Saturday, 4 August 2018

Into Futurity

Strange devices:

the Time Machine
the time projector
time corridors
T machines
the Dirac transmitter

(Wells, Anderson, Tipler and Blish.)

There are many such devices but this post focuses on these five and on the future, not the past.

Usually, fiction is set in its characters' present which can be the readers' past, future or alternative timeline. A narrative is set in its character's future if he time travels, e.g., with the Time Machine etc, or previews, e.g., with the Dirac transmitter. Thus, Wells' Time Traveler travels to 802,701 A.D., then to his "Further Vision," before returning to the nineteenth century when he tells his dinner guests about his passage through "tomorrow" and "into futurity."

The following works are eminently "Wellsian":

Poul Anderson's "Flight to Forever" (see "Flight to Forever" Timeline, Part I here and Part II here);
Anderson's The Corridors Of Time with its future periods of  the Wardens and Rangers, then of their successors, the time wardens;
Anderson's The Avatar (see jumps 1-4 here and 5-11 here);
James Blish's The Quincunx Of Time (see Chronology Of The Beep here).

Blish's characters see the future from the comfort of an office instead of traveling into it.

3 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

And the point about T machines is that serious scientists have given hard thought to them being actually possible. I don't expect any to be discovered in our Solar System, mind!

I would have included Anderson's FTL hyperdrive, seen in his Technic Civilization stories in your list of strange devices. Or Jerry Pournelle's Alderson drive, another FTL or "other than light" means of reaching the stars.

Sean

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

Sean,
True. I was trying to focus on devices for visiting or viewing "futurity."
Paul.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

And Anderson's hyperdrive would be PLENTY futuristic for me!

Sean