Futures And Pasts

A different future implies a different past. In Poul Anderson's Time Patrol history, the invention of time machines at a future date entails that there has already been considerable activity by time travelers in the past. Additionally, Sherlock Holmes, a fictional character in our timeline, is a historical figure in the Time Patrol timeline. Holmes' Adventures, narrated by Dr Watson but written by Conan Doyle in our timeline, are both written and narrated by Watson in the other timeline.

In terms of human activities, Anderson's History of Technic Civilization parts company with our history some time in the present century. However, in terms of other planetary evolutions and of Chereionite civilization, the two histories have differed for billions of years.

This means that everyone who is known to us as either a historical or a contemporary figure exists in two versions. One Alexander Solzhenitsyn existed in a timeline that would later include the Terran Empire and another Solzhenitsyn existed in our timeline that will include we do not know what.

Solzhenitsyn paints a favorable picture of an older fellow prisoner, a former Social Democrat who had known Lenin personally and who suffered imprisonment for his "...sixty-three years of honesty and doubts." (Chapter 5, p. 196) History is composed of such diverse individuals. Fiction must reflect this diversity and Anderson succeeds in his Technic History.