Earthman, Come Home

This is an evocative passage from the Prologue to James Blish's Earthman, Come Home (London, 1963):

"Thus the Earth police held their jurisdiction, but the hegemony of Earth was weak, for the most part. There were many corners of the galaxy which knew Earth only as a legend, a green myth floating unknown thousands of parsecs away in space, known and ineluctable thousands of years away in history. Some of them remembered much more vividly the now-broken tyranny of Vega, and did not know - some of them never had known - even the name of the little planet that had broken that tyranny." (p. 13)

The passage evokes thousands of years of galactic history with many intelligent races ruled at a distance first by Vega, then by Earth. However, other parts of the Cities In Flight Tetralogy suggest a smaller spatiotemporal scenario. Vega is said to have ruled most of this galactic quadrant, not all of the galaxy. Earthmen are said to rule Arm II. The text of Earthman, Come Home tells us that:

"Only eleven non-human civilizations had been discovered, and, of these, only the Lyrans and the Myrdians had any brains to speak of (unless one counted the Vegans; Earthmen did not think of them as human, but all non-human cultures did; anyhow, they were extinct as a civilization)." (p. 89)

(John Amalfi, Mayor of New York, is told that he is atypical enough to pass as a Vegan so they must be quite humanoid but we do not see any of these non-human races. Myrdians are not humanoid. An Okie city must transport "Dr Beetle," real name unpronounceable, in a tank.)

Finally, the concluding Volume of the Tetralogy ends the universe in 4004 (later revised to 4104) but Earthman rule begins in 2522 and is assimilated by another interstellar power, the Web of Hercules, in 4000 so that Earthmen rule for less than one and a half millennia.

That is a pity because the text, like the Prologue, of Earthman, Come Home does refer to thousands of years, which would seem to be necessary for some of the events to occur. That evocative passage from the Prologue presents an intriguing future historical perspective even though it differs in some respects from the fictitious history presented in the rest of the series.

Four Pillars Of Okie Culture

In James Blish's Cities in Flight tetralogy, interstellar trade by "Okie" flying cities is made possible by antigravity, anti-agathics and the germanium-based Oc dollar and is supplemented by the faster than light ultraphone and the instantaneous Dirac transmitter.

Antigravity is discovered in "Bridge" and anti-agathics in "At Death's End" and the Dirac is invented in "Beep" although, for reasons stated elsewhere, this story parted company with the Okie series.

That leaves the Oc dollar without an origin story. (I always thought that "Oc" must abbreviate "Okie" but it was never explained.) This currency matters because its collapse in the main Okie volume Earthman, Come Home (London, 1963) signaled the end of Okie culture. However, Blish does describe its origin in the Prologue to Earthman, Come Home.

Before space travel, germanium's importance for solid-state physics had made it fantastically valuable on Earth. Then:

"The opening of the interstellar frontier drove its price down to a manageable level, and gradually it emerged as the basic, stable monetary value of space trade. Nothing else could have kept the nomads in business." (p. 12)

That is all we are told: not enough for a story but the currency matters because, when it collapses, to be replaced by a drug standard, the Okies are finished and New York leaves the galaxy.

The advantages of the drug standard are:

drugs can be exactly valued by their therapeutic efficacy and availability;
cheaply synthesised drugs "...would be the pennies and nickels of the new coinage..." whereas rare, in demand drugs "...would be the hundred dollar units..." (pp. 121-122);
drug dilution could make debt payment flexible;
drugs, like metals, can be tested for counterfeiting;
rapid outmoding of drugs would prevent hoarding.

There would continue to be paper money but anti-agathic credits would raise the dilemma of using them to relieve poverty or continuing to live in poverty in order to live longer. It is no surprise when Blish's characters, like Poul Anderson's Master Merchants of the declining Polesotechnic League, decide to start afresh elsewhere. The fourth volume of Cities In Flight is set entirely outside the home galaxy where, of course, other problems arise.

