"'...oh, suppose I went back and prevented Booth from killing Lincoln. Unless I took very elaborate precautions, it would probably happen that someone else did the shooting and Booth got blamed anyway.'"
-Poul Anderson, "Time Patrol" IN Poul Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 1-53 AT 2, p. 15.
Valeria Matuchek in the Old Phoenix:
"'Suppose, oh, suppose I happened to meet Abe Lincoln here - I'm sure he's eligible, whether or not he ever did find his way to a door - well, given a lot of time together, I probably couldn't resist warning him against Ford's Theater.'"
-Poul Anderson, A Midsummer Tempest (London, 1975), xi, pp. 93-94.
Two ways to change history, maybe: prevent Ford or warn Lincoln. And what point(s) am I making here exactly, apart from finding a brilliant image? Lincoln is important, a potent focus for either historical or time travel fiction. Twice, he provides a convenient "...oh, suppose..." example for a Poul Anderson character. And those are just two of the many intricate details in Anderson's vast canon of speculative fiction. I am out of here.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
And of course one of favorite "what ifs" is wondering what might have happened if the Sarajevo Assassination of 1914 had been prevented. And might Archduke Francis Ferdinand also had been a guest at the Old Phoenix Inn???
Ad astra! Sean
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