in Poul Anderson's mutable timeline, Neldorian time criminals help Hannibal to sack Rome and thus Carthage to win the Second Punic War but Time Patrol agents restore Roman victory;
however, in John Barnes' multiple timelines, descendants of the Carthaginians enslave more than a million timelines but are opposed by the ATN (meaning?) alliance who unite twice as many timelines;
ATN representatives visit and negotiate with SM Stirling's slave-owning Draka;
the Draka have conquered the Solar System and colonized several other planetary systems and are beginning to explore alternative timelines.
Thus, we have moved, conceptually, through four easy stages, from the Time Patrol to the Draka. I would not have believed that this was possible.
John Barnes' ATN-Draka story, "Upon Their Backs, To Bite 'Em," in Drakas!, is good but I have yet to read it to its conclusion.
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Wow, what you said about John Barnes story! And the possible, at least conceptual, connection to Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series!
Talk about literary cross connections and weird mutations! What's next, the Time Patrol or the Draka/Samothracians/Earth2 getting connected to Tolkien's Middle Earth? (Smiles)
Sean
Paul:
ATN stands for "Allied Timelines for Nondeterminism":
"We have members of all sorts--there's a couple in which humans never left the Stone Age, there's one that has starships. The only general principle is that we want to go our own way in our own timelines--though we don't have many slave societies, or global police states. Those tend to join up with the other side."
-- *Patton's Spaceship*, John Barnes
Their enemies' preferred technique is to "destroy all the alternatives between police state and anarchy--because most people will pick the police state--and then take over the police state. They get you to destroy your own freedom and then they just knock over the local masters and take over the operation themselves."
-- *ibid*
David,
Thank you for the explanation.
Paul.
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