After And During

Many people experienced or participated in the Russian Revolution. Many have read Leon Trotsky's History Of The Russian Revolution. Some, like Trotsky himself, were able to do both. Born in 1949, I can only read about the Revolution. This is the familiar chronological sequence:

if we are alive when an important event occurs, then we might experience it;
afterwards, we might read about it;
but, if we are born too late, then we can only read about it.

(There is an intermediate stage: reading about contemporary events in the newspapers is intermediate between directly experiencing them and reading about them after the event. However, I met a man who had participated in the Battle of Cable St when a counter-demonstration prevented the British Union of Fascists from marching through a Jewish quarter in London. What did he see on the day? The backs of other people's heads. How did he know that they had stopped the Fascists? He read about it in the papers the following day.)

Time travel implies the fascinating possibility of first studying an historical event, then directly experiencing it. The Time Traveler's dinner guests speculate about visiting the Battle of Hastings although, in the published text, the Time Traveler himself visits only the future. The protagonist of Ward Moore's Bring The Jubilee, a historian of the War of Southron Independence, sets out to observe the Battle of Gettysburg and inadvertently changes its outcome.

Poul Anderson's Carl Farness says:

"'...Ermanaric...is a real if shadowy figure around the middle and late fourth century.'" (Time Patrol, p. 358)

Later in his career but earlier in history, Carl as the Wanderer leads a small band that tries to make peace with Ermanaric, a big man with black locks and spade beard, attired in splendor, no longer a shadowy figure.