Message from a Time Traveler

Dan Simmons - Official Web Site ^ | April 1, 2006 | Dan Simmons

[hocndoc]

"Syracuse, New York"?


I still say it's "Write this story."

[whd23]

About "the last three words" .... has anyone figured them out?

"Pull my finger?"

[Triple]

Fear selfinterest
Honor

Or

Religion of peace

[reagan_fanatic]

Thank You for posting. There's something here for everyone to think about.

[Triple]

Islam means submission

[null and void]

LISTER snatches the hat he's wearing off his head and stuffs it in a pocket.

LISTER: Well there you go, I won't wear the hat. Then it can't happen, can it? I can live without a hat.
RIMMER: Lister, it *has* happened. You can't change it, any more than you can change what you had for breakfast yesterday.
LISTER: Hey, it hasn't happened, has it? It has "will have going to have happened" happened, but it hasn't actually "happened" happened yet, actually.
RIMMER: Poppycock! It will be happened; it shall be going to be happening; it will be was an event that could will have been taken place in the future. Simple as that. Your bucket's been kicked, baby.

LISTER: Sez you.
RIMMER: Sez me and Albert Einstein, thank you very much. Albo and I happen to agree on this one. It's called the Theory of Relativity.
LISTER: All right, OK, OK. Right. The Cat broke his tooth in a future echo, right? Now if I can stop him breaking it...
RIMMER: (Smugly) Can't be done.
LISTER: ...then I can stop me from dying!
RIMMER: Can't be done.

[agrace]

Great read.

LG - please take the time.

[TChris]

But I'm pretty certain that in the context of the story, the traveler turns out to be himself.

Read it more closely. The traveler is his surviving grandson.

[CygnusXI]

Nano Nano...uh.. Nano?
:D

[TASMANIANRED]

This is not fiction.

[dwighteise]

I have a scariest three words that fit the storyline.

Load the gun.

[NewJerseyJoe]

> They came up three times. Oh, I don't want to give it away. Three words, three times.

The writer in the story says "three words I will not share here in this piece nor ever plan to share." Not - share - here - in - this - piece

[T-Bird45]

tc --

I have been reading your exchanges on this thread since this morning and believe I understand your thesis on this matter as is stated in #152: "We didn't need to become like them to defeat them."

In this statement you are using the US vs. USSR analogy of the 1980s to make your point. However, you also stated earlier that it was the societal and cultural fault lines of the Soviet empire that caused its collapse and Islamic societies also have such fault lines.

Please elaborate on these Islamic fault lines and how they are best used for leverage in an assymetric warfare mode. I think this is where your analogy breaks down because the lack of a nation-state construct reduces our ability to achieve the required leverage.

[Paul C. Jesup]

Have you ever heard of M-Theory?

[null and void]

Yep.

[Knitting A Conundrum]

Bumping for later

[Paul C. Jesup]

The interesting part of M-Theory is it explains what sub-atomic particles go when they phase in and out of our reality. It also states the possiblity of multiple universes constantly branching out from themselves into new universes.

Using this theory, by time traveling into the past, you create a new timeline simply by being there.

[null and void]

Yes. But you don't change your own past.

[calljack]

Mankind is Islam.

[calljack]

America is gone.