Future Shock, page 39
He shook his head, again. “I made a mistake,” he said. “And that is going to cost us.”
His mood, already dark, darkened still further. The contemporary Zargana were both more advanced than the contemporary humans and more numerous. They’d be fighting at the end of a long supply line, true, but the problem was hardly one that couldn’t be solved. They’d have some problems catching up with the future tech base, even with Vendetta and her crew serving as a cheat sheet, yet again ... given time, they’d fill in the blanks and start churning out newer and better weapons. They would sweep through the stars and destroy Earth ... unless they were stopped. They had to be stopped.
And then the Killers ...
“It won’t happen again,” he told his wife. He’d been naive, in so many ways. He’d assumed the local governments would understand the threat of the Killers, understand they needed to work together to save themselves; he’d assumed Y’Opohan and his crew would have the sense to understand they needed to work with him, in order to avoid a second devastating war. And he’d been wrong. “Whatever it takes, it won’t happen again.”
He closed his eyes. Earth would have to be dragged kicking and screaming into the future, no matter what its governments said, to protect the human race against the Zargana and the Killers. The Zargana would have to be stopped – again – before it was too late. And the Killers ...
“Whatever it takes,” he promised himself, “we’ll save the human race.”
“Just don’t lose yourself in the process,” Rachel advised. “There is such a thing as too much change.”
Ethan had to smile, although it wasn’t really amusing. They’d changed history ...
And now they were going to have to change it again.
Epilogue
“Jump completed, My Lord,” Y’Taslin reported.
Y’Opohan felt his jaws open in a wide smile as he beheld Zargana Prime, already the heart of a mighty empire. The Sol System had been busy, in a primitive sort of way, but Zargana Prime was far more impressive. Hundreds of starships were making their way to the nearest colony worlds, or setting out on missions of conquest; thousands of smaller spacecraft were buzzing around the orbital facilities, from giant industrial nodes to orbital battlestations. The Zargana had never forgotten the most fundamental rule of the universe – there were no rules – and they’d taken care to defend their homeworld, even if the threats were often imaginary rather than real. It was a vibrant sight before him, an empire that had never been forced to doubt itself by a single crushing defeat ...
I should have been born in this era, he thought. He could imagine himself as a great lord leading his troops to victory over an alien race, then returning home to reap the rewards of his service. It would have been so much more fitting.
He stared at the display for a long moment, allowing himself time to indulge the fantasy. He had plotted with the rest of his cabal, before the Killers had arrived, to bring back the days of yore ... and now he had his chance. His destiny lay before him, in the claws of an emperor whose name was still spoken with respect, even in his time. All he had to do was reach out and take it.
“My Lord,” D’Holin said. Her voice was quiet, respectful. It was good she was learning her place. “They have detected our presence.”
“Transmit our planned greeting,” Y’Opohan ordered. There was no more time for pleasant fantasies. Vendetta didn’t look that different from her ancestors, unlike the Federation Navy’s starships, but the contemporary Zargana would know she wasn’t one of their ships. “And then hold position. Let them get a good look at us.”
He felt his jaws open in a wide smile. The Emperor would be informed, of course, and then Y’Opohan would be invited to meet him. He’d be recognised as a noble caste and then ... there would be no limits. Not for him, nor his crew. Their destiny awaited, he told himself, the dawn of a whole new era ...
And the humans were about to discover, once again, that history could be changed.
End of Book One
The Story Will Continue In:
Future’s Past
Coming Soon!
Afterword
Lasky: Still think it's a dream?
Yelland: It's a nightmare.
-The Final Countdown
It will not surprise you to hear, I think, that when I was younger one of my favourite movies was The Final Countdown, which features the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz being transported back in time from 1980 to 1941, arriving near Pearl Harbor shortly before the Japanese strike that started the Pacific War. The crew are forced to decide if they should intervene in the war, effortlessly destroying the Japanese strike force before it can attack Pearl Harbor, or stay out of the conflict even though that means leaving thousands of contemporary Americans to their historical fate. The captain eventually decides to intervene, only to have the carrier transported back to the future before his aircraft can destroy the Japanese fleet.
