These ten pages cover a lot of ground.
Wanda Tamberly and Tu Sequeira, horse-riding in the Oligocene, alarm a dozen pre-equine quadrupeds possibly intermediate between mesohippus and miohippus. Tamberly comments:
"'Even with time machines, they've learned so little.'" (pp. 127-128)
The archaic Wellsian phrase, "time machine," has become embedded in English. I once heard a friend's grandfather refer to a "flying machine."
Tamberly continues:
"'If only I'd brought a camera.'" (p. 128)
Having used the English word, "camera," in a Temporal sentence, she has to explain that she means "'...an optical recording device.'" (ibid.) Sequeira is a Martian in the sense that he was born on Mars in the period of the Solar Commonwealth, not the Solar Commonwealth that is in Anderson's Technic History although the fact that both timelines incorporate such a Commonwealth is one parallel between them. The Mars of the Technic History has extrasolar colonists. Sequeira will have to learn about primitive technology like "cameras" when he studies and monitors early spacefaring. Our immediate future is his more remote past. Early space explorers do not suspect that they are monitored by time travellers.
3 comments:
The tendency seems to be for one device that does everything. You have a phone, and it takes pictures, gives you directions, and can be used to play music and read books.
So Tamberly, if she has the Patrol's equivalent of a mobile phone, should be able to take pictures with it.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Another possibility is this: Wanda Tamberly came from the 1980's, before things like the Internet and ubiquitous mobile. So, she would still find it natural to think in terms of cameras.
Ad astra! Sean
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