Unfortunately (maybe) rereading Poul Anderson's
The Shield Of Time makes me more aware of how much I disagree with Time Patrol spatiotemporal metaphysics. (To them, it is just physics.) An entire chapter describes Keith Denison's experiences in the alpha timeline. Two chapters describe Wanda Tamberly's experiences in that same timeline. That alpha timeline would have continued to exist around both of them if they had remained in it until their deaths and would have continued to exist for other people after that. There was no reason why the alpha timeline should have ceased to exist the moment after they had departed from it and, even if it did somehow arbitrarily disappear at that moment, it would still have remained true to say that it
had existed until that moment. Later in the novel, Manse Everard, speaking in the Time-Patrol-guarded timeline, says that the alpha timeline
has never existed. The events of the alpha timeline have never occurred in the past of the Patrol-guarded timeline but the entire alpha timeline did exist in the past of a second temporal dimension. Surely this concept is straightforward and accounts for everything that is described both in chapters headed with ordinary year dates and in chapters headed with alpha or beta year dates?
In time we trust.
4 comments:
I recall a story by another author, in which the viewpoint characters live in a timeline in which the Spanish Armada conquered England. This timeline has developed time travel and some people explore possibilities by going back in time making a change and investigating the resulting timeline. They then go back to reverse the change and return to their own time & timeline with records of the alternate history. I don't recall if those characters think of the alternate timeline as becoming non-existent when they reverse the change.
Jim,
TIMES WITHOUT NUMBER by John Brunner: hopelessly incoherent.
Paul.
Paul: well, it was a -little- incoherent... I don't think he thought it through.
Kaor, Paul!
No need for me to repeat what Jim and Stirling said. Only need to say that your criticism of Anderson's use of "deleted timelines" makes sense. Such timelines were simply made inaccessible for anyone from the Patrol's universe. Which pleased me because I did not like the idea of snuffing out entire universes.
Ad astra! Sean
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