At last, the ultimate authority is invoked to explain the Patrol's guardianship of an imperfect timeline:
"...none less than God can be trusted with time. The Patrol exists to guard what is real." (p. 123)
"'In a reality forever liable to chaos, the Patrol is the stabilizing element, holding time to a single course. Perhaps it is not the best course, but we are no gods to impose anything different when we know that it does at last take us beyond what our animal selves could have imagined.'"
-Poul Anderson, The Shield Of Time (New York, 1991), PART SIX, 1990 A. D., p. 435.
And the Exaltationist project is the diametric opposite:
"'We would have made [the universe] what we chose, and unmade it and remade it, and stormed the stars as we warred for possession, with an entire reality the funeral pyre of each who fell and entire histories the funeral games, until the last god reigned alone.'"
-The Shield Of Time, PART TWO, p. 118.
Thus, the Patrol: none less than God, no gods; the Exaltationists: the last god.
James Blish's Service knows some of the future but resists the temptation to alter it, on the principle:
"'To Whom it may concern: Thy will, not mine.'"
-James Blish, The Quincunx Of Time (New York, 1973), CHAPTER TEN, p. 119.
However, on a literal interpretation of monotheism, I have big problems with a creator who allows, indeed causes, such suffering as has happened.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
There might be a misprint here. I've wondered if that "...we are no gods to impose..." should be "...we are NOT gods to impose..." That "not" makes the text read more smoothly and naturally.
And we have argued before about that bit about God. The problems you see are not problems to me. A big reason for that being how God Himself shared in the suffering of mankind by becoming a man Himself and dying on the Cross.
Ad astra! Sean
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