In all honesty, I found that a little disappointing. Nimitz’s presence is part of a stable time loop, and everything they did while they were in 1941 was already part of established history. There were no changes to the timeline, and the actions of a crewman who remains behind when the carrier is returned to 1980 were also part of history. In my younger days, I liked the idea of the carrier destroying the Japanese fleet; as I grew older, and more interested in alternate history, I wanted to see how history would change by the sudden arrival of a carrier from the future. It would not just be a technological revolution, but also a socio-political one. If the Japanese fleet is destroyed before it can strike Pearl Harbor, would war be declared as in the original timeline (OTL)? If the Japanese lose their first and arguably most significant engagement of the early Pacific War, would Hitler declare war on America as he did historically? If the Americans of 1941, the era of Jim Crow and very limited female emancipation, came face-to-face with the America of 1980, when society had improved in many ways, how would they react? And how would the arrival of knowledge from the future influence the course of World War II?
These questions were answered, to some extent, by John Birmingham when he wrote the Axis of Time trilogy. Birmingham created the universe in which a multinational fleet of vessels from the very near future were sent back in time to 1942, just before the Battle of Midway (which is averted by the arrival of time travellers), and lets events flow from there. The contemporary British and Americans have to work to adapt to the arrival of the time travellers, and the sudden infusion of future knowledge and beliefs (including homosexuality as well as racial and sexual equality), while the Germans, Japanese, and Russians have to figure out how to make use of what scraps of knowledge they have obtained to save themselves in the universe where their enemies have suddenly acquired a major and seemingly decisive advantage. It is easy to criticise the direction Birmingham took his books, but overall I feel they are a valuable addition to the alternate history world.
John Birmingham is not the only author to write about the impact of time travellers from the future. SM Stirling wrote Island In The Sea Of Time, which featured Nantucket being somehow transported nearly 3000 years back in time, while Eric Flint wrote 1632 and its sequels, exploring what happened when an average American town was sent back to the middle of the Thirty Years War in Europe. Other writers looked at the impact of more deliberate time travellers: Harry Turtledove, for example, wrote The Guns Of The South, in which a party of time travelling Afrikaners went back in time to change the outcome of the American Civil War, while SM Stirling created the To Turn the Tide universe, featuring a team of Americans trying to save the Roman Empire before it was too late. And let us not forget the ur-example, Lest Darkness Fall, by L. Sprague de Camp, which obviously inspired To Turn The Tide.
It is not an easy field to write in, but when done well it can be brilliant.
I experimented with the genre myself during my early years, trying to work out what would happen if someone or something went back in time and/or was transposed into an alternate universe. I messed around with stories about time travellers in World War II, including the entire British Isles being sent back to 1940, or an American aircraft carrier finding itself in a world where Britain won the Revolutionary War and having to come to terms with the fact they were the only true Americans in a very different world, but there was little in the stories that was truly new. I wanted to try something I hadn’t seen before (or not very often): what would happen if a future society encountered time travellers from further in the future?
My original idea was to do a spin-off of Ark Royal, in which the original story would be rudely interrupted by characters from the future. The more I worked the idea, however, the more I realised it wasn’t going to work very well. It really needed a setting of its own. Accordingly, I devised a universe on the brink of war with an alien race that suddenly came face-to-face with humans from the far future, as well as aliens who had motives and agendas of their own. The remainder of the story spun out from there: how would they react, I asked myself, to people from a universe where national concerns were no longer important? How would they react to the knowledge of the immediate future, where some people would commit crimes or rebel against the government ... people who have not yet committed those crimes? What would they make of advanced technology and attitudes, and what would they make of the time travellers themselves?
And, of course, humans would not be the only race involved. How would the first set of enemies react to knowledge and weapons from the future? How would the second set of enemies react to news of their future defeats? And how many people would try to take advantage of the disruption caused by the time travellers to win power and influence for themselves? How would it all play out?
Those were the questions I asked myself, when I started writing this book. I hope you like my answers. And I promise you that the second book will be along shortly.
And now I have written all this, I have a request to make.
If you have enjoyed this novel, please leave a review. It is getting harder and harder to make a living through self-published books, and the algorithms grant more promotion to books with more and better reviews. Please also follow my blog, mailing list, fan page, and everything else: the more followers I have, the better I look to any prospective publishers. And please feel free to email me with your comments, criticisms, and everything else. I’m in the market for more beta readers, so let me know if you’re interested in that too.
Thank you for your time.
Christopher G. Nuttall
Kuala Lumpur,2025
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Christopher G. Nuttall, Future Shock
