To reformulate two of the options, Poul Anderson presents:
multiple successive timelines with a temporal police force in his Time Patrol series;
multiple coexistent timelines with an inter-universal inn in his Old Phoenix sequence.
The Time Patrol and Taverner have partly comparable roles. However, if the Patrol fails, then the Danellian timeline is succeeded by some alternative timeline whereas we cannot speak of Taverner failing.
If da Vinci is about to return to a timeline in which he has never learned of relativity and if Taverner fails to prevent da Vinci from learning about relativity, then someone or something else prevents da Vinci from learning of relativity. If nothing and no one prevents da Vinci from learning of relativity, then the timeline from which he came and to which he returns is not one in which he had never learned of relativity.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
And was the Leonardo da Vinci of "The Light" from a timeline where he HAD learned of things like spacial relativity and quantum mechanics?
One complication of "The Light" being that the da Vinci of that story seems to have suppressed knowledge of whatever it was he had discovered/invented.
Ad astra! Sean
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