Tuesday 25 August 2015

Subjectivity

"...what he needed was not surcease but the completion of the hunt." (Poul Anderson, The Shield Of Time, p. 8.)

"The hunter awoke in Everard. A chill tingle passed through his spine, out to scalp and fingertips." (p. 305)

"Again the hunter's tingle went through his skin and along his backbone." (p. 327)

"A scent came down the time-winds, that of maneater.
"'Time to hunt,' [Everard] said."
-SM Stirling, "A Slip In Time" IN Multiverse, p. 91.

(I thought that Anderson also had a reference to "maneater" but have not found it on rereading.) (Addendum, 30 Aug 2015: "Most of [Everard] stood in a wind down which blew the scent of tiger...maneater." -The Shield Of Time, p. 75)

Everard brings primitive feelings and motivations to the high tech business of time travel. Guion seeks a higher level of experiential comprehension:

"'What is involved is no more amenable to symbolic logic than is the concept of mutable reality. 'Intuition' or 'revelation' are words equally inadequate.'" (The Shield Of Time, p. 7)

Although I apply logic to time travel, I find Anderson's texts consistently elusive, especially when the excellent "Star Of The Sea" is taken into account. Suppose the Patrol really is encountering something like a singularity that defies analysis and intellectual understanding? They perceive it in terms of time travel paradoxes because they have to perceive it somehow. Babylonians at the Patrol Academy had to be given a battle of the gods routine.

Lastly, for tonight, in addition to the time criminals and opponents listed in a recent post, another potential collective villain is suggested. Possibly, in a divergent timeline:

"'...the entire world that brought you and me into being is a phantom, a might-have-been, which, conceivably, an alternate Time Patrol keeps suppressed.'" (p. 76)

The Patrol might have to fight another Patrol to restore the Danellian timeline.

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