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To: Diana Gabaldon 76530,523

Dear Diana,

I just started reading THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS this morning, and when Buchan defines his book as “the romance where the incidents defy the probabilities, and march just inside the borders of the possible” in its preface, he echoes very nicely what I thought when reading your excerpt last night.

I don’t know how probable Claire’s penicillin experiments are (but I do hope the medical experts will give you an alls-clear to let the scene stand), but once again you tie them very nicely with events and questions that are deeply rooted in a doctor’s professional life—and, to make them ring even truer, in a mother’s life.

That’s what kept me reading the later parts of VOYAGER (and keeps me rereading it); that even though the plot sometimes made me think that now Robert Louis Stevenson had finally gotten the better of you , there are always those deeply human elements in it that make this more than “just” entertainment. Same here, on a smaller scale: daring setting, but at the same time something for me to relate to. And to respond to, Kleenex and all .

As you may notice, I’ve given in to curiosity and read the scene, and I don’t think you’ve spoiled anything for me. So, if you still feel like it, I’d be more than happy if you shared whatever scenes you feel like showing to someone with me.

Thanks for posting this. Baerbel

Fm: Mira Brown 100425,170

To: Diana Gabaldon 76530,523

Hi Diana,

<< Can one change history? Well, yes and no (under the Gabaldon Theory of Time Travel, that is). One usually _can’t_ change the outcome of any “large” event, simply because knowledge isn’t the crucial factor. >>

Ah, yes, one can’t stop the Jacobean uprising but one can tell friends to plant potatoes? I think I’ve grasped enough of the Gabaldon Theory of Time Travel *not* to expect you to put Mr. Fleming out of business.

OK, I’ll try and explain what I mean, but I probably won’t do it very well: Even with the accepted perspective on the past and the future, it’s fairly normal to have at best limited expectations of one’s own impact and contribution. Now, Claire *knows* that penicillin doesn’t come into use (other than use of mould in traditional medicine all over the world, I suppose) until WWII. How does, or doesn’t it or even shouldn’t that affect her “back to the future” view of events? I can understand her desire, even ability, to improve things in whatever small way she can, but somewhere in there must be more doubt than hope, more for her than people who live in their own time. This is where I get lost in all this “backward and forward” stuff.

<> Do I have to answer this? Mira

Fm: Eve Ackerman/Librarian 71702,3077

To: Diana Gabaldon 76530,523

Speaking of time travel…

I was thinking about your characters the other day. So far, we haven’t seen any travel forward in time farther than where he/she would be in “normal” life. IOW, Claire returned to the twentieth century no later than where she would have been anyway, right?

So what does this mean to a baby born in the eighteenth century whose parents can return to their points of departure in the twentieth century? Would he not be traveling forward beyond his biological time?

But of course, being an author, you have godlike powers to do whatever you want. Within reason. Eve Ackerman/Librarian

Fm: Marte Brengle 76703,4242

To: Diana Gabaldon 76530,523 (X)

I think in the event of assassinations and so forth, while one couldn’t change the outcome, one *could* use foreknowledge to clear up various and sundry mysteries. Think if you could step through the stones and go back to November 1963 and focus a tele-photo lens on that sixth-floor window in Dallas, for example. (And then scoot before the FBI grabbed the film.)

But as for changing small events… have you ever read that wonderful science fiction story where the time-traveler steps on the butterfly?