of the other problems you've
pointed to arise from the same dynamic: it's not how Paratime "started"
but rather how it "works" which creates the contradictions.
> It feels more like Beam playing with words to
> confuse or at least gloss over the issue, rather than a
> serious attempt to redefine how the Paratime universe
> came to be.
It was just Beam writing and trying to ~sell~ each ~individual~ yarn to ~different~ editors over a period of ~decades~.
> One can get there by making several ~assumptions~
> about various bits of what Beam wrote,
[snip]
> but then you've wandered away / beyond
> from what Beam left us.
>
> Maybe, but no more so than those who postulate a
> “World Commonwealth of Nations” after WWIII,
> for which there is no explicit evidence in Piper,
> and which requires renaming the First Terran
> Federation the “Terran Federation of States”
> (Beam never called it that);
Of
course, but I don't insist that the stuff I've "made up" (no matter how
carefully I might try to ensure that it "fits" with what Beam left us)
is ~actually~ what Beam had in mind.
I'm happy to admit it's ~my~ work, not Beam's.
Cheers,
David
--
"I
was going to write like James Branch Cabell, which would have taken a
lot of doing. Before that, I was going to write like Rafael Sabatini,
and like Talbot Mundy, and like Rider Haggard, and even, God help us
all, like Edgar Rice Burroughs. . . . Eventually I decided to write
like H. Beam Piper, only a little better. I am still trying." - H. Beam
Piper, "Double: Bill Symposium" interview
~
|
Calidore 06-02-2021
17:53 UT
|
David “Piperfan” Johnson wrote,
>Beam doesn't simply fail to mention any "Martian origin" in his final Paratime work
>he also ~introduces~ the concept of differences in timelines being due to ~genetic~
>factors. Whatever the differences in timelines are in "Gunpowder God"--"variations"
>or "accidents"--their causes are ~genetic~. Beam has replaced one explanation—
>differences in timelines due to different outcomes of the Martian colonization attempt
>--with another explanation--differences in timelines due to different outcomes which
>have their origins in ~genetics~.
That
is not accurate. In Lord Kalvan, the different timelines and sectors
are caused by the usual alternate probabilities. Beam is quite clear on
this. Tortha Karf says that Paratime consists of “a near infinity of
worlds of alternate probability”. As an example, he cites
“Aryan-Oriental; the Aryan migration of three thousand years ago,
instead of moving west and south, as on most sectors, had rolled east
into China.” On Home Time Line, a professor of Paratemporal History
says, “Who knows what started the Aryan migration eastward on that
sector, instead of westward as on all the others? Some tribal chief’s
hangover; some wizard’s nightmare.” (LKO, pp. 2, 3, 106)
This is
not a genetic variation, it’s an alternate probability. Someone making a
different choice based on different causal factors. The same goes for
Aryan-Transpacific, “an offshoot” of Aryan-Oriental, in which “some of
them had built ships and sailed north and east along the Kuriles and the
Aleutians and settled in North America” (ibid., pp. 3-4) No genetics
here, either; just an alternate probability caused by some Aryans
deciding to build boats and go exploring. On most of Aryan-Oriental,
their drang nach osten was stopped by the Pacific Ocean, but on at least
one timeline, a few of them apparently decided to continue it by other
means, creating a new sector in the process.
I could add that
Kalvan Subsector is not caused by a genetic accident, either; it is due
to a paratemporal transposition accident. But that’s a rare and
exceptional case.
>A "genetic accident" is not a way simply in which "accidents" might "happen differently."
>Beam is describing these accidents as being the result of ~genetic~ factors, of biological
>variations which give rise to differences in outcomes through evolutionary processes.
>To say that on one timeline a colonization attempt was successful while on another it
>was less so and then describe this difference in outcomes as a "genetic accident"
>misunderstands the words that Beam has left us.
>Beam didn't just fail to repeat the "Martian origins" explanation for differences in
>timelines in "Gunpowder God"; he also introduced a ~new~ and ~different~ explanation.
