This story was
totally implausible. Give a real far-left group access to a time machine and three things would happen within half an hour:
- one group of would-be socio-economist intellectuals would be insisting on bringing forward Marx to update his theories to explain why capitalism hadn't yet collapsed upon itself, but why it surely soon would -- after all, the only way to bring about a functioning socialist state is to win the arguments and bring all the people around
- another group of seize-the-day revolutionary types would be insisting on bringing forward Lenin to lead the comrades in action against the capitalist-imperialist oppressors, and saying some very rude things about the faithless cowardice of the first group
- a group of Trots would have thrown their toys out of the pram and left within the first five minutes when the others didn't recognize the overwhelming importance of retrieving Trotsky
Seriously, though, I rather liked elements of it. CammoBlammo said several things I agree with, including:
The real kick for me was at the end when the cell all went on to different lives. Some died, some continued the revolution, and some got on with life while staying true to their cause.
The way that this note rang true for me actually made up for a lot of the other implausibility. In real life the realization that your youthful ideals can't be brought about just by wanting it hard enough tends to creep up gradually: the story used the techniques of SF to force it on the group in a rush (through the words of their idol who knew what the future held). Good, dramatic, short story stuff, with very human results.
Personally, if I had a guarantee that the revolution would succeed in 800 years I wouldn't bother fighting. I wouldn't even bother when the time came. Why risk everything for a cause that cannot lose?
That's one fascinating question. The other is, what good is a revolution in 800 years for the next 30 generations of oppressed workers? Is it morally right to give up the struggle just because you know you can't win yet? As for Marx, is he really content to let the seeds of the destruction of capitalism take so long to grow?
Just on that, somebody complained that there was no indication about what the cell were fighting against. There was one clue --- it was a government that was prepared to nuke their own nation in order to win. If my nation were to consider that a real option, I'd probably think about a revolution too.
I thought there were several hints that the government they were fighting was more oppressive than the US today. One was the very existence of active revolutionary communist cells in the country, and not just a few: enough to mount a serious revolution. That's a fictional setting, not careless implausibility. I'd have liked to know more, though.
There did seem to be a lot of partially developed ideas -- the characters, particularly; the government; the history of socialist movements in this world; the presence of Marx; the politics of the time machine -- and I could imagine it being much more effective if some of these were fleshed out. It struck me as a story released a draft or two too early.
But it was very far from being the worst Escape Pod.