The Eight Volumes

Yes, I think that these proposed eight volumes would adequately present James Blish's interconnected works:

I, Some Early Blish.
II, The Galactic Cluster Trilogy.
III, Jack Loftus.
IV, After Such Knowledge.
V, The Seedling Stars.
VI, Cities In Flight.
VII, The Quincunx Tetralogy.
VIII, The Haertel Scholium Coda.

The Haertel Scholium, ie, works referring either to the character Adolph Haertel or to his interstellar drive, comprises Volumes II, III, VII and VIII and a third of IV. Anyone who had read to the end of Vol VI would by then have encountered three Haertel overdrive futures and one spindizzy-Dirac communicator future. (The spindizzy or Dillon-Wagonner gravitron polarity generator is, like the Haertel overdrive, a faster than light interstellar drive.) Vol VII presents a Haertel overdrive-Dirac communicator future.

The instantaneous Dirac communicator, simultaneously receiving all past, present and future Dirac messages in a single "beep" of sound and light, first appeared in a one-off story never published in its original form because, under the guidance of Blish's Editor, John W Campbell, it was transformed into the concluding episode of a four part "Okies" series collected as Earthman, Come Home. That volume plus one pre-Okie novel, one juvenile Okie novel and one post-Okie novel equals Cities In Flight.

The pre-Okie novel, They Shall Have Stars, is a joint novelisation with new material of two stories each showing one of the two discoveries, anti-agathics and antigravity, that were necessary for Okie civilization. Logically, there should be a third story showing the invention of the Dirac communicator. In fact, that story exists but could not be incorporated into Cities In Flight because Blish wanted his Okie characters to meet challenges without being helped by messages from their future. Therefore, both the invention of the Dirac and the extraction of messages from the beep are described in the independent story, "Beep," novelized as The Quincunx Of Time.

In the longer version, one Dirac message describes the background of Blish's story, "A Style In Treason," and another is transmitted in his novel, Midsummer Century. Thus, Volume VII, for which I suggest the title The Quincunx Tetralogy, would contain:

Welcome To Mars, about Haertel's discovery of antigravity;
The Quincunx Of Time;
"A Style In Treason";
Midsummer Century.

The early Adapted Men stories could have fitted into the Okie sequence, and indeed looked as if they were going to, but then the two series developed in different directions so the former are collected as The Seedling Stars. Thus, the contents of Volumes V, VI and VII grew from two roots, the earliest written Okie and "pantropy" (science of Adaptation) stories, but also incorporated other material from the Haertel Scholium (Welcome To Mars and The Quincunx Of Time) and via the Dirac transmitter ("A Style In Treason" and Midsummer Century).

Because most of these works describe the consequences of future scientific discoveries, it makes sense that, in the first part of After Such Knowledge (ASK), Blish presents a fictitious biography of Roger Bacon, the discoverer of scientific method. Because Bacon, a scientist, was mistaken for a magician, it is also appropriate that the second part of ASK is neither sf nor about scientists but fantasy about magicians. The third part of ASK is a Haertel overdrive novel about a future conflict between theology and science.

"Common Time," the opening story of Galactic Cluster, presents Haertel as an elderly scientist receiving a report back from the pilot of the first successful test flight with his overdrive whereas Welcome To Mars, written later, presents him as a teenager discovering antigravity and flying to Mars while a slight variation on that version of Mars is presented in the story that would introduce Vol VIII. These works present creativity without linearity.

Eight Volumes?

A James Blish Complete Works could include eight volumes collecting connected works. I have said most of this before but am trying to refine it.

Vol I, Early Blish: several early stories refer to common characters and technologies. These include "The Real Thrill," which later provided material for a Dirac message received in The Quincunx Of Time, thus in Vol VII below.

