"Ages before the first hieroglyphics there had been wars and wanderings, discoveries and achievements, whose consequences reached through all the continuum. The Patrol had to know them. Charting their course was a job for the Specialist ratings." (p. 60)
Consequences from pre-hieroglyphic times stretching throughout the continuum? Again, the Time Patrol series connects past with future and Earth with cosmos.
I first heard of Star Trek because, looking for second hand paperbacks by James Blish, I found Star Trek, his first book of script adaptations. I bought Star Trek 3 when it was first published fifty one years ago and never expected to quote it here.
According to Blish's adaptation of "Assignment: Earth,":
Kirk, Spock and McCoy had time traveled from the City on the edge of Forever;
the Enterprise had time traveled when it hit a black star;
now the Enterprise has been sent to 1969 because, in the confusion at the end of that crisis year, crucial documents had been lost or falsified and their contents:
"...were possibly of political as well as military interest, and in a galaxy that contained the Klingon Empire as well as the Federation, they might be a good deal more than interesting."
-James Blish, "Assignment: Earth" IN Blish, Star Trek 3 (New York, 1969), pp. 54-65 AT pp. 54-55.
I misunderstood that to mean that Klingons were descended from Terrestrials.
Thus, both the Time Patrol and the Enterprise search in Earth's past for information of future interstellar significance. Also, Blish used futuristic sf to comment on his present.
5 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Poul Anderson used a similar idea for "Star of the Sea," when the Patrol obtained a copy of Taxitus' HISTORIES which did not match the text of the same work in the Danellian timeline. That conflict was worrisome and needed to be investigated.
Ad astra! Sean
In H. Beam Piper's "paratime" series (travel between alternate histories, with a "Patrol" that keeps it under control) there's a sector called "Aryan-Transpacific", in which the Indo-European migrations mostly headed eastward into East Asia and North America, so that by the 20th century there's a Renaissance-equivalent civilization in what's the eastern United States in our history.
LORD KALVAN OF OTHERWHEN is the only novel (the rest of the series are short stories) and it's quite good, an old favorite of mine.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I do remember with pleasure the too few of Piper's stories which I have read!
Ad astra! Sean
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I also like LORD KALVAN OF OTHERWHEN, which is set right in the area where I grew up. My first sf convention was Hos-Hostigos, which was held in State College, Pennsylvania, when I was back there as a graduate student; I met Jerry Pournelle, Roland Green, and John Carr, as well as Hal Clement.
Best Regards,
Nicholas Rosen
Kaor, Nicholas!
FIRST convention? You seem to be much more of a convention goer than I have been. I've only been to ONE convention, Noreascon in 1980 (Boston, MA).
Regards! Sean
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