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Fast-Forward or Rewind?
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I choose to pass the machine to the next person.
Hm. I think I'd go back but only if I can come back, I agree.Sidebar: I watch most of many movies on fast forward with subtitles.
I've read enough Connie Willis to know the perils of time travel. It's not a time travel story if something doesn't go wrong.I've also read enough social history to know that we would be pretty appalled by a lot of what preceded our current level of comfort. If you're gonna go backwards, let someone else test the machine first so you know you'll make it back.
I'm reading Connie Willis right now. Well, not right now. But after I finish typing this I'll go back to reading Blackout.
Yay! Is this your first Connie Willis book, Larry?
Larry wrote: "It is."I hope you enjoy it, and that you have All Clear on deck for when Blackout stops practically mid-sentence.
Ooh! This reminds me of a Henry Vaughan poem!"The Retreat"
Happy those early days! when I
Shined in my angel-infancy,
Before I understood this place
Appointed for my second race,
Or taught my soul to fancy ought
But a white, celestial thought;
When yet I had not walked above
A mile or two from my first love,
And looking back—at that short space—
Could see a glimpse of His bright face;
When on some gilded cloud, or flower,
My gazing soul would dwell an hour,
And in those weaker glories spy
Some shadows of eternity;
Before I taught my tongue to wound
My conscience with a sinful sound,
Or had the black art to dispense
A several sin to every sense,
But felt through all this fleshy dress
Bright shoots of everlastingness.
Oh how I long to travel back,
And tread again that ancient track!
That I might once more reach that plain,
Where first I left my glorious train;
From whence the enlightened spirit sees
That shady city of palm trees.
But ah! my soul with too much stay
Is drunk, and staggers in the way.
Some men a forward motion love,
But I by backward steps would move
And when this dust falls to the urn,
In that state I came, return.
If you went forward in time, and were smart about it, you could also make a killing betting on stuff, once you got back. :)I'd like to go back, just a bit, and do things like snorkel the Great Barrier Reef before it suffered all the ecological damage it has. Stuff like that.
I know the human world wasn't all that fun in the past, I don't really want to experience London during a cholera epidemic, for example.
Rewind to September 1975 and don't bogart that joint my friend. Whose turn is it to drive down to Cobo?
the future: You can read history books about the past but there are no future history books except fiction. I want to see what happens. Of course, it could be "army of darkness" apocalyptic.
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My young niece says she would go into the past, so she can clean up on bets and amaze people with her "clairvoyance." I'd pick the future, just because I want to know if I ever get my robot maid and flying car. I want to see things I've never seen before.