II, The Galactic Cluster Trilogy: from Garrard's test flight of the Haertel overdrive through microcosmic exploration to the beginning of interstellar conflict between the Terrestrial Matriarchy and the Central Empire. (In publishing terms, this volume, just three short stories, would be far too short but that is not the point here. Its contents form a linear sequence and are substantial.)

III, The Jack Loftus Novels: from first contact with energy beings called "Angels" to the beginning of a UN-Angels alliance against the Heart Stars Empire.

IV, After Such Knowledge: from Roger Bacon's discovery of scientific method through a magical metaphysical metamorphosis to a conflict between theology and science on an interstellar scale.

V, The Seedling Stars: from the invention of "pantropy," the science of adapting organisms for different environments, to the colonization of the entire galaxy and even of a changed Earth by Adapted Men.

VI, Cities In Flight: from the discovery of antigravity and anti-agathics through flying cities and planets to the end of the universe.

VII, The Quincunx Tetralogy: from Haertel's discovery of antigravity through an unexpected application of the Dirac transmitter (introduced in Vol VI) to both an expanding intergalactic civilisation and a "Rebirth" of human terrestrial civilization.

VIII, The Haertel Scholium Coda: Haertel-related works that do not fit elsewhere. I suggested before that these be included in a Galactic Cluster: Revised Edition but they should be read after all the linear sequences. Thus:

a short story set on not quite the same Mars as that visited by Haertel in the opening novel of Vol VII;
earlier, shorter versions of the second and third works collected in Vol VII;
a short story set in an alternative version of the Angels-Heart Stars history (Vol III)
etc (an editor would decide which other works to collect here and which to place in other volumes of a Complete Works).

Overlapping Trilogies

Not every trilogy is three long volumes. In the British edition of Galactic Cluster by James Blish, three short stories formed a linear sequence:

"Common Time":
an elderly Adolph Haertel and his faster than light overdrive, strange temporal experiences in the spaceship;

"Nor Iron Bars":
the Arpe drive replacing Haertel's,
a planetary explorer called Hammersmith,
microcosmic telepathy;

"Beep":
an unspecified faster than light drive,
a planet called Hammersmith,
the Dirac communicator,
a mention of "...time phenomena..." which I took to refer to "Common Time." (1)

However, the American edition of Galactic Cluster also included "This Earth Of Hours" which fits in more neatly with the first two stories, thus:

"Common Time" and "Nor Iron Bars": as above;
"This Earth Of Hours": the Standing Wave replacing both earlier interstellar drives, macrocosmic telepathy.

Apart from the single word "Hammersmith," "Beep" is really on its own. However, when it had been novelized as The Quincunx Of Time, it then formed a sequence with two other novels.

Welcome To Mars: the young Haertel discovering antigravity;

 
The Quincunx Of Time: as "Beep" but now with explicit references to the young Haertel and his overdrive;

Midsummer Century: the transmission of a Dirac message received earlier in The Quincunx Of Time.

Thus, we wind up with two trilogies connected by Haertel. Since another message received in Quincunx refers to "A Style In Treason," the second trilogy can be upgraded to a tetralogy.

Haertel is also mentioned in a juvenile diptych and in one volume of another trilogy (see earlier posts), but "Common Time" and Welcome To Mars are his only two appearances. In any "Complete Works of James Blish":

the tetralogy as above could be collected in a single volume;

Galactic Cluster could be revised to highlight the trilogy, to shed unrelated stories to other collections and to include Haertel Scholium "loose ends," connected stories that do not quite fit into any linear sequence.  

(1) Blish, James, "Beep" IN Blish, J., Galactic Cluster, London, 1963, pp. 93-128 AT p. 103.