Yes,
it is new and different, but it also doesn’t make much sense. Because
what Beam is actually saying in Lord Kalvan is that four of the five
Paratime levels devolved from low-probability genetic accidents, while
Fourth Level (presumably) evolved to the maximum genetic variation. But
since in Fourth Level, the various sectors, subsectors and timelines
are still caused by alternate probabilities, the same should be true of
the other four levels, which “devolved” from it. Seen as a whole, this
system seems unnecessarily complex; a strange amalgam of two different
concepts, with genetic accidents or variations creating the different
levels, and alternate probabilities creating the different subdivisions
within them.
Okay, for the sake of argument, let’s grant it
anyway. But what genetic accidents create the other four levels? They
should be major ones, if they create four entirely different outcomes.
How is a First Level Paratimer genetically or biologically different
from a Fourth Level Prole? More intelligent, greater mental abilities,
taller, better looking, longer lived? Perhaps, but these don’t seem to
be caused by genetic accidents, they’re due to the science and medicine
of First Level, which is 100,000 years more advanced than that of the
Fourth Level.
In “Time Crime”, Verkan Vall notes that the Fourth
Level Prole woman Zinganna “could easily pass as a woman of his own
race” (Paratime, p. 232). How can the Fourth Level produce a woman with
First Level characteristics? This would seem highly unlikely, since
the First and Fourth Levels should be very different, genetically
speaking. It’s like saying a ‘Fourth World’ Brazilian or Melanesian
aborigine is born looking very much like a First World American or
European.
Of course, “Time Crime” mentions the Martian origin of
the five levels, so Zinganna’s First Level looks are easily explained.
They are most likely a ~genetic~ throwback to her level’s Martian
origin. Through a ~biological~ quirk, she was born just about as
Martian as the people of the completely-successful First Level. And
true to her genes, she quickly becomes one of them, being adopted as a
sister by Hadron Dalla, and engaged to Kostran Galth, a paracop. (ibid.,
p. 258)
Okay, then what about Lord Kalvan, where genetic
accidents are mentioned? In Kalvan Subsector, there doesn’t seem to be
any genetic difference between the Fourth Level characters Calvin
Morrison and Princess Rylla, and the First Level characters Verkan Vall
and Hadron Dalla. On the contrary, they all seem to be the same sort of
people, and get along like gangbusters.
Or did Beam mean genetic
variations of all organic life? In that case, there should be a wide
variety of plant and animal species on the other levels and sectors, not
found on our own Fourth Level timeline. In other words, Paratime would
be like the Terro-Human Future History, with ‘alien’ Terras whose
species and genera (including humans) are very different, paralleling
the wide variety of organic life in the known galaxy. Humans (or
humanoids) with three fingers and toes, or three eyes, or cute little
furry primates like the Fuzzies; animals of strange and ferocious
aspect; and weird and monstrous plant life never seen before. The
possibilities are endless, since Paratime contains a near-infinity of
timelines.
But that does not seem to be the case. All the
Paratime levels appear to have the exact same types of organic life,
including humans (except for Fifth Level). They even have the same
weather. As Verkan Vall travels back to First Level, “The barn
vanished; blue sky appeared above, streaked with wisps of high cirrus
cloud. The autumn landscape flickered unreally. Buildings appeared and
vanished, and other buildings came and went in a twinkling…For a while,
there were vistas of deep forests, always set in the same background of
mountains and always under the same blue cirrus-laced sky.” (ibid., p.
46)
All the other Terras of Paratime are just like ours, genetically, biologically and climatically speaking.
>Beam wasn't being "vague" in "Gunpowder God"; he was quite specific.
>He didn't write "'generic' accidents" but rather "~genetic~ accidents."
Piper
was very specific on the five different outcomes of the Martian
colonization premise. Yet he was indeed quite vague on the “genetic
accident” premise. You even admitted that in your response to Tim Tow.
(“I think they're arbitrary, mostly just subjective choices (both
in-setting and out) about the differences in variation (which is likely
why Beam never discussed this point in detail).”)
