Ooh, that's a good one!

How would they extend the story enough to make it a movie?



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Those who forget the pasta are doomed to reheat it.

Didn't Clifford Simak write a whole novel on much the same premise (Time Safaris, that is)? Though who stole the idea off who, I've no idea -- they were writing at approximately the same time, I think.

I seem to remember Simak's novel being called Catface . . . anyone else remember it?

EDIT: Just Googled it and Catface was published in 1978, so Simak was probably pinching ideas off Bradbury, then. Tis a fine book, nonetheless (and some would suggest he was pinching ideas off Lewis Carroll, too.)



Post Edited (07-14-03 10:03)

Jesus saves; Buddha does incremental backup.

L Sprague De Camp wrote a short story called 'A Gun For Dinosaur', which may have been even earlier, and subsequently wrote more stories about the same hunter/guide's expedition's. They were collected into one volume as 'The River of Time'. ('Rivers'?)

If I had access to a time-machine, but history couldn't be changed, then I wouldn't go near any battles (Too risky! After all, my survival presumably wouldn't be a fixed part of history...) or try intruding on any VIPs: Duke Ellington's Orchestra at the Cotton Club, Satchmo before he got stuck in the list of best-sellers that people expected him to play every time, Benny Goodman's Orchestra at the Palomar Ballroom in LA (on the night when he broke through into fame) and his first Carnegie Hall concert, Artie Shaw's Orchestra live in concert somewhere (with his original Grammercy Five, featuring Johnny Guarnieri on harpsichord), an Ellington/Basie "Battle of the Bands", the Newport Jazz Festival in the year that they filmed it....

(Nowhere that modern English _ which is the only language that I'm any good at _ wouldn't be understood. Nowhere where I'd probably be TOO uncomfortable if the time-machine broke down & left me stranded... )

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Warning! Product may contain Newts!

I think I'd have to nip forward a decade or two to see if things have improved any. Failing that, back to Edwardian times, where I could wow the literary establishment with my daring and innovative forays into Mr Wells' field of "scientific romance"...



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"Whisky-wa-wa," I breathed - she was dressed as Biffo the Bear.

I'd just want to see a dodo, or a mamoth, or a tas tiger, or a passenger pigeon, or a giant sloth, or a great auk, or a .........................................................

Hey, you could show up at one of Jasper's booksignings with a real live dodo. I suspect he'd be rather surprised. Or you could bring him a pair and he could start breeding them in Wales. I hear there's a lot of money to be made in exotic pets.

Re seeing "a" passenger pigeon _
The main potential problem with this would be (and one reason why they were wiped out may have been...) getting caught under one of those sky-darkening flocks of them: Take a wide, heavy-duty umbrella with you...

There may be some surviving 'Tasmanian Tigers', or [at least] members of a closely related species that hasn't yet been scientifically described, in the Central Highlands of New Guinea. Thylacines definitely existed on that island until quite late in the Pleistocene epoch, according to fossil evidence, and there have allegedly been several sightings of live beasts of this kind (for which the local natives have a distinct name) thereabouts in recent years.

The population of Mammoths that apparently survived for longest was on Wrangel Island, which lies off the northern coast of eastern Siberia, where they lasted until about 3'000BC... Not only would going to see those be a rather shorter journey than going all of the way back to the closing stages of the last major glaciation (which was over twice as long ago), and thus presumably less strain on the time-machine, but they had evolved into a "pygmy" stock during their insular isolation and so you might _ just possibly _ be able to bring one (or even a breeding pair?) back to the present day with you.

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Warning! Product may contain Newts!

"Re seeing "a" passenger pigeon _
The main potential problem with this would be (and one reason why they were wiped out may have been...) getting caught under one of those sky-darkening flocks of them: Take a wide, heavy-duty umbrella with you..."

I was at the Noup of Noss last week, at the Gannetry. Talk about "a short, sharp shower of......"



Post Edited (07-14-03 16:49)

I'd like to try to go back in time and make some notes on passenger pigeons, just to try and work out whether Allee effects came into play in their decline. (Allee effects are when a population has a minimum population size for some behaviours - mating, feeding etc)



PSD

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This is the work of an Italian narco-anarchic collective. Don't bother insulting them, they can't read English anyway.

I'm not sure about passenger pigeons, but part of the reason the Carolina Parakeet (the only parrot native to the US) was so easily hunted to extinction was that when a farmer, who viewed them as a pest, killed one bird, the rest of them would fly down to comfort and try to help their fallen comrade, and the farmer could easily kill the entire flock.

There was also a market for the colorful feathers, which were used on ladies' hats.

As a parrot fancier, I find the whole thing rather depressing.

Having read and re-read a biography of Josephine Baker recently, I'd love to visit Paris in the mid-20's to see her dance, and to see that famous 'witty bum'.
A visit to Abbey Road to see The Beatles recording 'Sgt Pepper' would be fab.

I went to the art deco exhibition at the V&A a little while ago and they had a film of her dancing - funny because in the stills she looks quite squat and not as her legend would have you believe but her dancing really was witty and wonderful - stunning stuff !



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If the English language made any sense, a catastrophe would be an apostrophe with fur.

The interesting thing about the passenger pigeon is that the minimum population size seems to have been in the millions! It fits right on the end of a bell curve, but is quite depressing if true. It means you really can't predict how small popualtions can go before they suddenly collapse.



PSD

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This is the work of an Italian narco-anarchic collective. Don't bother insulting them, they can't read English anyway.

I actually live in TAsmania and I can tell you that the extinction of the Tasmanian Tiger is a topic of lively debate even now. Just in Sundays paper was a two page spread talking to various folk about whether the Thylacine (it's REAL name) still exists or not. It is actually possible. After all, one third of Tasmania is locked up as world heritage forest and nobody gets there except the odd scientist (Called PSD? Sorry. Going off on a tangent there) doing some wired weather experiment.

I'd love there to still be Thylacines about, and I'm sure it's a possibility. I'd love to visit Tas, really - it just seems to grab some part of me I can't define.



PSD

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This is the work of an Italian narco-anarchic collective. Don't bother insulting them, they can't read English anyway.

And nor can anyone else.

On a serious note (it's alright. It won't last) come visit! I could show you around a few places. The Blowhole (you could fall in), Port Arthur (we could lock you in), Queentown (loose you in a mine). The possibilities are endless.

If I ever end up there you'll be the first person I come to infest...



PSD

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This is the work of an Italian narco-anarchic collective. Don't bother insulting them, they can't read English anyway.

Now there's something for me to look forward to. (And plan for...)

I'm still puzzled about the 'wired weather experiments' Kaz claims are taking place. Are Taz scientists trying to create life by tying long wires to the trees when there's a thunderstorm ? Is this how they intend to resurrect the (extinct ?) thylacines ?