Saturday 10 October 2020

Return From Space And Time

Because we are away from home until Monday morning, I do not have access to a copy of CS Lewis' Out Of The Silent Planet. Nevertheless, I can confidently make the following comparison from memory.

In Lewis's novel, Weston, Devine and Ransom return from Mars/Malacandra in Weston's spaceship. When they have left the ship, it is annihilated because the Oyarsa of Malacandra does not want human beings to return to space.

In Poul Anderson's "Flight to Forever," Martin Saunders returns to 1973 in his time projector. When he steps out of the projector, it is annihilated because the "gods" over four million years in our future do not want twentieth-centurians to have the technological improvements that They have made to the projector.

Saunders will censor his thesis because he wants to conceal the fact of time travel from his contemporaries. But is it ever right for a scientist to suppress his discoveries?

5 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

Even more to the point, perhaps, is it even possible for a scientist to permanently suppress anything he might have discovered or invented (for whatever reason)? What Scientist A had might just as well be independently rediscovered by Scientist B fifty years later.

Ad astra! Sean

S.M. Stirling said...

Scientific discoveries are usually made because it’s “time”. But individuals can affect the -precise- timing. Einstein’s special and general relativity were things physics was groping towards (one reason they were accepted so quickly) but it might have been a decade or two before they were discovered if he hadn’t worked. Such a massive synthesis was a rare achievement for a single individual.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Mr. Stirling!

And that makes sense to me. Without Einstein's work Special and General Relativity and all their consequences might not have happened for another few decades.

Ad astra! Sean

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

Sean,

Of course time travel was rediscovered later as it would have been in the TIME MACHINE timeline.

Paul.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

And we know that was what happened in the future of Saunders' time line.

Ad astra! Sean