One of my favorite shows is LOST and this season is awesome, reminiscent of season one. The curious thing is that time travel is emerging as the culprit for why the survivors are, well, lost. It's interesting that the creators chose time travel rather than government conspiracies, supernatural forces, aliens, or any of the other elaborate theories circulating the net. Simple time travel.
I wonder why we are so fascinated with time travel?
It never seems to get old, does it? (Pun intended)
The concept of time is really too big for us to fathom. We are powerless to measure, control, or even understand time.
"But we have clocks" you say.
Well, you will never be able to convince me that 15 minutes at the dentist is the same amount of time as 15 minutes on a trout stream.
But we can experience other times.
History is our attempt at legitimate time travel. We funnel history to our imagination, and then our subconscious builds an environment we can experience...apart from our own time.
This is partly why I wrote a historical fiction book, to play with how the past affects the present and in turn how the present can affect the future.
I do have a few sci-fi genes in me though, and I would like to explore time travel more in my writing. I wonder what Lincoln would think of Obama's America. Or how the Spartans would fare alongside modern-day US Marines? What advice could Anne Boleyn give Hillary?
I don't know, I think it would be a fun way to compare and contrast the past and present. I could demonstrate that the more things change, the more they stay the same.
To conclude, I leave you with a quote by Jay Leno I just heard.
"Long before you were born, people used to write really long text messages on paper. These were called books."
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The Spartans and US Marines...now there is a sight to behold.
ReplyDelete- Chad
Write a short story about time traveling. Do it. Do it now.
ReplyDeleteMark, I'm going to wait until someone invents a time machine, and then I'm going to write a short story and go back in time and post it here. Just wait and see.
ReplyDeleteIf I hadn't always had too much material to cover, I had wanted to throw banquets for my students with historical characters from different eras. The characters you mentioned would have worked nicely and I might add that I would love to have Hannibal and Napoleon and Ghingus Khan and Washington and Eisenhower to debate war strategies. On the other hand, Jane Austin, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Milton, and Spenser would be an awesome gathering! Shall we do it?
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