From: Michael Straight <straight@email.unc.edu>
Subject: Re: (urth) Daemonising Pullman
Date: Thu, 2 Aug 2001 10:05:23 

On Thu, 2 Aug 2001, Tony Ellis wrote:

> The Crushed Butterfly theory of time has been tediously fashionable in SF
> writing for a long time now, but it -is- just a theory. Another one is that
> the stream of history would simply flow around any change, and carry on much
> as before. If that theory leads to more books like Pullman's, or Wolfe's
> There Are Doors, where the changes are small and thought-provoking rather
> than huge and predictable, then I for one am happy to give "logic" a miss
> for a while. :-)

Well, if you're willing to admit it's illogical, I can't argue with you,
but I think dismissing objections as "just the Crushed Butterfly theory"
is ridiculous.  All of human history and society would be very, very, very
different if men died immediately after having intercourse. No one would
ever know his/her father!  No man would have more than one child!  Every
man alive would be celibate.  This makes Star Trek Voyager look like
tightly-plotted diamond-hard science fiction.

-Rostrum


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