22-November-2005, 02:51 PM
|
 |
Honored Member
|
|
Join Date: Jan 2004
Location: Fifth corner of the Earth
Posts: 16,731
|
|
Re: Forward or back in time?
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by SG-1 Fan
If you had to decide whether to go forward 1000 years or back 1000 years, which would you choose? Assuming you could retain all memories but take nothing with you, would you go back in time and advance civilization at a "blinding pace" or go forward to see what’s what?
|
As long as I could get back, and if I could move around in the past at will, I'd forgo the financial rewards of future knowledge for knowing what really happened back then.The idea of getting to know the original scientists is just too darn tempting. That combined with experiencing the real starts of the cults that later became major religions would be more satisfying than monetary rewards.
That reminds me of a passage in Slaughterhouse-Five OR THE CHILDREN'S CRUSADE by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.:
Quote:
So Billy moved a little farther back, but not as far as the part for adults only. He moved because of absentminded politeness, taking a Trout book with him -- the one about Jesus and the time machine.
The time-traveler in the book went back to Bible times to find out one thing in particular: Whether or not Jesus had really died on the cross, or whether he had been taken down while still alive. The hero had a stethoscope along.
Billy skipped to the end of the book, where the hero mingled with the people who were taking Jesus down from the cross. The time-traveler was the first one up the ladder, dressed in clothes of the period, and he leaned close to Jesus so people couldn't see him use the stethoscope, and he listened.
There wasn't a sound inside the emaciated chest cavity. The Son of God was dead as a doornail.
So it goes.
The time-traveler, whose name was Lance Corwin, also got to measure the length of Jesus, but not to weigh him. Jesus was five feet and three and a half inches long.
|
__________________
A person's name, or a mark representing it, as signed personally or by deputy, as in subscribing a letter or other document.
|