-Poul Anderson, "Time Patrol" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 1-53 AT p. 15.
Is this plausible? Does it mean that someone else was preparing to shoot Lincoln but we do not know about him because Booth did it first? Or would the other assassin only have existed in the timeline where Booth was prevented? I accepted these statements when I first read them but now I think that they have to be questioned.
7 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
And trying to make sense of these history changing, time traveling conundrums is skull cracking! (Smiles)
Sean
It has a general plausibility, but not necessarily in every instance.
For example, in the decade each way of Edison's invention of the light bulb, at least 4 other engineers made plausible stabs at it -- one in England was so similar Edison had to pool the patents.
Edison's real claim to fame was his development of lighting as a -system-, with large-scale power generation, transmission and so forth, offered as a package to clients.
It was time for electrical lighting to be developed. Many were working on it.
Paul:
The hypothetical other assassin would only have become an assassin in a universe where Booth wasn't first to plan the job, thus absorbing the energies of his co-conspirators. If JWB had a "tragic fatal accident," or even a REAL fatal accident, the people with whom he conspired would still be disgruntled and open to taking part in plots against Lincoln, and if/when someone unknown to our history, with similar attitudes to Booth's, came into their orbit....
Kaor, DAVID!
But, wasn't Booth the LEADER of the plot to kill Lincoln? Didn't this group of malcontents need someone who would inspire them and keep them from losing their nerve and confessing to the authorities or simply drifting away? Didn't Booth have to plan out the "assignments" of his co-plotters?
If SOMETHING had indeed happened to Booth before the assassination of Lincoln, I am not absolutely sure someone else would have soon come along to jump start the plot against Lincoln.
Sean
I think Poul's Time Patrol expert is saying that the structure of time would tend to "produce" someone else and blame Booth. I'm not convinced of that, but something like that would have to be in place.
If time was mutable -and- very easy to change, you'd get a situation where any time traveler would muck things up just by breathing.
The logical end product of that would be a series of changes until time travel was never invented.
I think Poul mentions in one of the Patrol stories that the "inertia" of time and the difficulty of changing it is why time travel is allowed by the Patrol at all.
Tho' the later stories introduce spontaneous, "chaotic" changes.
"That resilience of time is the reason travel is permitted at all. If you want to change things, you have to go about it just right and work very hard, usually."
"Time Patrol" IN TIME PATROL (2010), p. 16.
"...usually..." is an important qualification.
Dear Mr. Stirling,
And that is why I'm not absolutely sure, absent Booth, that Lincoln would have been assassinated at all. Individuals do matter, for good or ill.
Sean
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