I cannot make a lot of sense of this story but here are some comments occasioned by these statements:
"'Time is stabilized. The quantum effects aren't there any more. There aren't any more emergencies.'" (p. 315)
"'The Time Patrol will have to stand down. Starting here, I think.'" (p. 316)
Comments
A universe with three spatial dimensions changes along a single temporal dimension.
An entire sequence of successive three-dimensional cosmic states comprises a single four-dimensional space-time continuum.
If such a continuum were to change, then it would do so along a second temporal dimension.
Along that second temporal dimension, there would be a succession of four-dimensional continua.
A static, atemporal 3D universe would resemble a still picture although there would be no one to see it.
An experienced continuum resembles a film, a long sequence of individually static pictures projected successively onto a screen, although its observers are within it as part of the action, not outside it, looking in.
A contemplated continuum resembles a film reel unwound and stretched out so that its successive frames can be seen simultaneously.
In Poul Anderson's The Corridors Of Time and There Will Be Time, the continuum does not change, is immutable.
In Anderson's Time Patrol series, the continuum does change, is mutable.
Can a continuum change from mutable to immutable?
If so, then this change occurs at a moment in the second, not in the first, temporal dimension.
In the early twenty first century of the Time Patrol continuum, some Time Patrol agents know that, more than once, the continuum has been changed so that humanity did not evolve into the Danellians but also that these changes were reversed.
Thus, these agents inhabit one four-dimensional continuum in a succession of such continua.
The stabilization of time and the consequent end of the need for a Time Patrol, if this occurs, is not an event happening, e.g., in 2008 of these agents' particular continuum but rather is a change somehow occurring between continua along the second temporal dimension.
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
And the conclusion I drew from your argument, Niven to the contrary, was that problems and emergencies REMAIN possible. Therefore it was too soon for Manse Everard and the rest of the Time Patrol to retire. If indeed, it COULD ever retire!
Sean
Sean,
Not sure. Still thinking about it.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Since the universe will last for many billions of years from the Big Bang to the heat death, I would argue that gives plenty of time for the Time Patrol to have to wrestle with problems and emergencies.
Sean
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