Friday 8 June 2018

The Future After 1973

Sean suggested in the combox here that, if Jack Havig visited our time, then he would learn about the Internet. However, our time does not exist in Havig's timeline. His "future" starts in 1973 when There Will Be Time was published. Because the Time Patrol was a continuing series with its central character based in the second half of the twentieth century, Anderson did not divulge any information about later decades of the century until they were with us. Thus, Gorbachev arrived both in reality and in the series. Because There Will Be Time was a single work, its fictional future started the day after it was published.

Havig to Robert Anderson:

"'Do you know the oceans supply half our oxygen? By 1970, insecticide was in the plankton. By 1990, every ocean was scummy, and stank, and you didn't dare swim in it.'"
-Poul Anderson, There Will Be Time (New York, 1973), V, p. 53.

I have not yet pinned down the date of the War of Judgment but I am sure that it is earlier than 2018.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

Obviously, as I see now, I was wrong to think Jack Havig was in the same timeline as ours. And the details about the oceans merely confirms my error. We certainly do have problems or dangers as regards the environment, but OUR oceans has not yet become scummy and unsafe to swim in.

I'm inclined to agree, the War of Judgment in THERE WILL BE TIME almost certainly broke out before the 2018 of that book.

Sean