The dinner guests merely discuss observing the Battle of Hastings but you have got to start somewhere.
The outcome of the Battle of Gettysburg is changed because the time travelling historian, not having read The Time Machine, did not consider how his mere physical presence might affect events.
The outcome of the Battle of Ticinus was changed because two Neldorian time criminals deliberately intervened in the battle.
The outcome of the Battle of Rignano was changed without extratemporal intervention by a quantum fluctuation in space-time-energy but, as with Ticinus, it was the task of the Time Patrol to rectify events.
Battles are altered in L. Sprague de Camp's Lest Darkness Fall but this is part of a campaign by a stranded time traveller to prevent the Dark Ages.
I think that that is a comprehensive synopsis but maybe there are some other examples.
4 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
H.G. Wells might later have grasped some of the implications and possibilities of writing time traveling stories. But, by making THE TIME MACHINE a one off story, he foreclosed using that story as a hook for writing sequels.
Ad astra! Sean
Oops. The comment above belongs more properly to the previous blog piece.
Sean
Hastings really was a decisive battle, btw. If the Normans had lost -- and it was a close-run thing -- it's unlikely they'd have tried again.
Which would have meant that England remained a part of Scandinavia (which it essentially was in 1066) rather than becoming subsumed into the France-centered Western European sphere.
And at one point in the fight, there was a rumor that Duke William had been killed; he had to push his helmet back and ride down the front of his troops to reassure them, otherwise they'd have bolted and been hunted down by the English.
If William had taken a stray arrow in the eye while he was doing that ride...
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
And what if King Harald of Norway had won at Stamford Bridge? Then HE would have been the one to fight Duke William!
Yes, stray arrows can be whimsically crucial! What kind of world might we now have if Harold Godwinson had beaten William?
Ad astra! Sean
Post a Comment