Wednesday 5 June 2024

Time

When I read sf in the 1960s, the main concept in my mind was time: time in the abstract, as discussed by HG Wells' Time Traveller - mainly, what is it? - and also the concrete passage of time in individual experience but also in historical or even cosmic periods. I was conscious not only that much sf was set in the future but also that at every moment we were approaching and entering that future. Some of Robert Heinlein's Future History was already a decade or more in the past. 

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:

S.M. Stirling said...

I liked the way the Exaltationists were curious about 20th-century Earth, which was "inconceivably ancient" to them.

Sean M. Brooks said...

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

S.M. Stirling said...

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.

Sean M. Brooks said...

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