Friday, 10 June 2022

Social Change In The Twentieth Century

Manse Everard, born in 1924, served in World War II and was recruited into the Time Patrol in 1954.

Keith Denison, born in 1927, served in Korea and was recruited into the Patrol in 1952.

Tom Namura joined in 1972.

Carl Farness spent his younger days in the sixties and seventies, served in peacetime and joined the Patrol in 1980.

Wanda Tamberly, born in 1965, was recruited while still a student in 1987.

Poul Anderson shows us social changes in the twentieth century. Everard hunts animals. Tamberly photographs them. She has to visit the sixties to see what they they were really like. I was a teenager but in boarding school until 1967 so what do I think of the sixties? Not the same as Anderson or his characters. Another time traveller, Jack Havig, in There Will Be Time, not part of the Time Patrol series, lives in the sixties for a while. I valued individual freedom, hope, social experimentation and Western acceptance of Eastern meditation and still do in 2022.

4 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

I put less stock in "social changes." You stressed Wanda Tamberly NOT hunting animals. I assure you, there are still lots of hunters! Nor do I think that is a bad thing, per se.

And Wanda being recruited into the Patrol was purely accidental and would never have happened except for Don Luis Castelar, from the 1530's, kidnapping her.

Ad astra! Sean

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

Sean,

I know that there are still hunters but Everard, visiting the lodge with Tamberly, accepts that some attitudes have changed between his generation and hers.

Paul.

S.M. Stirling said...

I was not only in a boarding school in the 60's, it was in Kenya and run by a 92-year-old ex colonel in the British Army of India who'd been born in the late 1870's.

You might say I spent the 60's in the 1920's with a dash of the Edwardian era. A lot of our textbooks were that old.

I read about the 60's in magazines. It gave me an unrealistic idea of how easy it was to get girls flat when I returned to North America in the 1970's...8-).

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul and Mr. Stirling!

Paul: Yes, but considering how many still hunt, the prevalence of Wanda's attitude should not be exaggerated.

Mr. Stirling: Aside from the stories of Rudyard Kipling, I'm most familiar with the fabled officers of the Anglo/Indian army of the Raj from Pierre Boullard's novel THE BRIDGE OVER THE RIVER KWAI, featuring the astonishing Lt. Colonel Nicholson.

Popular magazines are not always reliable sources, true!

Ad astra! Sean