ASK Haertel II

I posted ASK Haertel on Sunday but continued adding to it till Friday. It was not planned but grew in three stages. First, there was an attempt to find some order in the complexity of Blish's Haertel-related works. I have seen these works described as the "Haertel Scholium." This is appropriate because "scholium" is a term much used by Blish himself, for example, in one of the works under consideration:

"...the laws of the macrocosm didn't apply down here; this was the domain of quantum mechanics - though telepathy didn't obey that scholium either." (1)

The Haertel Scholium is divisible into several short comprehensible sub-series. For example, three short stories form a linear sequence in a single collection. This short trilogy starts with a first interstellar round trip and ends by defining a galactic conflict: planets of Population I stars in the galactic centre and the clusters are inhabited by hive organisms hostile to the individual brain-bearing inhabitants of Population II planetary systems like the Solar System. The intermediate story, from which I quoted, describes an exploratory trip to the microcosm and introduces the kind of telepathy that, in the third story, binds together the Central Empire but cannot be used by organisms with brains. Thus, here is a complete interstellar trilogy comparable in theme and content to longer and better known works like Foundation and Dune.

A second sub-series comprises the two novels about the juvenile character, Jack Loftus. This diptych begins with first contact between human beings and energy beings and ends with another galactic conflict when these two kinds of beings begin to plan an alliance against the stagnant tyranny of the Heart Stars Empire. Both the trilogy and the diptych also speculate about possible future directions for human society. In the trilogy, the question is what would result if parents became able to predetermine their children's sex. In the diptych, it is how to organise a high-energy civilization.

Secondly, A Case Of Conscience is both a Haertel overdrive novel and Volume III of the After Such Knowledge Trilogy (ASK) so it was appropriate to include discussion of the Trilogy especially since Volume I, Doctor Mirabilis, is a historical novel about Roger Bacon whom Blish credits as the discoverer of scientific method and thus as the forerunner of scientists like Haertel and his successor, Arpe, who explores the microcosm. Since Bacon was mistaken for a magician, it is appropriate that Volume II, Black Easter/The Day After Judgement, a contemporary fantasy novel about practising magicians, shows what magic would have to be like if it existed.

Thirdly, the conflict between theology and science that is the theme of ASK is present to a lesser extent in Blish's hard sf Okie and pantropy tetralogies so these works had to be mentioned. The Okies study and try to intervene in the imminent end of the universe and, of course, are told by Fundamentalists that this is blasphemous. In "ASK Haertel," I mentioned that a "pantropist" wonders whether he and his colleagues seeding extrasolar planets throughout the galaxy with Adapted Men are guilty of hybris but this speculation is not taken seriously.

However, in another Haertel overdrive novel, The Quincunx Of Time, a group of characters gains a knowledge of future events that might enable them to choose between possible futures for mankind and they do reject the exercise of such power as hybris, adopting instead this message to the "...cosmic Dead Letter Office...": "To Whom it may concern: Thy will, not mine." (2)

The Aristotelean spheres, mentioned as real by a magician in ASK II, are dismissed as a "...bad dream..." but the danger of "...that madness: hybris, or overweening pride..." is taken seriously. (3) (2)

The Haertel Scholium, ASK and the Okie and pantropy series are remarkable both for their common themes and for the diversity of their imagined future scenarios.

(1) Blish, James, "Nor Iron Bars" IN Galactic Cluster, London, 1963,  pp. 61-92 AT p. 74.
(2) Blish, James, The Quincunx Of Time, New York, 1983, p. 104.
(3) ibid., p. 61.

ASK Haertel

Works by James Blish referring to his character Adolph Haertel can be grouped as follows.

The Star Dwellers and Mission To The Heart Stars are the Jack Loftus diptych.

"Common Time," "Nor Iron Bars" and "This Earth Of Hours" are the Galactic Cluster trilogy. (They form a linear sequence and are collected in a volume of that title.)

A Case Of Conscience (ACOC) is Volume III of the After Such Knowledge (ASK) Trilogy. (ASK Vol I, Doctor Mirabilis, and Vol II, Black Easter/The Day After Judgement, are respectively historical and contemporary, thus pre-Haertel.)

Welcome To Mars, The Quincunx Of Time, "A Style In Treason" and Midsummer Century are an untitled tetralogy.

