Question 123

What is your favorite time period to read and study about? Would you want to go back and live then?

• The Meji dynasty of Japan. Specifically, from the mid 1860s to the early 1880s. There is a *fantastic* work of historical fiction set in that time period called "Rurouni Kenshin". (Frank Wustner #119)

• Seriously, I would love to have lived during the Italian Renaissance, when man was rediscovering the classics and the world of ideas was full of so much potential. (Todd Adamson #1114)

• Middle ages.

  No!! ([email protected] #1554)

• Greece. Probably a student of Socrates or Plato.

  But while I'm indulging in fantasy, I might as well make myself an extremely wealthy, handsome, well endowed, 6' tall man with a genius IQ and a few superpowers on the side.

  If this is within your power to grant, I beg of you to do so. (Decimal #482)

• Ancient Egypt, Revolutionary France, Ancient Rome, Ancient Greece. The Dark Ages. The Nineteen-Twenties and Thirties. Reading - fiction or non-fiction - is fine. I'd hate to go back then; partly because I wouldn't live then - no modern drugs - mostly because I don't have a romantic view of the past and I'm a true child of my time - I like good plumbing. (Diem #1459)

• I'd have to say it's a tossup between three periods: The Renaissance, The Napoleonic Era and Ancient Greece/Rome.

  Italy during the Renaissance would most likely be the place I'd visit. No one particular place, but I'd have to see the major centres of learning. (Blackguard #869)

• I thought about this question all day at work yesterday and came to the conclusion that I don't really have a favorite. I think I like them all. If a history or a novel is accurate and interesting, in other words teaches me something I might not have known before, I'm hooked. I suppose I'm currently interested in two periods more than any others. The first is the Mission and Rancho periods in California. The second is the prehistory of human beings in Europe.

  I would love to visit any period in the past, but not stay. I doubt that I have the survival skills necessary to make it. Life was *hard* for the vast majority of our ancestors. We often take for granted how well off we +are, here, today, now. (chibiabos)

• The middle of the 13th century. The mongols had established their empire at that time. Curiously, that age of conquest was surely one of the most peaceful. With one out of two people on earth united under the iron fist of the Great Khan, there was probably little fighting going on amongst them. The age saw free trade and religious tolerance. (how else un an empire that spans totally different cultures?) Ever wondered why various technologies were "invented" in europe afterwards? Too bad the mongols lost out in the end. They spent too much time and effort bringing islamist nations to their knees, so they failed at crushing christianity (maybe they were little interested in 13th century europe). (darwinian)

• The future is definitely my favorite time period to speculate upon. Specifically, the distant future. I don't know what it will be like, but I would like to think that we will be able to create virtual or physical fantasy worlds for ourselves. I would like to create, among others, a world that would recreate the wonder of childhood, the pure sense of fantasy and wonderment, of pure wistful nostalgia for all the pretty unspoiled things of my childhood remembered, when even situations that any adult would find embarassing and burdensome would be just another adventure, when stumbling upon an old piece of junk in the middle of a pasture would be fascinating to me. When in the distant future, mankind is able to manipulate matter to a high degree, we can create these worlds for ourselves.

  I sense splinters of this childlike wonderment when I see a picture of a toy or something from the time period of my infancy.

  Now, as for the past, it was a nasty and brutish place for all except those few who lived off the sweat of their fellow humans, and animals. Let's put it behind us. (Antonius Block)

• I don't believe that any time in the past was some "ideal" time when things were better (using whatever subjective criteria you want to use). Nor do I think the future will be "brighter." The present is just fine for me. With that said, however, since I'm a fiction writer, I've bought in to the romantic notion of Paris between the two world wars. Hemmingway, Fitzgerald, Maugham, Henry Miller, Anais Nin, etc.

  I've read a great deal of fiction that was written during that time period (which has been considered great mostly because of it's defining style) and also about the history of that time and place. I was also a philosophy student in college and still see much of the philosophy that was written during that time to be the defining thought for the century.

  I live in California, but I have travelled to Paris several times, done the "literature" tour. There's no way to capture what times were like 70 to 80 years ago, but it's still fun dreaming abou it -- while staying at a little hotel in the St. Germain de Pres (where to this day is the French publishing district), break off a piece of baguet, sip expresso, and work on my next novel. (Lee Locke #893)