A Time Odyssey

One of my favorite science fiction writers was Arthur C. Clarke. He is most famous for his short story “The Sentinel” which got converted into one of the best science fiction movies of all time, “2001: A Space Odyssey.”

During the last phase of his life, he carried some of the ideas from that book into a series of novels, co-authored by Stephen Baxter, called “A Time Odyssey.” This, somewhat obscure piece of work is based on non-benevolent aliens trying to regulate life in the universe. This requires destruction of many intelligent species in order to save the universe from dying due to harnessing of too much energy. Human beings, not surprisingly, are selected for destruction.

That is however, not the most interesting idea in this series of novels.

What is interesting is that the aliens create an alternate earth to preserve a record of what they are going to destroy. This alternate earth-museum contains human beings from different time periods co-existing. So, the first novel includes the saga of the main character living in year 2037, co-existing with Rudyard Kipling from 1885, Genghis Khan and his army from the 13^th century, and Alexander the Great from the 4^th century BC.  Most of the story in the first novel deals with all these disparate folks duking it out.

Some days I feel like we are living in such an alternate earth created by non-benevolent aliens. We now have people living in:

•          The medieval times who believe that god created universe in six-days some six thousand years ago and that it is OK to kill someone for not believing in god,
•          The 1780s who believe that we need every citizen of our country to own guns to be able to fight against a tyrannical government,
•          The early 1900s who think that women have no rights and should be second-class citizens,
•          The 1960s who have no problem wasting energy because it is their birthright to do so,
•          The 1970s who are still fighting the cold war, and
•          The 1980s who still think that the climate change is just a theory created by greedy scientists in order to win research grants.

In Clarke’s book, the folks from the old times attacked the modern humans with weapons they had during their time---spears, swords, bows and arrows. What is different in our reality is that people living in the medieval times have or will soon have nuclear weapons.  Even more frightening, we are not an earth-museum, as in the book, but the real deal. Although, the aliens have not targeted us for annihilation, perhaps they do not need to.

We are capable of doing that ourselves!