Sunday, September 17, 2017

I Am Sure Someone Answered This in a Comment in the Last Few Years

But blogger lets me search posts, not comments.  There is a sci-fi story where a scientist demonstrates to his class that time is actually quite resilient to changes in the past.  He starts a pendulum swinging  through a time portal.  The first swing kills a bug, which causes the ancestor of an early mammal to starve, removing a useful mutation from the gene pool.  It is a short story, but it adequately demonstrates the long-term effects, with each swing slowly altering the classroom and its inhabitants.  At the end, the professor and his students are now reptilian, not primates, and he croaks, "See!  Nothing has changed!"  Author, title?  "Anyone, anyone."

9 comments:

  1. Could it be "Brooklyn Project" by William Tenn?

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  2. "Brooklyn Project" by William Tenn

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  3. I was thinking it might be an Isaac Asimov story, but it turns out to be "The Brooklyn Project" by William Tenn.

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  4. "Brooklyn Project" by William Tenn, 1948.

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  5. I have that story somewhere in one of my ancient sci fi collection books.
    I have about 30 boxes of books I'd need to did thru to find it tho!

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  6. "Brooklyn Project" description sounds more political. Something by Asimov or van Vogt?

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  7. http://variety-sf.blogspot.com/2009/05/william-tenn-brooklyn-project-short.html

    There are actually two possibilities. The professor conducting the experiment in The Brooklyn Project is described as "just as arrogant at the end as at the beginning", and there is commentary that it might be based on a van Vogt story from 1941, also with a seesaw. Asimov collected it in an anthology, "Isaac Asimov presents the great SF Stories 10 (1948)"

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  8. L. Sprague de Camp did some time-travel stories, this sounds kinda like him... but I don't have the books anymore, so that's all I can offer.

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  9. It *might* be The Best-Laid Scheme, by L. Sprague de Camp; I haven't been able to find a synopsis though.

    I do hope you'll mention the title once you find it!

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