Message from a Time Traveler

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

[Mr. Silverback]

Thanks much for paging me, NAV.

Ivan, I apologize for the additional ping, but I think we could really use the perspective of a Londonistaner in this thread.

[hocndoc]

I want to see the minority report.

[calljack]

How about the old standby:

"Kill them all"

Whatever it is it stuns him into inaction for three months, must be something that rocks his entire belief system.

Interesting to ponder.

[MNJohnnie]

Stupid stuff. Counter insurgency is not the same thing as a war of conquest by Athens. The whole premise is a fraud from word one.

More stupid flailing around by the rabidly ignorant to sound "wise". Suggest the Arm chair generals simply shut up. Their ignorance of how to win a Counter Insurgency is appalling. The proper historical model for Iraq would be the Counter Insurgency in El Salvador, NOT blovating about ancient Greeks.

The only thing worse then the rabid ignorance of Armchair Generals is the way they tirelessly spew nonsense as if they had a clue on modern war

[Mr. Silverback]

Load the gun.

I don't think they would keep him up, but they would be appropriate. I think the three words have to do with him becoming a dhimmi or converting. The real Simmons would never do so (if he would he wouldn't have written this and posted it on the web) but if my future grandson told me that it would keep me awake nights.

[MNJohnnie]

Long and deranged clueless rant actually.

[Mr. Silverback]

It's too late.

I think you got it.

[null and void]

Yeah. "You become møøselimb" would certainly ruin my whole day.

[FlGoldwingGuy]

Bump. Thanks for the post. Interesting reading.

[kidd]

Lyndon B. Johnson- June 5, 1968 : 293 - Address to the Nation Following the Attack on Senator Kennedy:

" Let us put an end to violence and to the preaching of violence. Let the Congress pass laws to bring the insane traffic in guns to a halt, as I have appealed to them time and time again to do. That will not, in itself, end the violence, but reason and experience tell us that it will slow it down; that it will spare many innocent lives. Let us purge the hostility from our hearts and let us practice moderation with our tongues. Let us begin in the aftermath of this great tragedy to find a way to reverence life, to protect it, to extend its promise to all of our people"

[MNJohnnie]

Don''t waste your time TC. Just more mindless bl-ovating by self important pseudo intellectual Americans with a trailer park level understanding of the world and it's peoples. I always laugh how these Arm Chair General's always just glide right by the fact that the bulk of the people doing the fighting and dying on OUR SIDE in the War ON Terror are Arab Muslim Iraqis. This is just another clueless rant by an American Know Nothing with false pretensions of intellectual ability. 170 IQ? What utter nonsense. More like 17 IQ

[coydog]

Actually, the three words had something to do with a universally known EVENT, not so much something personal.

[Junior_G]

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

How do you know that?

[Mr. Silverback]

Yoiu're right. I stand corrected. Apparently I forgot to turn my brain on.

[Tolkien]

I'm impressed!!

[Junior_G]

Long and deranged clueless rant actually.

Yikes. I'd hate to be around you after you've read a bad Garfield comic.

[WestVirginiaRebel]

It's no April Fool's joke as some have suggested. Simmons may be a liberal but he seems to get it. Ultimately it is about the West's survival in the face of fanaticism.

[So Cal Rocket]

three words that refer to people, places, or events that everyone from the Time Traveller's time would recognize as significant, but anyone in our time would be baffled by.

Bingo! Something along the lines of "Atlanta, Seattle, Houston"... or three equivalent places that were destroyed by Islam in some huge attack that shocked the world. The author left them intentionally vague.

[Knitting A Conundrum]

More guesses then:

New York City

New York nuked

Los Angeles nuked

[calljack]

Three words that any Replayer or time traveler visiting here from a century or more from now would react to first and most emotionally

I do believe you are on to something there.