Haertel's Significance In Three Timelines

 

If the central character of James Blish's Welcome To Mars had not been surnamed Haertel, then there would have been no reason to classify this novel as belonging to the Haertel Scholium. 

Publication Order

The Star Dwellers (1961)

Mission To The Heart Stars (1965)

Welcome To Mars (1966)

Midsummer Century (1972)

The Quincunx Of Time (1973)

The first and second titles form a pair as do the fourth and fifth. Thus, these five novels present three narratives.

In Mission To The Heart Stars:

Einstein ruled out faster-than-light travel;

"Milne...taught that the speed-of-light limitation was only a mathematical limitation, not a natural law."

-James Blish, Mission To The Heart Stars (London, 1980), CHAPTER FOUR, p. 47;

in the mid-1960's, Dingle found errors in Einstein's reasoning;

in 2011, a paper by Haertel showed that Einstein's relativity was a special case of Milne's which was a special case of Haertel's;

in 2030, faster-than-light interstellar travel began.

Jack Loftus is the hero of these first two novels. Jack's mentor, Dr Langer, thinks that Haertel was the greatest theoretical physicist ever.

It remains to summarize information about "Haertel" as given both in Welcome To Mars and in The Quincunx Of Time. However, it is getting late here and there is always tomorrow.

Haertel's Significance In Three Timelines II

See: Haertel's Significance In Three Timelines

Publication Order

The Star Dwellers (1961)

Mission To The Heart Stars (1965)

Welcome To Mars (1966)

Midsummer Century (1972)

The Quincunx Of Time (1973)

Only the first, second and fifth of these Haertel Scholium novels present a scenario of interstellar civilization with regular use of the Haertel overdrive. Mission To The Heart Stars, a direct sequel to The Star Dwellers, culminates when "Angels" (energy beings) and Earthmen begin to lead an alliance of other intelligent species, including dolphins, beadmungen and the feline Aaa, against the Heart Stars federation, the Hegemony of Malis, whereas, in The Quincunx Of Time, Earth alone, monopolizing the instantaneous Dirac transmitter with its messages from the future, leads a utopian intergalactic civilization. If the Haertel Scholium had comprised a single linear sequence, then the Martian dune-cats in Welcome To Mars might have taken the place of the Aaa in the two Jack Loftus novels.

In Welcome To Mars:

Einstein maintained that gravity was not a force but a condition of space and tried to prove that it lacked polarity;

Milne's relativity incorporated Einstein's;

in the late twentieth century, Adolph ("Dolph") Haertel, aged seventeen, studied Milne, Dingle and any other theoreticians of gravity;

Haertel discovered that gravity has polarity and can be easily manipulated by working with it instead of against it.

In James Blish's Cities In Flight, control of gravity (with polarity) leads to a faster-than-light interstellar drive. Is this what happens in the Haertel Scholium, at least in that branch of the Scholium represented by Welcome To Mars? Alternatively, one Haertel discovers anti-gravity and another discovers FTL. Texts bear alternative interpretations.

In The Quincunx Of Time:

Haertel, aged seventeen, assumed that the geometry of ultimate particles is Pythagorean, not Euclidean, applying to points, not to lines, and thus transformed particle physics;

Haertel's assumption generated a Unified Field Theory and abolished both the equivalency principle and most of quantum mechanics except the part that is necessary for the Dirac transmitter;

Thor Wald, inventor of the transmitter, jocularly suggests that Haertel "'...must have been God...'" (James Blish, The Quincunx Of Time (New York, 1973), CHAPTER SIX, p. 67)

The Quincunx Of Time follows Welcome To Mars by stating that Haertel did something important at the age of seventeen. However, he either discovered anti-gravity or assumed Pythagorean particle geometry. These seem to be completely different. 

Welcome To Mars

We can perceive any one book very differently. Some - the Bible, the Koran, The Origin of Species - are so influential that we acknowledge their significance and have some idea of their content, or message, even if we have never read them.

Of the books that we have read, it makes a difference whether we have merely read them once or twice in the past, have reread them recently or have studied them. Certain works by James Blish are almost designed to re-arrange themselves in our heads if they are reread or studied closely:

both Welcome To Mars and Galactic Cluster feature Adolph Haertel;

both The Star Dwellers and Mission To The Heart Stars feature Jack Loftus;

The Quincunx Of Time and Midsummer Century are linked by a "Dirac message";

of the four works mentioned here that do not feature Haertel, three nevertheless do refer to him, as does A Case Of Conscience;

thus, these seven volumes are closely interconnected without forming a linear sequence.

I am currently rereading Welcome To Mars (London, 1978). Having already introduced Haertel as an adult and a future equivalent of Einstein, Blish now tells us about Haertel's parents and his teenage years, when he is known as "Dolph." Mission To The Heart Stars describes Milne and Dingle as intermediate between Einstein and Haertel and Welcome To Mars shows us Haertel studying these intermediaries.

Milne died in 1950. This was "...nearly twenty years before Dolph's birth..." (p. 18). Let us call that eighteen or nineteen years. So Dolph is born in 1968 or '69.

"At the age of seventeen, Dolph Haertel had discovered anti-gravity." (p. 14)

- so that was in 1985 or '86. Blish's Foreword and Afterword are dated 1965 and the text of the novel assumes no Moon landing yet, not even by '85 or '86. Dolph, flying his tree hut to Mars, will be the first man on another planet.

Dolph discovers that gravity "...has polarity..." (pp. 18, 27) and therefore "...could be manipulated..." (p. 18). Although Haertel does not mention the Blacket-Dirac equations, gravitational polarity does sound like the graviton polarity generators, nicknamed "spindizzies," of Blish's Okies or Cities In Flight series and, in fact, Dolph's "...breadboard rig..." (p. 19) does indeed function like a mini-spindizzy by lifting the Haertel's garage an inch from the Earth, thus confirming that it is able to lift a smaller object into space.

There were plans to film two of Blish's juvenile works, this Haertel novel and the second Okie novel. If this had been done, might the two films have become a series with the Haertel overdrive and the Dillon-Waggoner graviton polarity generator merging into a single Haertel graviton polarity generator?

Finally, for this post, Haertel's device functions like Cavorite: Dolph leaves Earth by shutting out terrestrial gravity, then approaches Mars by letting in Martian gravity. Never forget Wells.