Poul Andersion's version of that is:
"A few generations can make aliens of ancestor and descendant." ("Death And The Knight" IN Time Patrol, p. 748)
Aliens, foreigners. A generation is twenty years, right? Five in a century. Only a hundred generations in two millennia. I remember three of my four grandparents. They were born in the late nineteenth century. My granddaughter and her contemporaries may have children who will live into the twenty second century - a long stretch of time to be linked by a single person. One English family knew that a direct ancestor had been an eyewitness of the execution of Charles I in 1649.
Despite their chronokinetic capacity, Time Patrolmen find it easier to work with their own contemporaries:
"'...he's my contemporary by birth - not American: British, but a twentieth-century Western man who must think pretty much like me.'" (ibid.)
Thus, Everard is "'...probably the best man available...'" (p. 746) to rescue field scientist Hugh Marlow who has been arrested by the Knights Templar that he is investigating in 1307. This is an aspect of Patrol activity that might have been developed further if the series had been continued longer. How much danger was there of misunderstanding and cross-purposes between agents from very different generations? Everard and Wanda have opposite attitudes to hunting. Carl Farness talks about the sexual revolution of the 1960s to a doctor who is unimpressed - based in 2319.
"'Fashions come and go...'" (p. 375) is her only comment.
2 comments:
I remember both my grandmothers who would have read about the Jack the Ripper murders in their daily newspapers as they happened.
Hi, John!
That reminded me of how Patricia Cornwell, in her book PORTRAIT OF A KILLER, made what I thought was a convincing case for believing Jack the Ripper was an artist named Walter Sickert.
Sean
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