You can go back in time and prevent a great catastrophe. Which one would you prevent?

David I saw Ellison worked up an auditorium full of many hundreds of people to the point they was almost ready to go and hang some guy who public a small fanzine that had dare to annoyed him.

I remember being amazed at how he was able to work up such an emotional storm from fairly rational people over a minor issue that did not concern them.

World science fiction conversions can be interesting.

My only observation of him
was at a Star Trek convention, probably in the 1970s, of 1OOOs of attenders.
Seated next to me were a few girls who said thay were about 12 years old.
Thay were very excited about seeing Harlan Ellison in a few minutes.
His address was very rife with obscenities, tho he was not mad.
He was in fairly good spirits; that was just how he normally expressed himself.
( Even if he had gotten mad, we 'd have hoped for better discretion in public.)

I believed that his foul speech abused the audience.
I am 1OO% confident that he did not care WHAT I believe
(not to imply that we ever met; we did not).





David

IMO, he's also highly overrated as an sf writer. He's done some good stuff but, basically, he has a pocketful of tired tricks which he knows well how to use to his advantage. His major claim to fame is not as a writer, but as editor of the series of Dangerous Visions original anthologies.

Well, u know Andy:
how someone enjoys a book is a lot like how well he enjoys a meal.
Its very personal. The appreciation of art is very personal, subjective.





David

I can't argue with that; that's true, David. But I would suggest that in both literary and gustatory matters there are certain standards of excellence, mediocrity etc. which transcend individual tastes. But I did say, IMO. You need not, necessarily, share that opinion.

U bring out a valid point !





David

Someone who had once been close to me died recently. That made me focus on the relationship we had and where it fell apart. It crossed my mind to go back to the evening that happened and to speak up.

That reminded me of an old Child Ballad (243) called James Harris or the Daemon Lover or the House Carpenter. The plot involves an old boyfriend returning to claim his now married former sweetheart.

Often, the lover is revealed to be the devil. I imagine that the ballad was composed by some 16th C version of Stephen King or Edgar Allan Poe . . . but . . who is the Daemon Lover. One of the things he might be is a time traveler. He could also be the manifestation of her imagination or of a fever, particularly childbirth fever as she leaves her babes.

Maybe all those who loved and have regrets about the outcome are, in some way, time travelers.

For a short time, I thought I would be willing to fall into a black hole to correct the past, but I have adult children and grandchildren. My need to correct, to follow a different fork in the road, would leave holes in the present.

Have u seen the movie titled Somewhere In Time ?
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0081534/

I was obsessed with a certain young lady
and the storyline made me think back about her.

If it were possible for me to go back in time to prevent
a personal catastrophe, I 'd change what I did not do
in relation to her, when we were 13.





David

collapse of Mayan empire.

i think that was great

Barack Obama's conception? I suppose that doesn't seem like a catastrophe to some so maybe I can try a different one. Maybe the Johnstown floods (1889, 1936, 1977). Maybe the twit that created aerosol cans and started a more rapid global warming than nature might have intended.

Better yet, leave things as they are since each catastrophe makes things happen which often creates new beauty. Without the Obama conception we might not have his lovely wife as first lady so I guess he gets to stay. Floods create new indentations, move rocks to new places, rearrange the terrain, global warming helps ice sheets start moving which create new landscape as well.

Yeah, I think we should keep things as they are. Besides, a change from a past event could create an even worse future. I believe there was a New Twilight Zone...the 1980s series, not the original...where someone decided to keep JFK from being assassinated, it created an even more frightening future. Remember cause and effect, they go hand in hand.

The birth of Adolph Hitler

I would make sure Al Gore (not Bush) got the Presidency.

As my name implies I can time travel, so actually I am constantly tweeking the present by going back in time to change things. Do you ever forget things, sorry this is caused by me causing ripples in time lines and alternate realities. Just last week I went back in time and wiped out 50,000 Roman soldiers in Carthage; I was mad. Oh you said prevent a great catastrophe, okay there was that time Pompeii was going to explode, so I landed Sicilian pirates and kidnapped all the young women in the brothels and took them to Sicily; everyone else turned to stone. The same thing happened in Sodom. That was fun, before the eruption I got everyone pregnant and then the women escaped, or they literally turned to stone again; we cant save them all every time, but at least we can send time bandits back to knock up Sumatra women before giant Volcanoes cause catastrophic disasters ... kind of reminds me of when I was Thor and I went and saved many shiploads of women at an island palace before a volcano exploded.
I prevent loss of genetic material, by assessing the needs for lost genes, then I warp time and time travel, to altar reality, and prevent gene loss, during preconceived natural disasters, such as meteorites and great floods every 7000 years. But be not afraid.

do you like western style breakfasts?
I own some property near Eastport Me

"I'd probably saaaaay....

seeing to it that Adolph Hitler's mother got an abortion."

Too late, to do so sooner would be effective to a point, but now you lose more than you gain. You should abort a problem of the day, I would choose myself.. Though such is not wise as no future can ever be had if any attempt it, it is clear it would continue, also they would often prove themselves wrong to do so.
So it is impossible, even if it is merely impossible. As far as Humans should be concerned... The instant it happened, there was no question to be had. Likely too, the past which vanished twice, may not have been past at all to those altering it, but some other form of structure touched and changed.

Which leaves myself pondering which aliens killed the dinosaurs and how advanced was their first attempt, which we see the only part of in fossils.
They may have been wonderful, but for the few wrong. ??

why jump to abortion?

Why not just be around to prevent Mrs. Hitler from having sex during the time when she would have conceived the child. Or, maybe even better, keeping Mr. Hitler occupied around the time he was going to have sex with her.

Seems a lot easier to provide a pleasant distraction to one or both than to force a woman to do something to her body she doesn't want to.

If she had a baby at a different time, different egg, different sperm, different person.

How would you accomplish this?

That would be simple make sure the so call butterfly ballot created in one Florida county and that confused thousands of voters get printed in some other formate/layout.

World war one, which ultimately led to World war two