Time Travel
We need hardly list these titles yet again: six volumes, including an omnibus collection.
Time Dilation
Tau Zero
Starfarers
The Kith short stories
The Rustum History
"Time Lag" (and here)
The Boat Of A Million Years
We hardly notice the time dilation in Boat because the characters are immortal and do not return home. Nevertheless, time dilation as well as immortality helps them on their slower than light interstellar journeys.
History
historical fiction
historical science fiction (time travel; immortality)
future histories
lessons from history applied in individual stories
alternative histories
Immortality
World Without Stars
Boat (as above)
Anderson covers the past as much as the future.
8 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I've been wondering, re "alternate histories," have you read Stirling's TO TURN THE TIDE? I loved it and recently reread large parts of it.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
That is one of the ones that you and I were involved in pre-reading.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I did, and I suggested some corrections/changes. But I meant the final, official, published text.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
I haven't read that yet. Is it very different?
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
In some ways, yes. More detailed and fleshed out. E.g., the draft version barely mentioned the early Christians, but we see more about them in the final text. And so on.
Ad astra! Sean
I find the Time Patrol series more credible than the Jack Havig books. If time travel is possible, time would be mutable -- otherwise you'd need a Time Patrol or some omnipotent godlike being to prevent changes. Havig tries to change time and is prevented by... what? Directed coincidence?
Only one Jack Havig book, unfortunately. But two other Anderson novels have time travel with an immutable timeline.
It is very difficult to write a mutable timeline narrative that is fully internally consistent. I do not think that Anderson succeeds in this - good though the Time Patrol series is in many ways. Besides, if I am precise about the meaning of "time travel," I want a pastwards time traveller to arrive in our real past and to stay then, not to disappear into another timeline. This does lead to the unacceptable coincidences of the Havig timeline - unless we accept a scenario in which actual occurrences of time travel are few and far between.
Kaor, to Both!
Trying to make sense of time travel hurts my head! But I lean to the view that if time travel is possible, then timelines are mutable. At most anyone who prevented Archduke Francis Ferdinand's assassination caused splits in the timelines: our history still existed, but there were other histories with no Sarajevo.
Ad astra! Sean
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