"It was a peculiar feeling to read the headlines and know, more or less, what was coming next. It took the edge off, but added a sadness, for this was a tragic era. He could sympathize with Whitcomb's desire to go back and change history."
-Poul Anderson, "Time Patrol" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 1-53 AT 3, p. 17.
Or with the desire to go forward and change some future history? Might a Patrol agent get away with changing a small part of the future without his colleagues or superiors realizing that he had done it?
Would someone in 1954 even begin to understand the complexities of 2023? In James Blish's The Quincunx of Time, the characters receive messages from their future but realize that they cannot understand any that are from too far ahead. Blish's fictional organization called simply "the Service" protects future events just as Anderson's Time Patrol protects "past" events whereas the Temporal Bureau in Robert Heinlein's "All You Zombies" need not protect any events because they are immutable. Heinlein, Blish and Anderson present a temporal triad.
8 comments:
Someone knowledgeable from 1954 wouldn't have all that much problem with 2023, I think.
Most people, however, have a very distorted view of historical change. Either they're teleological about it -- thinking of change as 'progress' -- or they tend to think the past is uniform and the future will be, with the period -they're- in as one of rapid, unusual change.
It's a distance effect.
Kaor, Paul!
I can see why you might be surprised by recent news, so many politicians are showing how they have clay feet! But I am not surprised, because human beings are often going to be so FLAWED.
Ad astra! Sean
I frequently remind myself of the proverb the Persian king's wise men came up with when asked to find one that would be true in all times and places:
"This, too, shall pass."
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
True, but, so often blundering idiots like "Josip" can do great harm before they mercifully pass from the scene. Here I'm thinking of how that dotard seems set on doing nothing EFFECTIVE about that Chinese base in CUBA, barely 90 miles from Florida!!!
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
I referred to news from the US. You referred to many politicians, then to Biden. Obviously there is a lot in the news.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
All politicians, like all humans, have clay feet--some more likely to shatter than others!
The news about Chinese intrigues in Cuba were esp. angering to me! Ever since "Josip's" catastrophically humiliating and botched withdrawal from Afghanistan the enemies of the US, esp. China, has been probing, to see how far they can go pushing around a weak President. And that Chinese spy balloon moseying around the US without being shot down until TOO LATE must have given Xi and his Politburo joy! A blazing green light to China to go on to even more provocations, like that base in Cuba!
The end result, if not corrected and reversed by Republican Presidents, can only be dire.
AGAIN, I'm thinking the "real" Josip would have done better! At least he seems to have been guided, usually, by the realists in the Policy Board.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean:
My understanding is that the Afghanistan withdrawal was started by Trump, leaving Biden with no really good options. I think you let your dislike of Biden (all Democrats?) blind you.
Kaor, Jim!
Incorrect. That "agreement" was contingent on the good behavior of the Taliban, and EVERYBODY knows, or should know, that promises from such scum are worthless. Moreover, when "Josip" took office the military presence of the US in Afghanistan was minimal, about 2,500 personnel, mostly to give support to USAF strikes against the Taliban. Those strikes, combined with attacks by Afghan gov't ground forces, were sufficient to keep the Taliban in the hills.
In short, Afghanistan was as stable as could reasonably be hoped for. THEN that senile idiot
"Josip" and his puppet masters began that needless, pell mell, bungled, chapotic US withdrawal from Kabul in June 2021, resulting in all the baleful consequences we have been seeing since then. And you can bet Putin in Russia, Xi in China, that crazy fat guy in Korea, the ayatollahs in Iran, and all the other enemies of the US took eager note of what dolts "Josip" and the people around him are!\
Ad astra! Sean
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