If Piper was
firmly resolved to get rid of the Martian origin, as you believe, then
one would think he would have been more specific—more detailed—on what
the four different genetic accidents were that gave rise to the other
four Paratime levels.
To me, it just doesn’t add up. The
genetics premise seems odd, is in disharmony with the alternate
probabilities of the sectors, subsectors and timelines, and is very
nebulous compared with the Martian origins premise. It feels more like
Beam playing with words to confuse or at least gloss over the issue,
rather than a serious attempt to redefine how the Paratime universe came
to be.
>There is nothing explicit from Beam to support a "Martian origin" in the Terro-human
>Future History. Indeed, if you read the Future History without considering Paratime
>this idea should never even occur to you.
First
sentence, true. Second sentence, not necessarily. Because in
“Omnlingual”, Piper mentions that the Old Martians died out 50,000 years
ago, and at the height of their civilization they had discovered
uranium, “knew about electron shells”, were “not quite” at the Bohr
atom, but “did know about atomic energy”. (Federation, pp. 3, 38, 48)
On Terra, uranium was discovered in 1789, the electron in 1897, and the
Bohr model was created in 1913.
At the very least, this places
the Old Martians at an early Twentieth Century-equivalent level of
technology, somewhere between 1897 and 1913. It was probably
higher/later than that, since the Terrans in “Omnilingual” discover that
the Martians possessed very durable silicone-based paper, advanced
bullet-proof glass, and “radically different” refrigeration units.
(ibid., pp. 14, 21-22, 29) This suggests the Terrans have some things
to learn from the long-extinct Martians. And the higher level of
Martian technology could certainly have included space travel, since the
less-advanced Terrans have it.
But for the sake of argument,
let’s leave the Old Martians at a circa 1905-equivalent level. In
Piper, the Cyrano Expedition to Mars occurs in 1996. That’s less than
100 years between the Bohr atom and interplanetary travel. So even with
no regard to Paratime, it is quite possible for the Old Martians in the
THFH to have developed atomic power and space flight during the century
after the murals in Kukan were painted. For their first interplanetary
expedition, their destination would certainly have been Terra, a
warmer, younger and more verdant world than slowly-dying Mars. This
ancient voyage would therefore have occurred sometime prior to 48,000
BC, meaning that the perfectly human-looking Martians could have become
the ancestors of Terro-Humanity.
And of course, that’s exactly what we see in “Genesis”.
>One can get there by making several ~assumptions~ about various bits of what Beam
>wrote, including things which he himself didn't mention when he identified his Future
>History yarns in his ~Zenith~ interview, but then you've wandered away / beyond
>from what Beam left us.
Maybe,
but no more so than those who postulate a “World Commonwealth of
Nations” after WWIII, for which there is no explicit evidence in Piper,
and which requires renaming the First Terran Federation the “Terran
Federation of States” (Beam never called it that); not to mention the
'ancient alien race of seeders' concept, which is indeed ‘alien’ to
Beam’s writings, as he himself never created a sapient alien race
superior to Terro-Humanity. :)
Regards,
John
|
Calidore 06-02-2021
17:47 UT
|
Gregg Levine wrote,
>What about the remains of the Martians in the work "Omnilingual"? I'd always
>thought that the ones who survived, before the bitter end was described there,
>did move someplace else.
and
>I was suggesting that before things got to be that badly, it could have happened.
>In fact, being that it was a short story, I suspect a lot was left out by Piper. It would
>be interesting to see if any notes were made and survived during the time period
>in question when it was written.
That
is my view as well. Beam was not explicit, but to me the evidence
certainly suggests that he used the same ‘Martian origins’ premise in
the THFH that he did in Paratime. In this scenario, a few Martians made
it to Terra but met with disaster, as in “Genesis”. But unlike
Paratime, the Old Martians in the THFH did not give up trying to
emigrate after their first attempt failed, and a later group settled
Freya before they became extinct on Mars.
