I used to think vaguely of the Danellians as occupying an end-of-time-and-the-universe cosmic culmination scenario. However, one million years is not very far into the future in cosmic terms. We saw in A Cat that, in "Flight to Forever," time traveler Martin Saunders passes through a city of energy in about AD 4,050,000. Although in a different timeline with a different temporal structure, the inhabitants of the city perform some of the functions of Danellians.
Saunders thinks of them as "Them" and as "the gods."
-Poul Anderson, "Flight to Forever" IN Anderson, Past Times (New York, 1984), pp. 207-288 AT CHAPTER SIX, p. 281.
They might be evolutionary successors of mankind although this is only one possibility. One of Them makes the time projector airtight, makes its windows unbreakable and increases its time dilation to millions of years per minute.
A hundred million years later, Saunders knows that the gods are no longer on Earth but does not know whether They have died, abandoned Earth or gone on to another plane of existence. A billion years later, another non-human city warns him away.
When Saunders has returned to 1973, the time projector dissolves because the gods had put some annihilating device into it and he agrees with Their decision. They do not want Saunders to change the twentieth century. He does not want human beings to be able to travel into the past by going around the circle of time. Thus the gods play the role of Danellians on a cosmic scale and it is unlikely that Saunders is the only time traveler that they guide.
Lastly, an old friend revisits. Saunders thinks that he hears Taury's "...voice whisper in the cool wet wind..." (p. 288)
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
One of the things I remember about Guion was Everard thinking the former lived near enough to the time of the Danellians to be FRIGHTENED by them. A hint that all might not be RIGHT or good in the Era of Oneness?
Ad astra! Sean
Post a Comment