In a passage under the heading, 22 July 1435, Castelar, having kidnapped Wanda Tamberly, tells her that they are on an island that she will know as Santa Cruz:
"'...five hundred years hence.'" (p. 697)
She reflects:
"Breathe slow and deep. Heart, take it easy. I've read my share of science fiction. Time travel." (ibid.)
Stating it as baldly as this strains the willing suspension of disbelief. How credible is it that, having read The Time Machine etc, someone will, shortly afterwards, be kidnapped by a man on anything like a stolen Time Patrol timecycle? Would our reading of sf help us to cope? Probably not.
I think that one of two propositions is definitely true of time travel:
(i) it is impossible;
- or:
(ii) if it can and does happen, then it is completely unlike the "time travel" that has been imagined.
Maybe a time journey will also have to be a long space journey? In any case, motorbike-like vehicles do not appear out of nowhere.
(Of course, Anderson did cover long space-time journeys in The Avatar.)
8 comments:
SF has had a constantly growing impact on popular culture for the last three generations. It's obvious when I think back on what I experienced as a SF fan in the 70's, for example.
So people's mental reaction to, for example, meeting aliens or being transported through time would be quite different from what would have happened if it took place in, say, 1950.
I've tried to bring that out in my writing when dealing with people from our time or around it, not least in the series that began with TO TURN THE TIDE.
They're all thoroughly familiar with the -concept- of time travel. They don't believe it actually exists, but when confronted with the fact of it they adjust much more quickly than their grandparents would have.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
SF certainly left its mark on me since I was 13 or 14! And even on my long-departed father, born in 1903. He started reading the books of Anderson from the ones I left about the house and enjoyed them.
I too have sometimes wondered how I would react to meeting aliens. Alas, I don't think I would have been as clever about it as Sean Francis Xavier Lindquist in "Peek! I See You!" Ditto, wondering how I would react to time traveling.
I love your books set in Antonine Rome and I did see how L. Sprague De Camp's classic LEST DARKNESS FALL was mentioned/used by those stranded Americans. I've also been looking for any Andersonian allusions.
Ad astra! Sean
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
IIRC, you even had Arthur/Artorius quoting that grimly amusing line from Tolkien's THE LORD OF THE RINGS, about that orc sergeant sardonically saying, "Where there's a whip there's a will"! Loved that little touch!
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: well, that's been the attitude in a -lot- of places, historically.
And then there is discussion between Artorius and a high ranking Roman about how he gets such good work out of the workers at the iron works. The Roman assumes a lot of whipping, while Artorius has gone with the carrot rather than the stick.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling and Jim!\
Mr. Stirling: True, brutality has been the norm of almost all human history. Albeit I was thinking more of appreciating the Tolkienian allusion.
Jim: I remember that! The carrot is the better way to go, not the stick or the whip.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: though the carrot here is attractive precisely because of the contrast with general Roman methods for manual laborers.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I agree, Artorius' genius lay in giving his employees at those new iron works the opportunity of having a stake in them, a chance of personally profiting from them. Classic free enterprise economics!
Ad astra! Sean
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