Time Patrol by Poul Anderson
The Earth Book Of Stormgate by Poul Anderson
Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy, if that could be considered as a single work
Time Patrol presents:
time travel paradoxes
history
mythology
the future
another fictional character, Sherlock Holmes
The Earth Book:
completes the Polesotechnic League series
almost completes the story of human-Ythrian interactions
prepares the way for the rest of the Technic History
5 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Good choices, if ether of us ever got stranded on a desert island. My choices might have been:
The Bible
Dante's DIVINE COMEDY
Your selections from Anderson's works
Solzhenitsyn's massive THE RED WHEEL series.
These are very arbitrary listings, of course. There are so many other works worthy of being stranded with!
Ad astra! Sean
I recall a short essay on a similar question.
What books would you want to have to help you rebuild civilization in the aftermath of eg: nuclear war? You are restricted to a rather small volume of *paper*.
The authors list included IIRC
The CRC Handbook of Physics & Chemistry.
Greys Anatomy
Merck Manual.
He very pointedly did *not* include anything on psychology politics etc. because we don't have anything in the social sciences that is anywhere near as reliable as our knowledge of physical & biological sciences.
See also the scene in 'Orion Shall Rise" when some major characters are in a sort of museum & see a *hand copied* table of logarithms from the period shortly after the collapse of the previous civilization.
Kaor, Jim!
I disagree with the author of that essay you read on how best to rebuild a civilization after a really massive collapse and downfall. I prefer the way Anderson handled similar ideas in VAULT OF THE AGES. To quote from the explanatory engraving found in the Time Vault of that story in Chapter Three: "IN THIS VAULT THERE ARE BOOKS WHICH EXPLAIN WHAT WE KNOW OF SCIENCE AND HISTORY, STARTING WITH SIMPLE THINGS WHICH ANYONE CAN UNDERSTAND AND GOING ON TO THE PROUDEST DISCOVERIES OF THE HUMAN RACE. OUR SMALLER TOOLS AND MACHINES ARE HERE, AND MODELS OF THE LARGER ONES, TO HELP YOU LEARN AND REBUILD." Take note, rebuilding has to start at a level which can be understood by the survivors of a crash or their descendants. Start with the simpler things before going on to the more advanced stuff.
And I absolutely disagree with the condescending attitude of the writer you read had to the fumbling efforts of the human race at learning wisdom. In VAULT Anderson had the unknown founder of the Time Vault continuing: "HERE, TOO, ARE WHAT I COULD GATHER OF THE GREAT PROPHETS AND PHILOSOPHERS AND ARTISTS FROM ALL OUR PAST AGES, TO EXPLAIN HOW A REGAINED POWER SHOULD BE USED WITH MORE WISDOM AND KINDNESS THAN OUR UNHAPPY WORLD HAS SHOWN, AND TO INSPIRE YOU NOT MERELY TO IMITATE US, BUT TO GO ON FOR YOURSELVES AND CREATE NEWER AND BETTER DREAMS OF YOUR OWN." To be ignorant of our past and unwilling to think about what it means and how it will affect us is not going to help.
Ad astra! Sean
The author of that essay explicitly limited himself to a volume that could only hold about half a dozen large books. That makes it hard to choose anything covering the humanities. There is too much that is as well established as anything in the physical sciences.
If you can make a device that would last a long time & read some sort of highly dense data storage ( eg:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5D_optical_data_storage) then including anything that might be helpful would be the thing to do.
One book on how to organize society that I would include is this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Never_at_War
on how democracies seldom or even never go to war with each other. I would also include links to criticisms of it.
Kaor, Jim!
I would still disagree, if only because I would prefer to attempt my own Time Vault at a lower level of technology, something more likely to be of practical use by the survivors of a crash of civilization. Sturdily bound printed books (many covering topics at a fairly basic level), tools and simple machines, etc. Basically, what Anderson's Time Vault had.
If you are only going to have a Time Capsule with six books, at least three will need to be fairly basic, the other three going on to more advanced levels.
Ad astra! Sean
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