We know in advance that a text that we are about to read is classified as fiction, even as science fiction, and we probably also know from the title, blurb etc that it is about time travel. So we are not surprised when Jack Havig's mother, suddenly hearing a baby crying in the next room, walks through carrying her baby and is so surprised at seeing an identical baby that she drops her baby only to see it disappear in mid-air... We just think about it and work out what must have happened but meanwhile the unfortunate mother is freaked to say the least...
I think that such events are logically possible but not that there is the slightest possibility in any other sense that they will happen.
21 comments:
There are hints of ways around relativity in current advance physics. Not that I understand them!
But, even if time travel is possible in some shape or form, it won't take the form of me appearing from five minutes in the future.
Kaor, to Both!
Excellent as Anderson's time traveling stories were, what really grips me are his stories using some means of FTL interstellar travel. And it's the possible hints at the cutting edge of speculative physics on ways of getting around the light speed barrier that makes me hope for that.
Much as I admire the Time Patrol stories and novels like THE DANCER FROM ATLANTIS, I tend to prefer Anderson's alternate/parallel worlds stories. Works like his two OPERATION books, THREE HEARTS AND THREE LIONS, and A MIDSUMMER TEMPEST. Probably because alternate history stories like these and Stirling's IN THE COURTS OF THE CRIMSON KINGS are at least theoretically less implausible than time traveling.
Ad astra! Sean
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
One thing which struck me while reading IN THE COURTS... was the passion your Martians have for "atanj," their version of chess, I've been wondering what these Martians might think of our Western/Terran chess? Either childishly simple or with maddeningly rigid rules?
I like chess but I am not at all good at playing chess!
Sh'u Maz! Sean
Sean: they'd find it rather simple, but occasionally refreshing. Of course, they have an average IQ of about 140...
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
That's rather ego crushing when I think of how often I lost chess games! I'm rather sorry we never saw Teyud trying out Terran chess--esp. because she was more open to accepting new ideas from Terrans than many Martians.
Btw, one of the Terrans in your book said the average Martian IQ was 125, not 140. Which is still plenty good!
Sh'u Maz! Sean
Ooopsie!
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
An average Martian IQ of 125 is still plenty good! And I look forward to reading THE LORDS OF CREATION when it's pub. on May 20. I'll be very interested in again seeing Marc Vitrac and the hominins of Venus, the King Beneath the Mountain, Teyud* and her consort Jeremy Wainman, and any number of Terrans of rival factions.
Do the Neanderthals of Venus also make an appearance?
Sh'u Maz! Sean
*It seems odd for a female monarch like Teyud to be called a King, rather than Queen.
This blog covers not only Poul Anderson books that have been published but also SM Stirling books that have not been published yet.
Sean: "It seems odd for a female monarch like Teyud to be called a King, rather than Queen."
English doesn't have a specifically female term for a woman who is prime minister or president. Why should there be sex specific terms for 'hereditary monarch' in another language?
Kaor, Jim!
I agree, but it does looks odd in English and many other languages on Terra.
And not all monarchies were hereditary. The Polish kingship, after the extinction of the Jagiellon dynasty in 1572, became elective.
Sh'u Maz! Sean
Which crippled Poland -- getting elected mean concessions to the nobility, which eventually ran amok and made coordinated government impossible.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Correct, aspiring candidates for the Polish crown had to agree to increasingly exorbitant demands from the Polish nobles before being elected king. And not only that, foreign powers started meddling in these royal elections, to get kings who would be beholden to them.
On top of all that the Poles capped their folly with the "liberum veto," allowing any single member of the Sejm to veto any proposed action or legislation.
In the last years before the Third Partition of Poland desperate reformers drafted the Constitution of 1791, which restored a hereditary monarchy and abolished the liberum veto. Catherine II of Russia did not like that one bit and invaded what was left of Poland, dividing it up with Prussia.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: yeah, they came to their senses... rather late!
Democratic republics generally seem to have a better record that at least *that* oligarchic republic.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling and Jim!
Mr. Stirling: But too late to save what was left of pre-Partition Poland.
Jim: I disagree, most republics, as seen in Latin America and Africa, are coup prone and tend to be ruled by despots or corrupt kleptocracies. And the US could be warlike and aggressive, despite being democratic. The War of 1812 saw a failed US attempt to conquer Canada and the US did conquer the northern half of Mexico in 1846-48.
The people in republics are no different from anybody else under any other form of gov't.
Ad astra ! Sean
Liberum Veto seems like a mistake a republic with a really broad voting franchise would be unlikely to make. Which isn't to say there are not other mistakes such a republic could make.
Sean: tho' it was nearly much more. Nicholas Trist, the negotiator, ignored President Polk's instructions and negotiated a settlement along the lines Polk had originally specified.
Polk had upped his demands -- he wanted the tier of Mexican states -south- of the border that we ended up with. They were thinly populated at the time, but had a significant number of Mexicans, unlike the nearly empty (and actually mostly Indian-run) areas the US actually claimed.
Mexico would probably have gone along with Polk's increased demands -- they really didn't have much choice, being blockaded and with their capital city under American occupation.
In which case the US would be about 500,000 square miles bigger and would have had more Mexicans for a long time before the present era.
Kaor, Jim and Mr. Stirling!
Jim: What really matters is not so much whatever form of gov't a nation has but whether or not that gov't is believed by its people to be legitimate. I would revise this comment of yours: "Liberum veto seems like a mistake a constitutional regime with a really broad voting franchise would be unlikely to make." I agree, all constitutional regimes of whatever forms are perfectly capable of making plenty of blunders.
Mr. Stirling: Now that was fascinating, that Pres. Polk's chief negotiator in Mexico agreed to offering terms far less harsh than what the President wanted! I looked up Trist and he did not like the war with Mexico, meaning Polk goofed, sending him to Mexico.
It does make me wonder, what might have resulted if Trist had obeyed Polk and insisted on Mexico agreeing to Polk's harsher terms?
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: Impossible to say. For example, where would the new territories -- probably states by then -- have stood in 1860?
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I agree, impossible to predict the consequences of what a US annexing far more of Mexico than what happened would be. I have my doubts any US states so recently carved of Mexico would enthusiastically support either side in the North/South divisions of 1860-61.
Ad astra! Sean
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