Sooner And Later

Although James Blish's Haertel Scholium is not a linear history, it has a definite earliest and latest moment: the beginning and end of Midsummer Century, set in 1985 and 25,000 A.D., respectively. Everything else happens between these dates although not in a single timeline.

Welcome To Mars, about the earliest journeys to Mars, is set in the late twentieth century. In 25,000 A.D., John Martels reflects that:

"...the curtain of rising mist which marked the beginning of the icecap might as well be the layer of ice-crystals which delimited the atmosphere of Mars." (9, pp. 69-70)

Thus, Martels faintly echoes Adolph Haertel who did penetrate the Martian atmosphere. There is a stronger link between Martels and Haertel. First, Haertel:

"...was reminded at once of what had happened in his boyhood when he had picked up a wounded robin chick, and had afterwards discovered that his hand was covered with mites, an incident which had divested him of all sentimentality towards birds forever."
-James Blish, Welcome To Mars (London, 1978), 3, p. 36.

Then Martels remembers:

"He had found a fallen robin chick...he had picked it up, but it had died in his hands - and when he had put it down again, his hands were crawling with tiny black mites, like thousands of moving specks of black pepper." (4, pp. 26-27)

This reads like an auctorial experience. In CS Lewis' Perelandra, Elwin Ransom nearly drowns. In his spiritual autobiography, Surprised By Joy, Lewis describes how he nearly drowned. The descriptions are identical. This is an auctorial experience.