Quote:
Originally Posted by latepaul
Yes. I can't recall the exact details but I think the reason Dirk goes back to become the Person from Porlock is to stop Coleridge writing the full poem which has information about the space ship etc, and they don't want that to be available. Although I seem to remember the logic doesn't hold if you examine it too carefully.
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Indeed, there are a few aspects of the novel that do not bear close scrutiny, even according to its own explicitly defined rules. eg: We are told that personal memories are retained, despite time paradoxes ("we will each remember whatever it is that has happened to us individually"), so this must include the ghost they have just sent back 4-billion-years - whose own very recent memory has him set on destroying life on Earth* ... however, we might argue that the paradox in this case is saved by the hand-wavium of what Reg describes as "The complexities of cause and effect defy analysis."
* This conundrum is why I thought we had Gordon the ghost still hanging around, but it was not to be.