Do I have time travel insanity? Am I obsessed with time travel stories? I don’t think so, but I seem to have written more tales about chrononauts than I thought I ever would.
The first story in The Gates of Polished Horn is “Socratic Insanity.” The gestation of this one begins with a pithy little non-fiction frippery written by Will Durant in 1926 called The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the Greater Philosophers. I consumed the audiobook version of this tome, nearly 20 hours of narration from the sublime Grover Gardner. The book is wonderful, covering the history of philosophy through the eyes of the greats, such as Spinoza, Kant, Voltaire, and beginning with Socrates.
It was here I first heard the moving account of the death of Socrates. later Immortalized by the French painter Jacques-Louis David in 1787, and based on the account by Plato in Phaedo. I was actually brought to tears by the tale. Highly recommended.
But then I had to make it silly.
My time traveler, Grant, is at the event, which I’d say is more accurately described as the execution of Socrates. The city of Athens had convicted him (Socrates, not Grant) of impiety and corrupting the city’s youth – and the death penalty was administered via the consumption of hemlock.
Like Monsieur David, I’ve taken some artistic license with the events, but I hope it makes for an entertaining and thoughtful story. I do think my version of how time travel works, psychologically, is original, so worth checking out for that reason alone. But I can’t get into that here, for fear of spoiling the story!
Image by Jacques-Louis David – Public Domain,
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