Matuchek refers to:
time streams;
time with more than one dimension;
entire universes;
time currents;
parallel worlds.
He hypothesizes:
Lee winning at Gettysburg (Bring The Jubilee was published about the same time as Poul Anderson's first Time Patrol story);
Napoleon winning at Waterloo (I think that I have read this one);
Mithraism winning against Christianity (the Mystery of Mithras would have had to initiate women and to historicize Mithras' sacrifice of the bull, thus making Mithraism more like Christianity, so that, instead of the Lamb of God, we might have had the Bull of Ahura Mazda).
Other timelines are merely hypothetical on Matuchek's Earth at this stage so he addresses us hypothetically. That is how I pray: "To Whom it may concern..."
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
I actually did reread Ward Moore's BRING THE JUBILEE not that long ago! As well as many other stories speculating on what might have happened if some events in history had turned out differently. But I don't recall reading any alternate universe story showing us Napoleon winning at Waterloo (which was indeed, as the Duke of Wellington said: "A near run thing"). I have read Anderson's "When Free Men Shall Stand," showing us what might have happened if Napoleon had both not sold Louisiana to the US and had won the Napoleonic Wars.
And one of my favorite "what ifs" of history is wondering what kind of world we might have gotten if Francis Ferdinand had not been assassinated at Sarajevo. Unfortunately, Stirling's "A Slip In Time" is the only story I've seen touching on that. Incidentally, if there had been no Sarajevo both of us might not have come to exist at all!
Ad astra! Seam
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