Haertel, young in Welcome To Mars and old in "Common Time," is referred back to by:

Loftus in his diptych;
Arpe in "Nor Iron Bars";
Ruiz-Sanchez in A Case Of Conscience;
Wald in The Quincunx Of Time.

"This Earth Of Hours" refers back to Arpe. The future civilizations of "A Style In Treason" and Midsummer Century transmit Dirac messages received earlier by Wald. In true future historical style, a planet in The Quincunx Of Time is named after a planetary explorer in "Nor Iron Bars." (Quincunx is a novelization of  "Beep" which had been collected in Galactic Cluster, the British edition of which excluded "This Earth Of Hours" so that I originally regarded "Beep" as completing this trilogy.)

Thus, the Haertel Scholium comprises one single volume, one diptych, one trilogy and one tetralogy plus some loose ends:

a short story loosely connected to Welcome To Mars;
another, "A Dusk Of Idols" (see Anywhen cover, below), connected to The Star Dwellers;
earlier, shorter versions of Quincunx and "A Style In Treason."

Works are linked by:

Arpe and Wald, each appearing once;
Haertel and Loftus, each appearing twice;
conflict between sacred and secular knowledge, addressed thrice.

The characters' legacies are:

Roger Bacon in ASK I: scientific method;

magicians in ASK II: a changed relationship to deity;

Haertel and Arpe: interstellar drives, named after them;

Arpe: microcosmic exploration and the discovery that psi forces are characteristic of subatomic space as electromagnetism is of macrocosmic space;

Ruiz-Sanchez: the theological problem of sinless but Godless aliens;

Petard, also in ASK III: his instantaneous communicator, the circum-continuum radio (CirCon);

Wald: (i) his instantaneous communicator, named after Paul Dirac, which, unlike Petard's, receives messages not only from the present but also from the past and future; (ii) a metalanguage for scientific paradigms and multiple dimensions;

Loftus: the Haertel overdrive-using UN, dolphins, extrasolar races and star dwelling energy beings allied against the Heart Stars Empire;

the Traitor in Chief of High Earth in "A Style In Treason": Earth and colonies, using a post-Haertel Imaginary Drive, allied against the Green Exarchy Empire;

Oberholzer in "This Earth Of Hours": the Terrestrial Matriarchy, using a post-Arpe Standing Wave, mobilized against the telepathic Central Empire;

Martels in Midsummer Century: a telepathically guided "Rebirth" of human civilization mobilized against an evolutionary challenge from intelligent Birds.

Thus, ASK and Haertel present:

two theories of telepathy (Arpe's and Martels');
two instantaneous communicators (Circon and Dirac);
three theology-science conflicts (Bacon, magicians and Ruiz-Sanchez);
three interstellar empires (Heart Stars, Green Exarchy and Central Empire);
four interstellar drives (Haertel, Arpe, Imaginary Drive and Standing Wave).

Circon, reaching around the continuum, detects and replies to radio waves currently transmitted light years away whereas the Dirac communicator controls the placement of an electron in the circuits of another Dirac communicator by controlling the frequency and path of a positron moving through a crystal lattice accompanied by de Broglie waves which are transforms of the waves of the electron so that a message is received by amplifying the bursts and reading the signal.

Thus:

Dirac is not radio;
its effect is simultaneous, not wave-like;
CirCon and Dirac are not two names for the same device.

Bacon, wrongly accused of magic, is the historical forerunner of scientists including:

in our era, Einstein and Dirac;
in several Blish futures, Haertel;
in different Haertel futures, Petard and Wald.

Blish's imagined scenarios are both extrapolative and exotic. ASK and Haertel are not a continuous sequence, except for ACOC, but Haertel etc as scientists are Bacon's successors.

Blish appropriately extends the theology-science issue from a medieval monk in ASK I through modern magicians in ASK II to a future Jesuit biologist and an atheist physicist in ASK III. However, despite the seriousness with which Blish treats this issue here, all his other fictitious scientists simply expand human knowledge of the galaxy, the universe, the microcosm and space-time without being troubled by theology.

