Is there someone behind the scenes pulling the strings on a historical or cosmic scale? Poul Anderson's Time Patrol operates behind the scenes of history, ensuring that every event, even the Holocaust, happens on schedule. The Patrol has counterparts in mythology and fiction:
pantheons include gods of the elements;
Rupert Bear (see image) meets Imps of Spring, Elves of Autumn and a Clerk of the Weather;
Neil Gaiman's The Sandman series features anthropomorphic personifications of seven aspects of consciousness - Destiny, Death, Dream, Desire, Despair and Destruction.
Time Patrollers are in good company. Maybe.
4 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
While interesting to play with, if we start seriously imagining there is someone/something pulling the strings behind the scenes, on a cosmic scale, we are going to succumb to paranoid delusions. Stirling used that secret conspiracy idea in his Shadowspawn books.
I think the plots hatched by Aycyharach* against the Terran Empire in the Flandry stories was Anderson's contributions to the secret conspiracy idea.
Ad astra! Sean
*E.g., in THE DAY OF THEIR RETURN, HUNTERS OF THE SKY CAVE, A KNIGHT OF GHOSTS AND SHADOWS, and THE GAME OF EMPIRE.
In the Flandry stories by Anderson the Mersian and Terran Empires are known by all to exist and to work against one another. The exact natures of the schemes each side works on to harm the other are not known to many, but anyone who pays attention knows there are such 'conspiracies'. Similarly in real life there are and have been countries and empires that are/were hostile to each other and work to harm the other with varying degrees of secrecy.
Hiding the very existence of such organizations is another matter. Could the mysterious THEY actually exist?
https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/they-2
Intelligence operations often involve intricate deceptions. Apart from that, and occasional assassinations and so forth, long-term conspiracies are vanishingly rare.
It's just too difficult to keep secrets for any length of time.
Kaor, To Both!
You gentlemen made points I mostly agree with. But I think occasional and rare long term conspiracies are possible. Here I mean how, in THE GAME OF EMPIRE we see Merseia and Aycharaych engineering a really long range plot to insert a deep cover agent who would rise thru the ranks of the Terran Navy to the point where he could aspire to seize the throne.
Paranoically yours! (Laughs) Sean
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