Wednesday 14 August 2019

1956 Revisited

See:

1956
"1956" search result on Comics Appreciation!
Google images for "1956"

Personal significance for me: it was the first year in which I became aware that each year has a number and that that number changes after 31 December. I remember my mother telling me this. That was the beginning of an interest in time, including time travel and future histories.

We were in Britain and in 1956 but not in the same way. To leave Britain, we had to travel whereas, to leave 1956, we just had to wait. But HG Wells had written The Time Machine... Later, I would want to know of any sf novel:

In what year was it published?
In what year was it set?
(See Significant Dates and Anderson's Technic History.)

In the 1960s, it fascinated me that the opening story of the "Future History" was set in 1951. Little did I know that I had yet to read Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History and Technic History. Both of these series "come after" Heinlein's Future History but not in the sense that they are set later in the same timeline. It took me a long time to make sense of multiple timelines. Now I am as familiar as any other Poul Anderson fan with his Old Phoenix multiverse and his Time Patrol mutable timeline.

Tempora mutantur nos et mutamur in illis.

8 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

I THINK I have memories going as far back as age three. But I don't remember when I clearly understood that years changed from one number to another after December 31st.

And is that third image a scene from the anti-Communist Hungarian uprising of 1956?

Sean

Sean M. Brooks said...

Correction, re my comment above: I should have said that was the SECOND image.

Sean

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

Sean,
It is.
Paul.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

Thought so! It had a "Western," not Russian look.

Sean

David Birr said...

Sean:
Those are Russkiy submachineguns they're holding, though: PPSh-41.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

As would have been no surprise! The rebels seized them from the arsenals of the Hungarian puppets of the Soviets. I was thinking more of how the APPAREL of the people in that picture had a Western "look."

Sean

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

An iconic picture of armed and determined rebels.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

And the Hungarian uprising of 1956 is one of those few rebellions I have no hesitation agreeing was both just and justifiable. Alas, Kruschev crushed it!

Sean