Friday 29 July 2016

Beneficial Effects Of Involuntary Pastward Time Travel

SM Stirling, Island In The Sea Of Time (New York, 1998), pp. 247-248.

Deprived of mass media, people get involved in:

militia
amdram
guitar lessons
piano lessons
quilting bees
glee clubs
learn-how-to-make-it groups
debating societies
mushroom-collecting circles

Further, exercise, low-fat food, no cigarettes and little alcohol make them average ten pounds lighter.

Another form of entertainment would be for everyone to give a talk on his or her interests. I realized that I have four kinds of subjects that I know something about:

those that I have studied formally;
those that I have read up on out of interest;
those that I have had to read up on in order to teach about them;
those that I have learned something about through political involvement.

By contrast, Poul Anderson's Time Patrol Academy gives concentrated physical and mental training to recruits who will face challenging tasks in different historical periods.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

I've just barely started rereading ISLAND IN THE SEA OF TIME, so I've not yet come to the activities you listed here. But, I am bemused at the idea of collecting MUSHROOMS.

And I can imagine as well more people taking a serious interest in games like chess.

It wasn't just the Time Patrol's Academy which gave cadets concentrated physical and mental training. The Academy ran by the Intelligence Corps of the Terran Empire gave its cadets a very similar training as well.

Sean