Ruiz-Sanchez's contemporary, Petard, a lapsed Catholic, parallels the entirely secular Wald's invention of an instantaneous communicator but Wald goes further by also inventing a metalanguage for discussing the succession of scientific paradigms that had been initiated by Bacon in Doctor Mirabilis.

Doctor Mirabilis can therefore be regarded not only as Volume I of ASK but also as a prequel to Blish's various sf series and, in fact, John Amalfi, the central character of Blish's non-Haertel Cities In Flight Tetralogy, does appropriately refer to Bacon when discussing the scientifically predicted imminent end of the universe which, of course, revives theological concerns in some other characters although the title of Cities In Flight Vol IV, The Triumph Of Time, conveys the entirely secular view that time, not eternity, is the final arbiter of human destiny.

This article began as an attempt to group together the works of the Haertel Scholium but, because that Scholium overlaps with the After Such Knowledge Trilogy, it became a discussion of that Trilogy in relation both to the Scholium and to the Cities In Flight Tetralogy. For completeness, we should also mention Blish's shorter tetralogy collected as The Seedling Stars.

In Book Two of The Seedling Stars, extrasolar colonists, temporarily separated from terrestrial scientists, revive the conflict between sacred (scriptural) and secular (scientific) knowledge. In Book Three, the pilot of a crashed spaceship remarks that, if he were a religious man (which clearly he is not), he would think that the crash resulted from divine vengeance for the hubris of trying to seed the galaxy with Adapted Men. He and his fellow "pantropists" play the god-like role of designing microscopic human beings to inhabit water pools on the planet where they have crashed.

In Book Four, Adapted Men have spread throughout the galaxy without encountering any divine vengeance or, as far as we can see, experiencing any further religious qualms although the pagan expletive, "gods of all stars," familiar from Cities In Flight, remains in use. Lithia, the planet whose sinless but Godless inhabitants had disturbed Ruiz-Sanchez, is mentioned. Destroyed by human interventions in 2050 in ACOC, Lithia exists unchanged millennia later in The Seedling Stars so Ruiz-Sanchez's conflicts have not occurred in the essentially secular history of this alternative timeline.

The Dirac transmitter first appeared in the Okie series that became Cities In Flight but the transmitter's capacity to receive messages from the future would not have fitted into Okie culture, where cities fly into the unknown, so it had to be developed separately in one of the Haertel timelines. Similarly, the Okies, interstellar traders, and the Adapted Men, extrasolar colonists, could have complemented each other in a single series but Blish wanted to show that the Okies, despite their anti-agathics, would not live forever and demonstrated this drastically by ending the universe in 4004 whereas the Adapted Men needed much longer to colonize the galaxy so these two series necessarily diverged despite some early common references:

a pantropist refers to the Okie currency, the Oc dollar;
pantropists, like Okies and Wald, have the faster than light ultraphone.

Okies and Wald, but not pantropists, have the instantaneous Dirac transmitter but only Wald and his colleagues receive the Dirac "beep" containing messages from the future and including messages from later stories. Thus, one potential series became three distinct series whose defining technologies are:

"spindizzies," gravitron polarity generators, moving spaceships and cities through space faster than light, later moving a planet between galaxies and to the Metagalactic Centre;

pantropy, adapting human beings to other planets;

the Dirac communicator, receiving Dirac messages transmitted from any other point in space-time.

The text of  "A Style In Treason," and even the Dirac message received from that period, assume faster than light but not instantaneous communication, ultraphone but not Dirac. However, the politics of the period are somehow based on institutionalized deception and Blish would have been able to resolve any inconsistencies in his projected High Earth/Traitors' Guild/Green Exarchy novel.

