Difference between revisions of "The Red Queen's Race"
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Premise has a book sent back in time via "micro-temporal translation." The book would be in Attic Greek and give enough information about 20th-c. science (primarily chemistry) to — let's mix metaphors and say — kick-start or reinforce the abortive ancient Greek flowering of science and mechanics. As the philosopher who did the translating tells the investigating authorities: | Premise has a book sent back in time via "micro-temporal translation." The book would be in Attic Greek and give enough information about 20th-c. science (primarily chemistry) to — let's mix metaphors and say — kick-start or reinforce the abortive ancient Greek flowering of science and mechanics. As the philosopher who did the translating tells the investigating authorities: | ||
− | 'The didactic Roman poet Lucretius, in his | + | 'The didactic Roman poet Lucretius, in his [...] "On the Nature of Things" - elaborated on [... atomic] theory and throughout manages to sound startlingly modern. |
− | 'In Hellenistic times, Hero built a steam engine and weapons of war became almost mechanized. The period has been referred to as an abortive mechanical age, which came to nothing because | + | 'In Hellenistic times, Hero built a steam engine and weapons of war became almost mechanized. The period has been referred to as an abortive mechanical age, which came to nothing because [...] it neither grew out of nor fitted into its social and economic milieu. [...] ¶ |
− | + | 'In other words, gentlemen, while you are right that any change in the course of past events [...] would have incalculable consequences, and while I also believe that you are right in supposing that any random change is much more likely to be for the worse than for the better, I must point out that you are nevertheless wrong in your final conclusions. | |
− | |||
'Because this is the world in which the Greek chemistry text was sent back. | 'Because this is the world in which the Greek chemistry text was sent back. | ||
'[... The man] who sent back the book] may have thought he was creating a new world, but it was I who prepared the translations, and I took care that only such passages as would account for the queer scraps of knowledge the ancients apparently got from nowhere would be included. | '[... The man] who sent back the book] may have thought he was creating a new world, but it was I who prepared the translations, and I took care that only such passages as would account for the queer scraps of knowledge the ancients apparently got from nowhere would be included. |
Latest revision as of 01:48, 15 September 2019
Asimov, Isaac. "The Red Queen's Race." Astounding January 1949. Collected in The Early Asimov or, Eleven Years of Trying. New York: Doubleday, 1972. Frequently reprinted and translated; see the Internet Speculative Fiction Database[1] On line as of 14 September 2019, possibly pirated.[2]
Premise has a book sent back in time via "micro-temporal translation." The book would be in Attic Greek and give enough information about 20th-c. science (primarily chemistry) to — let's mix metaphors and say — kick-start or reinforce the abortive ancient Greek flowering of science and mechanics. As the philosopher who did the translating tells the investigating authorities:
'The didactic Roman poet Lucretius, in his [...] "On the Nature of Things" - elaborated on [... atomic] theory and throughout manages to sound startlingly modern. 'In Hellenistic times, Hero built a steam engine and weapons of war became almost mechanized. The period has been referred to as an abortive mechanical age, which came to nothing because [...] it neither grew out of nor fitted into its social and economic milieu. [...] ¶ 'In other words, gentlemen, while you are right that any change in the course of past events [...] would have incalculable consequences, and while I also believe that you are right in supposing that any random change is much more likely to be for the worse than for the better, I must point out that you are nevertheless wrong in your final conclusions. 'Because this is the world in which the Greek chemistry text was sent back. '[... The man] who sent back the book] may have thought he was creating a new world, but it was I who prepared the translations, and I took care that only such passages as would account for the queer scraps of knowledge the ancients apparently got from nowhere would be included.
See for a scientifically-sophisticated discussion of the implications of a device that could send matter to a different time, and for the broad point of how the sciences are embedded in their cultures and thereby constrained in what can be discovered and/or what the larger cultural results might be of new scientific knowledge.
RDE, finishing, 14Sep19