I believe that is
also the opinion of Wolfgang Diehr (and possibly others), while David
Johnson and David Sooby (and possibly others) believe that parallel
evolution and an ancient alien race of seeders are the explanation.
Jimmyjoejangles wrote,
>Omnilingual is pretty explicitly supporting the Martian origins. IT means we have a
>common language. If we call iron iron and they call iron hufflepop, knowing that they
>call it hufflepop wouldn't lead us to a translation just by looking at the table.
If
you change “explicitly” to “implicitly”, I agree. Piper’s “overt” or
story answer is that the omnilingual is the Table of Elements, or the
language of science in general, which allows the Terrans to begin
translating Old Martian into modern English. But you're right; his
“covert” or hidden twist seems to be that the Terrans are simply
relearning the language of their ancestors who migrated to Earth. The
omnilingual of science enables the translation of the ancient
omnilingual of Martio- and Terro-Humanity.
Tim Tow wrote,
>So what do the Paratime levels represent then? Maximum genetic diversity.
>Would it be true at all levels that the Martians did make it to Earth but lost all
>of their technology a la Genesis?
>If so then the Martians in Omnilingual are the ancestors of Earth people.
That
is another possibility, since Beam’s “genetic accidents” statement is
so vague. I believe the Martians are the ancestors of Terro-Humanity,
in any case. For a variety of reasons; including the subtle connections
between “Genesis” and “Omnilingual”, the Federation spaceships named
Cyrano and Schiaparelli, which point to an extraterrestrial and indeed
Martian origin for Terro-Humanity, and the Burroughs influence on Beam.
Jimmyjoejangles wrote,
>Either Verkan or Hartley or both, been a while since I read them, said that everything
>is always happening. It was one of the first Piper works I read, so naturally I carried
>that ethos into all of his work, hence the Piper verse. Pointing at a Q and A where
>no one asked if they were connected and saying they aren't connected isn't enough
>for me. Piperverse.
Verkan
Vall says, “All time-lines are totally present, in perpetual
co-existence.” (Paratime, p. 52) And Tortha Karf says that Paratime
consists of “a near infinity of worlds of alternate probability”. (LKO,
p. 2)
So you seem to be saying that, since Paratime
contains a near-infinity of timelines, in which just about every
possible outcome happens, Piper’s other stories, like “The Answer”,
“Operation R.S.V.P”, and the three Hartley tales could be considered
other timelines in the Fourth Level, Europo-American Sector of Paratime.
If so, I agree.
Beam
did not explicitly connect the two series. John Carr considers them
separate, and so do I. But had Piper chosen to overtly connect them
later (as Asimov later went on to connect his Foundation and Robot
series in the 1980s), there would have been little or no difficulty in
incorporating his two main series and other stories into one big
“Piperverse”, as you call it. “Crossroads of Destiny” is essentially a
Paratime story already; the only thing missing is how the man from our
timeline got on one in which the American Revolution failed. The
obvious answer is another paratemporal transposition accident, like the
one which brought Calvin Morrison to Aryan-Transpacific.
“Genesis”,
with its subtle connections to “Omnilingual”, would serve as the
connecting link between the Paratime and Future History universes.
Indeed, I think the reason Beam did not explicitly name it either a
Paratime or THFH story is because it is effectively both. “Genesis”
explains the origin of the Fourth Level of Paratime, as well as the
Martian remains in “Omnilingual”.
“Flight from Tomorrow” could
find a home, too, as a story which begins in the far future of a
Europo-American timeline. I don’t think it would fit in the THFH,
because in that timeline Terra is “bombed back to the Stone Age” during
the Interstellar Wars (Empire, p. 181). This occurs around AE 1100,
while the Terra of the “Flight” timeline is still civilized—and has a
system-wide government—in AE 10,000. (Worlds, pp. 112, 114, 131, 134)
And
yes; the unified Piperverse could also include Beam’s non-fiction,
since he himself could be considered a character who lived on our own
Fourth Level, Europo-American timeline, among the near-infinity of
alternately probable Earths.
John
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