- to paraphrase Dr. Henry Jones Sr.
It's just... Wow.
I've rather slowing been making my way through listening to the audio books(tending to listen in burst), and while doing so I've found myself paying a lot more attention to all the surprisingly numerous examples of pre-retcon Traveling we see...
Pre-retcon Taveling. Well, it's basically just bog standard teleportation.
I mean... Just THINK about how different such a thing is to post-retcon's wormhole Gateways.
Post-retcon Traveling... Is just out and out faster then light travel, and an extremely versatile form of it at that.
And suddenly... Everything from "why would the AoL with all their tech have overpopulation issues,
And setting aside the lack of any evidence of continuity, there is also the nature of Traveling and Skimming, both of which rely on certain knowledge of the position from or to which one intends to move. In the Breaking of the World, such knowledge was not at all certain, since the very geography was changing under their feet. What if one of the points of reference involved in "knowing" a place well enough to Travel from, or Skim to, was a mountain range in the background, that suddenly didn't exist? Or what if the location changed, WHILE you were Traveling or Skimming? How many channelers found themselves inside of a mountain or stepping out of a gateway where a plateau used to be, to plunge into a canyon?
While on the flip side, just picture the plots of any of the post-retcon books WITHOUT the ability to move around whole armies easily... Entire PLOT LINES just wouldn't of even of been able to happen. Yet even without them everything would gotten dragged out to hell and back in universe just be pure travel time alone. Well, ether that, or we would of gotten sick the overuse of the Ways.
There is still no real evidence that people Traveled with teleportation in the early books. There is a lot to suggest it, but RJ left himself sufficient wiggle room to argue it away, regardless of our convictions of his sincerity. You couldn't even indict him on the tangible evidence, let alone convict.
"Sure he just jumped from one place to another, but as it didn't say that there wasn't a gateway, that totally means he just forgot to notice the large hole he'd never seen that opened up in thin air, that he promptly stepped through" is that it?
From the Eye of the World. Ch. 51.
"I have to get away!
"No!" Aginor shouted. "You shall not have it! It is mine!"
Rand did not move, and neither did the Forsaken, yet they fought as surely as if they grappled in the dust. Sweat beaded on Aginor's face, no longer withered, no longer old, that of a strong man in his prime. Rand pulsed with the beating in the cord, like the heartbeat of the world. It filled his being. Light filled his mind, till only a corner was left for what was himself. He wrapped the void around that nook; sheltered in emptiness. Away!
"Mine!" Flame shot from Aginor's mouth, broke through his eyes like spears of fire, and he screamed.
Away!
And Rand was no longer on the hilltop. He quivered with the Light that suffused him. His mind would not work; light and heat blinded it. The Light. In the midst of the void, the Light blinded his mind, stunned him with awe.
He stood in a broad mountain pass, surrounded by jagged black peaks like the teeth of the Dark One. It was real; he was there. He felt the rocks under his boots, the icy breeze on his face."
"Bog standard" as in "normal". "Everyday". "Basic".
"People who had absolutely no idea what Traveling entailed" While certainly believable enough... Kind of loses something when they are in fact describing how it is working at the time, rather then how it would be retconed to work later.
You're doubt about be just listening in to the audio book... Is completely right of course, but still you jumping to conclusions that that somehow means I wouldn't of bothered to give the issue any farther thought before even bring it up. -_-
The AoL population issues come from the BWB. Pg. 37. .
"Since long life spans and excellent health care resulted in large viable populations, it is fortunate that birth-control methods were extremely reliable and without side effects."
For all of being a short blurb, it stick in my mind as being the closest we ever heard to an actual "problem" with the utopian AoL.
"ridiculous debate"? The weave is easy to learn. Indeed, seemingly one of the easiest weaves for a Wilder to just come up with out of nowhere as it is tied to simply wanting to be elsewhere. Learning a location takes little time at all, and that is only even for trips more then a few miles. And the weave itself can save not just the channeler, but entire groups of people.
Gateway Traveling would of gone a LONG way to saving civilization from the Breaking all on it's own.
Where as teleportation Traveling... Wouldn't of been hugely useful for anyone aside from the channeler themselves.
*NM*
- 31/05/2017 09:27:58 AM
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