We have discussed alternative means of:
FTL
time travel
telepathy
longevity.
Poul Anderson contributes to these four concepts but discussion usually expands to cover several related sf writers and future historians. Before returning to longevity, which is what I had set out to do, let us recapitulate Wells and Anderson on time travel.
The Time Traveler discovers devolution into Morlocks and Eloi whereas the Time Patrol is based on evolution into Danellians.
Patrol timecycles resemble updated, streamlined and mass-produced Time Machines.
Wells's outer narrator thinks that time traveling suggests curious possibilities of anachronism and of utter confusion but does not conceive of a temporal police force.
The Time Traveler's dinner guests imagine observing the Battle of Hastings but:
the hero of Ward Moore's Bring The Jubilee unintentionally alters the course of the Battle of Gettysburg;
Neldorian time criminals deliberately alter the course of the Battle of Ticinus but are counteracted by the Patrol;
the Patrol must also counteract a quantum fluctuation in the Battle of Rignano.
Time is a fourth dimension in The Time Machine and in The Corridors Of Time.
Like Wells's Time Traveler, Anderson's mutant time travelers become insubstantial and watch events either rewinding or fast-forwarding.
Remember Wells. Read him and Anderson.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
That mention of Wells' Morlocks made me wonder if Anderson had any of the intelligent species in his stories "de-evolving." Iow, more plausible Morlocks or Eloi. The closest I can think of fairly quickly would be the Zolotoyans in "The High Ones," showing us an intelligent species which lost consciousness/self awareness after a totalitarian regime arose on Zolotoy, and banned independent thought. Leading intelligence to atrophy over thousands of years.
Ad astra! Sean
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