Sunday 18 August 2019

Will Rogers Across The Timelines

Manse Everard of the Time Patrol:

"He wasn't a celebrity hound, but after he'd decided roping was an art that might come in handy, he'd gone to the trouble of making acquaintance with an expert in 1910, who agreed to teach him. His hours with Will Rogers were among the pleasantest of his life."
-Poul Anderson, The Shield Of Time (New York, 1991), PART TWO, p. 81.

Roy Linden speaking to Trygve Yamamura:

"'Like Will Rogers said, my ancestors didn't come over on the Mayflower, but they met the boat.'"
-Perish By The Sword, 6, p. 56.

Observations
(i) In my childhood, I knew of Roy Rogers but not of Will Rogers. (Apparently, it was by design that the stage name, "Roy Rogers," incorporated the surname of Will Rogers.)

(ii) The Time Patrol series refers to Sherlock Holmes as a real person. If a Time Patrol story had also referred to Trygve Yamamura, then this would have established that the Will Rogers known by Manse Everard was identical with the one quoted by Roy Linden.

(iii) Everard can meet Will Rogers on only a finite number of occasions. However, as long as Everard is alive, it remains possible that one or more of those occasions are still ahead of him on his world line.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

I looked up Will Rogers and I can see why Manse Everard would have enjoyed his company while learning how to rope and use a lariat. Rogers was am unusual and very accomplished man!

Sean