-Poul Anderson, "Time Patrol" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 1-53 AT 2, p. 6.
"The thirty-first millennium was...far earlier than the development of the first time machines..."
-Poul Anderson, "The Year of the Ransom" IN Time Patrol, pp. 641-735 AT 15 April 1610, p. 660.
"Temporal, the artificial language with which Patrolmen from all ages could communicate without being understood by strangers...."
-"Time Patrol," p. 12.
"...Temporal, the common speech of the Time Patrol and many civilian travelers..."
-"The Year of the Ransom," p. 657.
There is a shift from the idea that the past is hard to change to the idea that it easily changes itself continually. Is there a reality change that we have not noticed during the course of the series?
13 comments:
Dang it! Testing.
Sean
Kaor, Paul! I fear Anderson missed a contradiction here: AD 19352 is a lot earlier than the THIRTY FIRST millennium. Ad astra! Sean
Kaor, Paul! I regret to say this, but Anderson slipped up here. AD 19352 is lot earlier than the THIRTY FIRST millennium. Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
But are we reading about two different versions of the timeline?
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
That notion would "save the appearances," as far as the Time Patrol's history goes. But I think this was a detail Anderson overlooked.
I more or less repeated myself twice, because some of my comments has been disappearing.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
I spotted the repetition but I faithfully reproduced it in order to leave nothing out.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Thanks, I have no problem with that!
Ad astra! Sean
No matter how careful you are and how much copyediting is done, this sort of error will persist in a work of any length. I just happens.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
True, writers will make some slip ups of that king, no matter how hard they try not to. I think Larry Niven wrote an amusing essay about how SF fans like to play the game of "gotcha" with such writers, pointing out to them errors and inconsistencies. That annoys some, while others, such as Poul Anderson, take it with rueful good humor.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Anderson, of course, pointed out that even scripture is inconsistent.
When I visited a nearby Hindu Temple, I was told that "there are different versions of the story" about the elephant-headed god, Ganesh.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I know, as Anderson mentioned in that article about future histories.
Ad astra! Sean
Hinduism is, even more than most, a "portmanteau" religion -- endless local stories crammed into a single metanarrative, and the joints show.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
That's basically how I regard Hinduism, different waves of invaders over the millennia superimposing their own gods over those of earlier peoples. With those of the Indo-Europeans being merely the latest. With no attempt made at sorting out and rationalizing the contradictory pantheons. And the joints, as you said, shows!
Ad astra! Sean
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