The various series are also differentiated by their beginnings. Blish laid a sound basis for each series by describing the discoveries underlying his characters' later activities:

antigravity in "Bridge," incorporated into Cities In Flight, Vol I;
anti-agathics in "At Death's End," also incorporated into CIF, Vol I;
pantropy in The Seedling Stars, Book One;
antigravity, this time discovered by Haertel, in Welcome To Mars;
test flight of the Haertel overdrive in "Common Time";
test flight of the Arpe Drive in "Nor Iron Bars";
the theory of telepathy that later accounts for the Central Empire, also in "Nor Iron Bars";
the Dirac transmitter in "Beep," novelized as The Quincunx Of Time;
scientific method in Doctor Mirabilis.

Blish did not envisage any single political future:

when anti-gravity and antiagathics have been discovered and some extrasolar planets colonized, Russia wins the Cold War and bans space travel but, later, with anti-gravity rediscovered and the Vegan Tyranny defeated, a new confederation, roughly based on the former UN, rules Arm II until replaced by the Web of Hercules although New Earthmen continue to control the Greater Magellanic Cloud and the planet He explores the Andromeda galaxy;

the Greater Earth Port Authority, so enriched by tolls that its police force has absorbed the United States armed forces, aims to charge landing fees on terraformed planets and nearly suppresses pantropy but Adapted Men escape and occupy the galaxy;

ACOC's UN has imposed a world government in response to Corridor Riots in the self-sufficient city-sized underground nuclear air raid shelters controlled by Target Area Authorities derived from self-policing port authorities;

Loftus' UN world government, which controls a high-energy culture maintaining a large unemployed majority in comfort but not allowing them to vote or procreate, learns that the Heart Stars is a stagnant tyranny and allies with other races against it;

in Oberholzer's future, sperm electrophoresis enables parents to predetermine children's sex, causing a glut of males and a Matriarchy which discovers that planets of Population I stars in the galactic center and the clusters are populated by beings with hive mentalities and ganglia instead of brains and who regard brains as tumors so are hostile to the brained inhabitants of planets of Population II stars like Sol;

in the High Earth period, neither the ultraphone nor the Imaginary Drive permits hegemony over more than ten light years but a uniform interstellar economy is maintained with traitors as brokers in a bourse where planets seek financial advantage although half of the human worlds are ruled by the Green Exarch which draws tithes from six fallen empires older than man;

Wald's successors in the Earth intelligence bureau foresee themselves preventing disasters and presiding over peaceful intergalactic expansion, then do what they have foreseen themselves doing. (As Brian Aldiss wrote in an Introduction to The Quincunx Of Time, this novel really is about the future. Not only do we read about a fictitious future but the characters receive a series of messages from different periods of their future.)

These are seven very differently imagined futures although the High Earth-Green Exarchy conflict is supposed to be incorporated somehow into the peaceful expansion supervised by Wald's successors - unless, contradicting both their theory and their policy, this Dirac message turns out after all to originate from a merely potential future which they prevent instead of causing? (I don't think so but there you are.) 

ASK, Haertel, Okies and pantropy are not one series but they are a single coherent body of work: one diptych, two trilogies and three tetralogies. Uniform editions could comprise six volumes including a revised Galactic Cluster containing the short trilogy and the "loose ends."

"It was not until 2011 that the great Haertel succeeded..." (1)

Haertel's achievements, not necessarily mutually compatible, were:

to incorporate Einstein's relativity into Milne's and Milne's into his own (he did this in 2011, last year!);

to prove that there is only one fundamental particle;

to assume at the age of seventeen that a Pythagorean geometry of points, not a Euclidean geometry of lines, applies to ultimate particles like positrons;

also at age seventeen, to discover anti-gravity and fly a tree hut to Mars.

Loftus' mentor regards Haertel as the greatest theoretical physicist ever and Wald sometimes thinks that he must have been God so it is unsurprising that he is prominent in several timelines.

(1) Blish, James, Mission To The Heart Stars, London, 1980, p. 48.