Jack Havig:
"'The pattern is. Our occasional attempts to break it, and our failures, are part of it.'"
-There Will Be Time, X, 114.
A Danellian:
"'Reality is. You are among those who guard it.'"
-Poul Anderson, The Shield Of Time (New York, 1990), PART SIX, 1990 A. D.
Of course, an immutable pattern is and a mutable reality is in different senses of "is" but, nevertheless, both are.
"Wildcat," like "Time Patrol" and There Will Be Time, links time travel to faster-than-light travel. In "Wildcat," a chaplain describes the idea of a fixed, rigid timeline as a heresy. When Herries retorts that the idea has been proved and is the theoretical basis of the time projector, the chaplain replies that time may be fixed from God's viewpoint but that mortal men have free will which is one of the links in the causal chain so that fatalism is unwarranted.
The argument in "Wildcat" and There Will Be Time that past moments are unalterable flatly contradicts "Time Patrol" but this is an example of Anderson addressing an issue from every angle. Other examples are:
Is AI feasible?
Is FTL possible?
Are life and intelligence common in the universe?
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
My two penny answers to your three questions:
I am extremely skeptical AI is feasible.
SOME scientists don't totally dismiss FTL as a remote possibility.
I BELIEVE (I don't claim to KNOW) that life and intelligence exists elsewhere in the Galaxy and the universe.
Ad astra! Sean
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