Wednesday, 9 September 2020

Time Travelers And Last Men

See Five Last Men.

Stapledon's Last Men mentally time travel to earlier periods. One inspires the author of Last And First Men.

Priestley's "last man left" tries to escape to the twentieth century but merely appears to Mr Strenberry before being killed by a rolling extra-planetary black shape.

Anderson's last man and his many time travelers inhabit different timelines.

In one of his speculative secret origin stories, the Phantom Stranger time travels from the end to the beginning of time, then lives from the beginning to the end.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

I would define Anderson's "In Memoriam" as being not quite a story, and not quite an essay. Possibly best described as a speculative thought experiment. And I don't think the author was thinking in particular about "time lines" in this piece. "In Memoriam" is totally separated from and not linked in any way to Anderson's other stories and series.

Ad astra! Sean