A Different Era

In Consequences Through The Continuum, I was pleased to find a strong parallel between Poul Anderson's second Time Patrol story, "Brave To Be A King," and James Blish's prose adaptation of Gene Roddenberry's and Art Wallace's Star Trek TV episode, "Assignment: Earth." In obvious ways, the crew of the Enterprise parallel Blish's Okies. By rationalizing the TV script, Blish also made one Enterprise mission read like a Time Patrol action. i.e., he elaborated the reason for the time travel, connecting Terrestrial history with an interstellar future.

In his Preface (dated 1958) to Star Trek 3 (published in 1969), Blish explained sf World Cons to ST fans. In 1970, I met Blish for the first time at the British Eastercon. That was a different era. Look what has happened to sf, ST, the world and our lives since then. Blish died just five years later. Poul Anderson accompanied us into the twenty first century.

I believed that there would be a world wide computer network but not that I would be writing on it like this. I also believed that there would be people on the Moon and Mars by now, even that a first interstellar expedition might have been launched. The Vinland colony proved unsustainable because of the distance involved. That remains true for interstellar distances but hopefully not within the Solar System.