temporal physics are as described in Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series - although I would disagree with Patrol theory of causality violation;
thus, I would say of a deleted event not that it simply does not exist but that it did exist in the past of a second temporal dimension (see early articles on the Logic of Time Travel blog);
a timecycle somehow comes into my possession (preferably together with some futuristic longevity treatment);
either I evade the Time Patrol or there is no such organization in this timeline;
a historian accurately records that a German barbarian hanged a Roman prisoner from a tall ash tree in a grove just north of Castra Vetera in the winter of 823 AUC (70 AD);
by reading maps and casting about on the timecycle, I find the hanging;
by intervening earlier, I rescue the prisoner, making it look as if he escaped without help;
I, Paul 1, "return" to a twenty first century in which there never has been any record of that hanging in 823;
this altered timeline is inhabited by Paul 2, who has the timecycle but who did not set off on that rescue mission;
I have duplicated myself and the timecycle;
Paul 2 and I set off on different but similar missions, thus finding ourselves in different timelines;
eventually, one of us makes a change that prevents our birth;
a more ambitious project would be to sabotage the early careers of Hitler and Stalin;
but there would be too little lifespan for all the research necessary to intervene at exactly the right times and places to make significant changes;
an organization, an anti-Patrol, would be necessary.
5 comments:
Hi, Paul!
Ha! Amusing, these speculations on what you might do if you ever get a time cycle.
And I too wish there could have been some way of "diverting" Staling and Hitler from becoming the monsters they became. What might have happened in history if Stalin had indeed become a Russian Orthodox priest or Hitler a professional and successful artist?
Sean
Sean,
I expected you to back the Patrol argument that interfering will almost certainly only make things worse!
We could not make Hitler an artist, of course, but we could maybe prevent his conception, as Carl Farness suggests.
Paul.
Hi, Paul!
Ha! Now that you've mentioned it, yes, I would indeed have back the Time Patrol's view that trying to prevent men like Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler from becoming the monsters they became would almost certainly make things worse. To say nothing, of course, of how that would abort the time line leading to the Danellians.
I would far rather Hitler had become a useful or harmless person than to prevent him from being born. I would not want to use means of preventing his conception that would harm his innocent parents.
Sean
Diverting sperm so a brother or sister instead of Adolph is born instead. Prevent conception in *that* month so a brother or sister is conceived the next month. Neither would harm his innocent parents.
On a personal note, any such intervention would prevent my birth. My father joined the RCAF in WWII which got him tuition for University study at McGill, where he met my mother. I expect similar conditions would apply to anyone born after 1945.
As for preventing WWII, there are a multitude of possibilities. I will mention 2 I ave thought of.
Eg: Change WWI. Gallipoli works well enough that some concessions by the Entente get Turkey to accept neutrality & allow Allied shipping to get supplies to Russia. Even if Nicholas II falls something like the Kerensky government wins against Germany & there is no plausibility to the 'stab in the back' myth. The French suffer less from a shorter war so they can accept imposing less onerous terms on Germany etc.
Something I would like to run by someone who is expert on the history of German unification in the 19th century. My impression is that the overwhelming majority of German speakers then wanted a united Germany, but Bismarck sabotaged any version that wasn't dominated by the Prussian monarchy. So prevent his conception & we get a united Germany that is less authoritarian & militaristic than the one we read about in the history books. So no WWI, no WWII.
Kaor, Jim!
Well, yes, some means of preventing Adolf Hitler from being conceived that would not harm his parents is certainly attractive. Maybe his father being called away to Vienna for a seminar on customs/tariffs law the month before his son would have been conceived would have done that.
Yes, there was a strong movement within the Germanies for a union of the German states stronger than that provided by the Germanic Confederation set up after the Napoleonic wars. There were two candidates: unification by either Austria or Prussia. My view is that a united Germany which was not unduly aggressive or too prone to authoritarianism might have arisen if Austria had won the Seven Weeks War of 1866.
The Hitler we know about would have been impossible if there had been no WW I. If there had been no Sarajevo Assassination he would never have embarked on the path leading Adolf to becoming Chancellor in 1933. To say nothing of how no WW I would have meant no Russian Revolution, no Lenin and Stalin coming to rule Russia. The world would have been completely different from what we now see (even tho WE would not have been born!). Better or worse? Impossible for us to say, altho my personal belief is it would have been better.
Ad astra! Sean
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