We read a futuristic sf novel or a future history series and discuss it. That discussion occurs within the text when a character like HG Wells's Time Traveler or Poul Anderson's Jack Havig visits the future and returns from it. The characters in James Blish's
The Quincunx Of Time detect messages transmitted in their future and thus are able to discuss future history without any of the discomforts or dangers of visiting it. Knowing some of the future even in a deterministic timeline, Havig's group and Blish's characters are able to do some good. For example, knowing that there will be a "Star Masters" period, Havig's group is able to ensure that those "Masters" are benign, not dictatorial.
Blish's "Service" sets out to bring about all the future events that it knows about. However, a massacre will occur only if they foreknew it and were willing to bring it about. Since they are not people who would willingly bring about a massacre, they do not do this so massacres do not occur and therefore they do not foreknow them. At least, that is my rationale for the intergalactic utopia supervised by the Service.
The Service contrasts with Poul Anderson's Time Patrol which presumably would bring about the Holocaust if that turned out to be the only way to ensure that it happened on schedule. The Patrol guards a past whereas the Service guards a future.
6 comments:
A major argument for the Time Patrol is that the consequences of changing the future are unknowable -- and may well be disastrous beyond conception.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
And I recall you responding to my comments about it being far better for the world if there had been no Sarajevo Assassination and all the catastrophes flowing from it--that it was also possible even worse things might have come with no Sarajevo.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: not only in the immediate aftermath, either. Personally I think the odds are on the 100 years after 1914 being much better without the death of FF, but I could be wrong. However, in the Time Patrol context you also have to think of the next 200, 400, 4000 years.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I too personally think the world would have been vastly better off in the century after June 28, 1914 if there had been no assassination of Francis Ferdinand. I would also add, given that, then it would also had been more likely than not the second century after a no Sarajevo Crisis would also have been pretty good.
But, yes, Anderson's Time Patrol had to think in far longer terms.
Ad astra! Sean
Note that the Time Patrol guards a future -by- guarding a past: the Dannelians founded it to keep the past that had led to them from being upended.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
True, we see Anderson's Time Patrol characters thinking or saying that many times. The premise of those stories was the MUTABLE, not IMMUTABLE timeline seen in THERE WILL BE TIME.
Ad astra! Sean
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