We learn that the Time Patrol second hand bookshop in San Francisco is in the Cow Hollow district.
The instruments on Wanda Tamberly's timecycle tell her that she is there although she is surrounded by wilderness. She recognizes Nob Hill and Russian Hill but they are covered by brush, not by buildings. Twin Peaks lacks the television tower. She has materialized on the surface instead of underground.
There is no:
San Francisco
Golden Gate Bridge
Bay Bridge
Eastbay cities
ships
aircraft
Oakland
Berkeley
Albany
Richmond
Golden Gate Park
What there is is:
"...the wind and the world." (p. 307)
The world without the works of man and, of course, the wind.
Wanda continues to think that she has arrived at the wrong time, not in the wrong timeline. But she will begin to suspect otherwise when she has flown east before the end of this chapter.
15 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I thought the Empire of the Frederick II we see in "Amazement of the World" had expanded to the Americas as far west as the site of San Francisco before collapsing? Shouldn't Wanda have seen the ruins of the city founded there by that realm?
Ad astra! Sean
Don't know.
That's the "Church wins" timeline. The Frederick timeline -did- have a city on the site of San Francisco.
I thought that was it.
Kaor, to Both!
I think "the Church wins" timeline has European settlement of North America only going as far west as the Mississippi River.
Yet again I'm annoyed at how I somehow mislaid my copy of THE SHIELD OF TIME.
Ad astra! Sean
We can follow Anderson by calling them the alpha and beta timelines.
Kaor, Paul
That would be preferable, altho "the Church wins"/"Frederick wins" timelines also has advantages.
Ad astra! Sean
The basic reason that the Americas are predominantly European (and African) genetically and culturally is Eurasian diseases.
The Europeans could -conquer- the place, but the die-off was predominantly from disease.
Eg., Mexico had something like 12-14 million people when Cortez arrived. By the 1720's, it was down to 1.5 million, and a substantial percentage of those were Spaniards or mixed.
It didn't get up to 12-14 million again until the early 1900's. By which time it was about 60% Spanish in its DNA. (Much more in the male lines, of course.)
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
It does make me wonder what might have happened if most of the Meso-American and N. American Indians had not been killed in those virgin field epidemics. I can see, in that case, a mix of both mostly Indian or mostly European new nations arising. Because I'm assuming some of the Indian nations and tribes would have had the time and population base needed for
learning the new tech introduced by the Europeans.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: it was very bad for the Indians. Particularly as populations crashed, and then populations were isolated... so they were vulnerable to virgin-field epidemics over and over again. That was common in the 19th century on the Great Plains, for example.
That's probably one of the reasons farmers overcame hunter-gatherers so rapidly in the initial Neolithic. Farmers were runty and small compared to hunter-gatherers, but they lived densely packed. They were disease-farms compared to the hunter-gatherers, and also outnumbered them.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Even the common cold, usually only a minor nuisance elsewhere, was a massive killer for American Indians, as described in CONQUISTADOR and your ISLAND books. And I read in Prescott's HISTORY OF THE CONQUEST OF MEXICO of how Cortez unsuccessfully tried to stop smallpox from spreading to the Aztecs.
The quantity of runty neolithic farmers overcame high quality hunter gatherers!
Ad astra! Sean
"Quantity has a quality of its own."
To quote a certain unpleasant person.
Kaor, Jim!
I did have the monstrous Stalin in mind.
Ad astra! Sean
Note that farming also meant 'going down the food chain', and eating a mainly plant-based diet.
Note also that aristocrats in farming societies hunt a lot (often prohibiting anyone else from doing it) and eat a lot more meat.
In other words, they live more like hunter-gatherers!
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Amusingly put, aristocrats living like hunter gatherers. You reminded me of the forest laws enumerated in the Magna Carta of King John.
Ad astra! Sean
Post a Comment