Tera, widow of Maeloch:
"...what use in fretting? Each gladsome day we have lived is the one treasure that no one can rob us of.'" (p. 365)
Every good day that we have lived is safely in the remembered past. Every bad day is there as well but our assessment of them is different and we can usually learn from them.
What Tera might fret about is Saxon raids. Even if we are in a part of the world where military attack is not imminent, we might fret about the consequences of our own past collective actions. But - without denying any of the threats - we can continue to enjoy immediate experience, like Tera with her gladsome days. This weekend, we have a 1940s Revival. I was born in 1949 so do not remember World War II but grew up in its aftermath. People older than me remember good and bad times.
16 comments:
Without the World Wars, I wouldn't exist -- my parents and grandparents met because of them.
Saying that makes the World Wars a good thing strikes me as a trifle... self centered?
That's why the divergent timelines in the Time Patrol series have entirely different populations.
Paul, Jim: yup. Who meets who, and who mates at precisely what time (crucial in determining your genetics) is very, very sensitive to 'initial conditions'.
So's the weather, in detail if not overall.
Hence in a different history, there would quickly be differences in both and each would influence the other.
Poul gives a good look at this when his assistant gets into trouble at the court of Frederick in THE SHIELD OF TIME.
He describes strife between royal brothers... but given the different history (a stronger Holy Roman Empire), they've reconciled to present a common front.
Those brothers were born before the divergence, but it's vanishingly unlikely that they'll have the same -children- they did in our history.
The change would propagate, too. By a generation or two later, that would be true throughout at least the Old World; and probably in the Americas too.
I'll give you an example from one of my own AH books, BLACK CHAMBER.
The first -overt, big- difference is that President Taft drops dead in the summer of 1912.
However, the real difference is that one Irish immigrant to Boston in 1848 lives instead of dying of conditions on the "coffin ship" that brought him from famine-stricken Ireland.
At first that makes very little difference. What's one more hod-carrying immigrant more or less?
But eventually he makes (modestly) good and starts a small contracting business. His son does better. His -grandson- goes to MIT in the 1880's and becomes an engineer.
That man moves to California, does well, and eventually marries a Cuban sugar planter's daughter who elopes with him.
That's in the 1890's. By 1898, he becomes an officer in Teddy Roosevelt's "Rough Rider" regiment in the Spanish-American war, and then a friend of TR. His daughter grows up a friend of the family.
That doesn't affect them much... until she makes it back to the US in 1911, after her parents are brutally murdered by Pancho Villa's men in the sack of a Sonoran hacienda in 1911.
That makes TR pay more attention to events in Mexico -- doesn't alter his -opinions-, just makes them stronger.
So he pushes Taft harder in 1912. Taft was severely overweight and he ate more when under stress. (He put on 40 pounds to an already elephantine bulk during the campaign in our history.)
Here he's under more stress, puts on more weight, and then vapor-locks after getting the news he's been defeated in the Republican primary in his home State (Ohio).
That puts the cat among the pigeons, and TR wins the nomination (highly probable) and then the election (near-certainty).
So, very rapidly after 1911-12, things become different everywhere.
Until then, the changes had been minor, spreading slowly. Eventually they'd have resulted in a different world, perhaps subtly so... but that kicks everything off on a severe tangent.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
That is a melancholy thought, that "we" would never have existed at all except for the assassination at Sarajevo and the world wars.
Fascinating, your explanation of how small changes can radiate into massive divergences of the kind seen in your BLACK CHAMBER books. I'm eager to read WARLORD OF THE STEPPES when it comes out.
Btw, because events in "our" world did not turn out as hypothesized in the BC books, Pres. Taft did not die in 1912, eventually got his weight under control, became Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and outlived TR by 13 or 14 years!
And TR did not become President again in 1913.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: TR had a healthier lifestyle... but he did very reckless things, too.
eg., during his ranching time in the Badlands, his horse went into a gully at a full gallop while he was trying to turn a nighttime stampede, did a 180-degree flip and landed on its back.
He was thrown clear. But if he hadn't been... squish.
Then there was the time he knocked out a drunken gunman pointing two Colt revolvers at his midriff from less than arm's length. I could go on and on!
His health was permanently wrecked by that expedition to the Amazon; he was never the same after that.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Because there are only so many chances a reckless man can take before his luck almost inevitably runs out. Such as might have happened with TR and his horse.
Much as I dislike many of TR's "Progressive" ideas, it's only decent to wish he had skipped that stupid expedition to the Amazon. He was getting too old for such stunts!
Philosophically, I'm more sympathetic to William Howard Taft.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: but Taft's supporters blatantly cheated in 1912 -- if there had been more primaries (as opposed to closed caucasus) TR would have carried all before him. The cheating included at least one murder, btw.
BTW, if TR had been in good health in 1920, he would almost certainly have been the Republican nominee.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
That kind of cheating and murderous skulduggery by Taft's supporters was bad I agree!
Intriguing, the idea of a healthy TR running and winning in 1920! Perhaps with either TR III or Calvin Coolidge as his VP?
Ad astra! Sean
I wonder why my comment on this and SFAIK only this post somehow disappeared?
Kaor, Jim!
Try repeating, if youd don't mind. I did not see your comment.
Ad astra! Sean
It was the 2nd comment
S.M. Stirling said...
"Without the World Wars, I wouldn't exist -- my parents and grandparents met because of them."
Neither would I, or probably most people now alive.
At this point I would add a reason that applies in my case: My father joined the Royal Canadian Air Force in WWII. After the was since he was a veteran he got free tuition to University. He went to McGill in Montreal where he met my mother. So without the war it seems unlikely they would have met.
And, even if they had met, they would hardly have conceived at just the right time to bring about a particular offspring. The course of their lives would have been different as would the lives of any of their children.
Kaor, Jim!
After June 28, 1914 everything would soon inevitably change in ways that would not have happened absent the Sarajevo assassination.
Ad astra! Sean
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