Stanley Doble
Call Me a Cab
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The Doonesbury gag:Another examination of forward time-travel by a science-fiction author, (albeit involving no futuristic technology), is in the Spider Robinson short story, The Time Traveler. It concerns an American missionary who early in 1963 had been imprisoned in a Central American country just as a revolution occurred. After being forgotten about for ten years, he is released into the world of 1973. Robinson describes what his character faced was not The Time Traveler's Dilemma, future shock, but instead was The Time Traveler's Second Dilemma, transplant shock. Whereas everyone else had been time traveling forward in time at a rate of one day per day, Robinson's protagonist had effectively traveled forward in time at a rate of 10 years per day. The story went on to describe the difficulties he had in adapting to the social, cultural, and political changes that had occurred in the intervening time.
Similarly, and much more succinctly, I remember there was a Doonesbury strip in the early-mid 1970s where one of Trudeau's characters was sitting at a counter talking with a just-released Vietnam War POW. It ended with the ex-POW saying he was looking forward to watching Ed Sullivan on TV.
POW: Have you got this week's Life magazine?
Host: Ah.... about that...
POW: Never mind, it's almost time for Ed Sullivan.