Of course, time travelers can remove goods from buildings about to be destroyed without disrupting history and can even take a hand in the destruction if they are sufficiently unscrupulous. In fact, in There Will Be Time, agents of the Eyrie plunder the past and try to control their future so maybe they are Temporal Imperialists?
Neldorians are less ambitious, aiming merely to change the past in order to enrich themselves. Exaltationists aim to eliminate the Patrol, then to fight time change wars between themselves until their last survivor reigns supreme - but s/he would then be able to rule Earth in a single period without needing to conquer earlier or later periods. A Temporal Empire would be a complicated project indeed.
9 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I dunno, a "Temporal Empires" seems a contradiction in terms. Starting from one milieu or era or another, are we think of a group of time travelers covertly or overtly ruling past or future eras? Could that be done in practical terms? Could a Temporal Empire rule, say, our Earth now and the Earth of a thousand years from now? I'm finding it difficult getting my head around that concept!
Robert Heinlein used a possibly similar idea in GLORY ROAD, as did, I think, Keith Laumer in WORLDS OF THE IMPERIUM.
Sean
Sean,
I know it is far-fetched but I accidentally created the term so I tried to give it some meaning1 I think that both the works you cited featured multiple universes/timelines but not time travel.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Correct, Heinlein and Laumer used the alternate world/universe hypothesis for the works I cited. But these works were the closest I could think of which had anything like a "Temporal Empire" in them.
Sean
A possibly amusing not-quite-quibble: The word "temporal" of course has a variant meaning, specifically "secular" -- and in a space-opera written in 1983 by Adrienne Martine-Barnes, the hero was a naval officer serving the "Kardus Temporal Empire." Since there was no hint of time-travel in that story, apparently Kardus sought to differentiate itself from a "spiritual" (presumably theocratic) empire.
Also, Michael Moorcock wrote one story in which the (supposedly) co-rulers of a certain city were known as the Lord Temporal and the Lord Spiritual. His hero noted the irony that the Lord Temporal was a scholarly, pious sort and the Lord Spiritual a corrupt and gross hedonist.
As far as a time-traveling empire goes ... Leo Frankowski wrote a series starting with *The Cross-Time Engineer* which MIGHT count. A corporation had developed time-travel and was secretly researching many eras; it'd built as its main base "a technical civilization in the sixty-third millennium B.C." It didn't seem, though, to be RULING so much -- although it did some heavy-duty manipulation (including at least one faked miracle) to help the main character after a couple of its stupider employees accidentally stranded him in the 13th century A.D. ... in the path of the Mongol invasion.
Hi, David!
And besides Michael Moorcock's use of "Lord Temporal and Spiritual," there's the real world example of how the British Parliament uses those terms. The House of Lords is comprised of the Lords Temporal and Spiritual.
And I've actually read at least the first three or four volumes of Leo Frankowski's "Cross Time Engineer" series. I read those books so long ago that my memory might be at fault--I don't recall any company doing what you said it did. UNLESS it was shown in later "Cross Time" books I have not read.
Sean
David,
Sean beat me to it. Our British regime calls itself something like "The Queen, Lords Spiritual and Temporal and Commons in Parliament assembled." Lords Spiritual are some of the Bishops of the Established Church. Church of England vicars cannot stand for election to the House of Commons, I imagine because the Church is represented in the Lords and you can't have both. Some aristocrats have given up their titles to stand for election. Thus, the voting population and their representatives are tacked on the end as "Commons." I am notionally present in Parliament because my MP is. All Americans are "Commoners" by their own Constitution, thus abolishing the distinction between Lords and Commons.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
And the Anglican bishops are members of the house of Lords because the pre-"Reformation" Catholic bishops (including some of the abbots of the most prominent monasteries) were the Lords Spiritual. This had its origins in many Medieval English bishops and abbots holding fiefs or grants from the Crown--making them de facto "secular" lords as well.
I have read of how, in recent years, some persons in the UK, including even Anglican bishops, have proposed that Catholic bishops should again hold seats in the Lords as Lords Spiritual. However, the Archbishop of Westminster, the Catholic Primate of England and Wales, declined such suggestions. Probably because he didn't want the Church becoming too closely embraced by the state.
True, some peers, like the late Tony Benn, surrendered their peerages to be able to stand for election to the far more powerful House of Commons.
While it is true the US does not have noble titles, the American Congress does have an UPPER house, the Senate, which is analogous to the British Lords. It was designed to act as a check on the directly elected House of Representatives and Senators were once indirectly elected, by the States, rather than directly elected.
Sean
Sean:
Scenes from the company's point of view were scattered throughout all the *CTE* books, including the prologue to the very first. They didn't, at first, make clear that it WAS a corporate rather than governmental operation (some of the attitudes of the discoverer of time travel seemed a bit like those of Rolfe from *Conquistador*).
A bit of biography for one of the minor characters who caused the whole problem: born in 62, 218 B.C., at the age of 45 she switched careers to the "Historical Corps" and entered training -- in 62, 219 B.C., the year BEFORE she was born.
I may have actually heard about that usage in the British Parliament -- it sounds familiar, now that you've mentioned it.
Hi, David!
Understood, what you said about the Cross Time Engineer books. I think I remember enough to wonder if the hero of the series, Lord Conrad, was too implausibly efficient and successful. That matters seem to work out too well, too often, to carry conviction.
Alas, I remember even less of the minor character you mentioned than I did of Lord Conrad!
Sean
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