Poul Anderson embodied this focus on time more than any other sf writer. The Time Patrol followed The Time Machine with the basic concept of time travel but also, and as a logical consequence of this, Anderson's series presented a panorama of civilizations and historical epochs past and future. When Manse Everard attended the Time Patrol Academy in the Oligocene, all times came together. A spaceman remembered his own experience of being:
"'...shot up off Jupiter.'"
-Poul Anderson, "Time Patrol" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, December 2010), pp. 1-53 AT 2, p. 14 -
- in "...the Martian war of 3890..." (op. cit., p. 13) which was referred to with the same casual familiarity as World War II.
4 comments:
I liked the way the Exaltationists were curious about 20th-century Earth, which was "inconceivably ancient" to them.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
And, considering how Don Luis Castelar outwitted and outfought them, the Exaltationists should have been curious about the "primitive" 16th century!\\
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: well, they underestimated him.
But I'd have thought, being gene-engineered, they'd be faster and stronger than him. Cat-quick, cat-strong.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
They certainly did underestimate Don Luis!
But they weren't, so I wonder how practical gene engineering would be in making humans cat quick and strong. Perhaps, as a soldier Don Luis had those drilled in muscle memory reflexes which made him "Cat-quick, cat-strong."
Ad astra! Sean
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