The Time Traveller's dinner guests discuss verifying the accepted account of the Battle of Hastings but also the danger of attracting attention as anachronisms.
A time travelling historian unintentionally alters the course and outcome of the Battle of Gettysburg.
Two time travellers deliberately change the outcome of the Battle of Ticinus.
A quantum fluctuation in space-time-energy changes the outcome of the Battle of Rignano.
Four stages culminating in two by Poul Anderson.
Future History Series
Robert Heinlein planned his Future History.
Poul Anderson modelled his Psychotechnic History on Heinlein's Future History.
Anderson's Technic History was an unplanned Heinleinian future history.
Three stages culminating in two by Anderson.
Artificial Life
Viktor Frankenstein created human life.
AIs dominate Earth.
The Terrestrial AI re-creates extinct human life.
Three stages culminating in two by Anderson.
Magic As Technology
Magic becomes a workable technology.
Magic becomes a workable technology in more detail in two novels.
Three stages culminating in two by Anderson.
5 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Besides H.G. Wells and Ward Moore, Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) and L. Strague De Camp also wrote pioneering time traveling stories: A CONNECTICUT YANKEE AT KING ARTHUR'S COURT and LEST DARKNESS FALL. I've read all of these except Twain's book, which I think you did not like.
I think it was De Camp who founded what became the alternate worlds subgenre of science fiction like THE WHEELS OF IF. Something to which Anderson greater depth and scientific plausibility in THREE HEARTS AND THREE LIONS. Nowadays, Harry Turtledove and S.M. Stirling specialize in that branch of SF. I like Turtledove's AGENT OF BYZANTIUM stories, but I think is the better writer.
Ad astra! Sean
I meant: "...but I think STIRLING is the better writer." Drat!
Sean
Sean,
A CONNECTICUT YANKEE has a pre-Wells phrase for time travel: "transposition of epochs." I thought that the Yankee's interventions in the past were implausible and that Twain spent too much time telling us how bad life was back then. I did not finish reading the book.
Paul.
Alternate histories date back a long way -- because it's impossible not to speculate how one's own life would have been different if something had fallen out in a different way, and the same applies to history. (Churchill wrote an alternate history based on a Confederate victory in the ACW, for example.)
De Camp helped establish it as a sub-genre of SF, though.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I agree, I'm sure most humans have wondered what might have resulted if B,C, or D had happened to them, instead of A.
And I have read Churchill's intriguing thought experiment on what might have happened if the Confederates had won at Gettysburg.
And I still have fond memories of De Camp and Pratt's Incompleat Magician stories. Or their TALES FROM GAVAGAN'S BAR.
Ad astra! Sean
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