I'm engaged in the process of constructing a rather complex fictional account of how
Isaac Asimov came to include some important clues about telepathy and time travel in his science fiction stories and so I've been reading some of his old stories such as "The Red Queen's Race". You can download
the 1949 issue of
Astounding that contains that short time travel story.
Time Travel
In "The Red Queen's Race", Asimov introduced the term "
temporal inertia", but he did not develop it as extensively as he later did in his time travel novel
The End of Eternity. "The Red Queen's Race" emphasizes what is often called the "
butterfly effect", and the sense of dread experienced by the story's narrator when it is discovered that a physicist has used his time travel machine to send a book about chemistry back through time to the ancient Greeks.
The narrator of "The Red Queen's Race" fears that knowledge of chemistry in the hands of the ancients will cause a dramatic change to Earth's timeline, erasing from existence the world as he knows it. However, all is not not lost! The chemistry book is part of a
time loop which is required to create the world we live in.
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| The Buld arrive on Earth. |
First Contact
Asimov is a character in my
Exode Saga. Using the
Eternity time travel system, the positronic robot
R. Gohrlay carefully arranged for Asimov to live in the era when rocketry makes space travel possible. In the
Buld Reality,
Interventionist agents made use of Asimov and his penchant for writing as a way to prepare Earthlings for the arrival of a
Buld spaceship. Sadly, the arrival of the Buld on Earth went mostly unnoticed. Under the terms of the
Trysta-Grean Pact, Earthlings in the 20th century could be allowed no knowledge of space aliens.
The Buld Reality
In that
Reality, Asimov wrote a story called "
The Atlan Intervention", which revealed the existence of
hierions and sedrons. One of the last changes to our timeline, just before the Final Reality, was the removal of stories such as "The Atlan Intervention" from Earth's timeline.
Making use of the
mind clone network,
Rylla is now receiving reports from
Observer Base about the contents of "hidden" science fiction stories that have existed in
Deep Time. According to Rylla, "The Atlan Intervention" mentioned several points in time when the existence of sedrons was revealed to Earthlings. Apparently it was in both the
Foundation Reality and the
Asimov Reality that Earthlings were given access to sedron-based technology in order to accelerate technological advances for early development of interstellar travel. Introducing sedrons to 20th century Earthlings was risky and dramatic. However, other Interventionist missions further back in the past were also needed in order to make sure that the over-all pace of technological advances would support the development of rocket technology and space travel in the 20th century.
In the Final Reality, the terms of the
Trysta-Grean Pact were strictly enforced. This required removal of all mention of hierions and sedrons from writings published before the end of the Time Travel Era. Further, no
physical evidence of hierions or sedrons was allowed to be passed on to we Earthlings by alien visitors to our world (for example, see
Maria Green). Some last minute Interventions were required to "clean up" the timeline and remove even the most obscure mention of sedrons or hierions from published works of literature.
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removing all physical evidence
of hierions from Earth |
According to Rylla,
Aristocles was a type of "anti-Inteventionist" agent who erased from Earth's history the fact that
Pythagoras had received information about sedrons and hierions as part of an Intervention into the course of Earth's historical timeline. According to
Zeta, Pythagoras was provided with
infites, invisibly small nanites that entered his brain and gave him an understanding of atoms, hierions and sedrons as unseen material components of the universe. In turn, Pythagoras passed on to his friends an account of how it was possible for human minds to be transferred into either
femtobot replicoids or a transcendent existence within the
Sedronic Domain.
Later, Aristocles attempted to destroy all the written copies of what Pythagoras had taught his contemporaries. Aristocles replaced the actual teachings of Pythagoras with his own account of "Pythagorean science", a story that we know as the dialogue of Timaeus.
In Aristocles' account of the teachings of Pythagoras, the words for "hadrons", "hierions" and "sedrons" were purposefully confused with the ancient Greek words for octahedron, dodecahedron and icosahedron.
The Aristocles Intervention would have been a complete success, however one written copy of the teachings of Pythagoras survived and was eventually discovered by
Cyriacus of Ancona. That long-lost account of the teachings of Pythagoras was not recognized and translated until the mother of
Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino was sent to Earth as an Interventionist Agent. Zeta believes that Raphael was a mind clone of his mother, Màgia. Raphael made several attempts to publicize his mother's work, but eventually he was taken from Earth to Observer Base, preventing publication of Màgia's translation of the teachings of Pythagoras.
Asimov's story "The Red Queen's Race" was one of the few clues that remained in the Final Reality to draw attention to the fact that time travel had been used to make the Roman Empire a dominant feature of Earth's timeline rather than the Etruscan Empire. In the Ekcolir Reality, the Etruscan Empire dominated early European history, leading to a world in which the science fiction literary genre was dominated by female writers, most of whom were well-trained in scientific disciplines. According to Rylla, there is a story in the library of the
Writers Block that explains the actual Interventionist plot that targeted Pythagoras and made it possible for Rome to dominate the Etruscans in all Realities except the Ekcolir Reality.
The Athens-Ephesus Alliance
According to Rylla, a
Fru'wu agent known as Hapha'iston, prevented the construction of the Temple of Artemis in the city of Ephesus in the Ekcolir Reality. Hapha'iston traveled back through time and intercepted the Interventionist attempt to give Pythagoras information about chemistry. Pythagoras was to be given infites that would provide him with the idea of using mercury to facilitate the extraction of silver from ore mined near Athens (see the
Athens Intervention). Those infites also mentioned the idea that there are three fundamental classes of matter, hadrons, hierions and sedrons. In the absence of those infites, the silver mines near Athens were never fully exploited and Pythagoras never became famous for his ideas about life-after-death.
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| ancient silver coins |
In the absence of a lucrative trade between Athens and Ephesus (sending mercury from Ephesus to the silver mines near Athens), Athens never flooded the ancient Greek world with silver coins and there was never a great flowering of classical Greek civilization. Zeta suggests that the time-traveling Fru'wu agent of the Ekcolir Reality took the code name Hapha'iston in honor of the god that we know as Hephaestus.
Related Reading:
Vanth
Exocycle
Next:
telepathy in 1939
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