In Anderson's Genesis, we find the following time scales:
"Seventeen hundred years later..."
-Poul Anderson, Genesis (New York, February 2001), PART ONE, VI, p. 57.
"Sol swung onward through its orbit, once around galactic center in almost two hundred million years, and onward and onward."
-ibid., IX, p. 96.
"Thought had just had time for a thousand or two journeys across [the galactic brain's] ever-expanding breadth."
-ibid., PART TWO, I, p. 102.
"'Human Earth is preserved in memory. What is posthuman Earth but a planet approaching the postbiological phase?'"
-ibid., p. 107.
HG Wells' Time Traveller visited that pre-postbiological phase and, in Anderson's "Flight to Forever," another time traveller bids farewell to Sol herself a hundred billion years in the future - before travelling around the circle of time and back to his starting point in 1973 which had been twenty-three years in the future when this story was published. We look back at the ultimate sf writers looking forward. Then we look forward to the shadow of God the Hunter across our future.
13 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
We also see vast amounts of time passing in "In Memoria," which I think of as making an all too apt sequel to "Murphy's Hall."
Ad astra! Sean
I meant "In Memoriam." Drat!
Sean
Humans can contemplate vast stretches of time, but in -human- terms a year is a long time, ten years is a very long time, and a hundred years is effectively 'forever'.
My "family memories" -- things told me by my parents and grandparents -- stretch back to the late Victorian period, but only really pick up after 1900.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I agree, with the proviso that as I approach age 70 one year seems all too short! (Smiles wryly)
Ad astra! Sean
My own family memories are similar, but I did read a journal my Great-great-grandfather wrote of the trip when he immigrated to Canada in the 1870s, with his wife and children.
Some of the bits that stuck in my memory:
He mentioned crossing the Russian-Austrian border. Something no longer possible after WW1.
He took Great Lakes steamers to Duluth, railway to the Red RIver, then steamboat down the river to his homestead location not far from Winnepeg.
Not many years later it would have been easier to take the Canadian Pacific Railway through northern Ontario.
There was a family in Britain who knew how many generations ago one of their direct ancestors was an eye witness to the execution of Charles I.
There was a guy at University who:
was called Francis Drake;
was a direct male line descendant of Sir Francis Drake;
dressed in 16th century costume so that people would ask him why he was dressed like that so that he could explain.
Paul: I like his sense of humor!
We did have an older story but without details -- that the first Stirling to leave Scotland (from Stirling Castle) departed in haste in 1746, for reasons of health.
(It was unhealthy to support the wrong king.)
Kaor, Jim, Paul, and Mr. Stirling!
Jim: Over the years I've accumulated a fair amount of written stuff: diaries occasional essays, two chess notebooks with some personal stuff mixed in, and two Andersonian notebooks with very Mixed contents. Best of all, two bound volumes containing my snail mail correspondence with Anderson--my 24 letters to him with his replies.
Paul: I looked up Francis Drake and the sources I checked both said he left no children despite marrying twice. This Francis Drake might be descended from one of his 11 brothers.
Mr. Stirling: My late online friend, Bruce Binnie, was also descended from a man who had to leave Scotland for reasons of health after the '45. Bruce told me his ancestor ended up in the army of the East India Company in India.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: yeah, the EIC's armed forces were a lot like the Foreign Legion, in some respects.
"No questions asked". They didn't matter, once you were in India -- and most of their soldiers stayed there the rest of their lives.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I even thought of the French Foreign Legion as an analogy for what happened in India: the EIC was willing to take into its army soldiers with very mixed political origins. Bruce told me his family stayed in India till about 1900, marrying English girls.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: once you were in India, politics back in the British Isles became sort of moot...
There were never very many British in India at any one time -- even at the peak, no more than a couple of hundred thousand, including the large garrison.
But there are over two million British -buried- in India. It wasn't congenial to European constitutions back then.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I agree, what you said about British politics for EIC army soldiers. That army was their new "fatherland."
The climate of India during the hot season was very unhealthy for people not used to it. But it might have been better for the British Raj if some effort had been made to settle fairly large numbers of the British there, at least in the cooler northern parts abutting the Himalayas.
And you did have millions of the British fleeing/emigrating to India after the Fall in THE PESHAWAR LANCERS and the German annihilation gas attack on Britain in your BLACK CHAMBER books.
Ad astra! Sean
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