This is the first of five chapters headed 209 B. C. in PART TWO of Volume II of the complete Time Patrol collection.
Physically, all that happens in this chapter is that Hipponicus' caravan, including the guard Meander (Manse Everard), approaches and enters Bactra. But high technology is at work. An unmanned spacecraft had tracked the caravan, revealing that it would suit Everard's purposes to join it. So Meander was with the caravan when it was tracked.
We read the usual Andersonian details about the countryside, then the city. Everard recalls Afghanistan, 1970, and reflects:
"A lot of change and chance would blow from the steppes in the millennia to come. Too damn much." (p. 22)
Too much? But we would not want the region or the world to remain as it was in 209 BC? "Change and chance" is an evocative phrase encapsulating much that is to be found in Poul Anderson's historical fiction, historical science fiction, time travel fiction and future histories. That phrase says it all. The particular works fill in the details.
Change and chance...
12 comments:
Those changes mostly involved war and slaughter.
So Everard's "Too damn much" refers principally to war and slaughter? OK.
Kaor, Paul!
To me that was exactly what Everard (and Anderson) meant.
Ad astra! Sean
Pretty much ever inhabited place on earth is an endless palimpsest of conquesrt and migration(*). All title-deeds are written in human blood; the only difference between one place and another is how long the blood has had to dry.
(*) with the minor and unimportant exception of some recently settled islands.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
And the atrocities of 10/7 was a brutally clear example of fanatical jihadists and antisemites trying to repeat that pattern of extermination/conquest, with the goal of destroying Israel/exterminating the Jews. A pattern I see no reason to ever be permanently stopped except by the Second Coming of Christ.
Ad astra! Sean
Disagree.
Kaor, Paul!
And I believe in having no illusions about human beings. And I distrust myself as well.
Ad astra! Sean
I believe in having no illusions about human beings.
The 10/7 atrocities were: (i) mass murder (they killed two babies which was two too many but they did not burn any - that was a lie): people breaking out of their confinement in what has been described several times as a "concentration camp." The conflict did not start on 10/7.
It is the Israelis who are conquering territory. Everyone who opposes them is not a fanatical jihadist or antisemite. I have met many Jews who oppose them. Israel is a racist and now genocidal state which has no right to exist. To oppose the existence of a state is not to call for the extermination of Jews. (I should not have to say that.)
We have the capacity to solve these problems without divine intervention which is a very long time in coming.
Kaor. Paul!
Except you believe in hopes/ideas I believe to be illusions.
I despise and utterly abominate the genocidal Hamas scum. I reject all the excuses made for the vermin breaking out of that "confinement."
I don't care beans if Israel is conquering territory. Hamas started the war and lost it. People who start and lose wars always pay for it, one way or another. Israel has every right to take whatever steps are necessary to destroy the Hamas threat.
Rejected, what you said about Israel
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
But I do not agree that my ideas are illusions! (You keep trying to state as if it were a fact that you are right and I am wrong. That is what is in dispute.)
But why was an entire population confined? Does anyone need an excuse to break out of confinement? Surely "vermin" is genocidal language?
Hamas did not start this conflict. The steps that Israel is taking - the wholesale destruction and slaughter, the targeting of journalists, the interception of an aid flotilla, the smearing of the flotilla as "terrorist" and the inhumane treatment of those arrested - are neither necessary nor succeeding in destroying Hamas.
Rejected, what you have said. (I do not like expressing myself like this but I am trying to make a point by replying in kind.)
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
And not everybody, even in Gaza, agrees with you. Some Gazans are now so fed up with the Hamas scum that they now oppose them, with Hamas thugs murdering them in retaliation. There may well be a civil war there--which hopefully ends with Hamas being destroyed. Then the war might end, with a new regime accepting defeat and the need for making the best terms possible with Israel.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Of course not everyone agrees with me or with you or with anyone else! Obviously we live in times of immense discord and conflict. The word "scum" is inappropriate. I could certainly say "IDF scum" but I don't think that that gets us anywhere. In Gaza, Israel backs Yasser Abu Shabad's former looting gang, the Popular Forces, against Hamas. The Popular Forces have taken over a piece of land in the part of Gaza still controlled by Israel. Israel foments division which can certainly lead to civil war. "Hamas," in the more general sense of Palestinian resistance to oppression and dispossession, is never destroyed and the attempt to do so equals more bombardment and starvation of Palestinians. Aid is withheld as a collective punishment which is against international law although all such laws are flaunted by the US-backed Israelis merely because they are not (yet) enforceable. All the documentary and video evidence is being assembled for eventual war crime prosecutions.
Defeat? Best terms? Israel wants everything. That approach just means endless conflict. Surely history since 1948 and earlier proves that?
Paul.
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