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In the Past Everyone Will Be Famous: Difference between revisions
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So you finally get your [[Time Travel|time machine]] working, and decide to visit some out of the way town in a quiet year. You hit the [[Big Red Button]], step out of the machine, and trip over [[Shakespeare]]. Cue the [[Historical In-Joke|Historical In Jokes]]. And probably the discovery that [[Beethoven Was an Alien Spy]].
It seems that time machines and [[Historical Domain Character|real life famous people]] have a very strong attraction. Even when you manage to avoid everyone in the history books (both real and in-[[The Verse|verse]]), you'll probably run into an ancestor.[[hottip:*:The further back you go, the more this becomes [[Truth in Television]] — every generation pastward, the number of your ancestors doubles, even as the world population shrinks. Of course, it's difficult to know that a given distant-past person is ''definitely'' your ancestor, even with DNA testing, because of their proportionally tiny genetic contribution. Then go back ''far enough'', and the percentage of living people who are your ancestor gets lower, due to [
This means that as soon as you step out of your time machine, a well known historical figure will [[Contrived Coincidence|show up]] shortly. This can either be someone who was famous in the real world, or, if the series takes place in [[The Future]], someone who became famous in the Future History.
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* Neal Stevenson's novel ''[[Cryptonomicon]]'' and ''[[Baroque Cycle]]'' trilogy are full of this. The former includes, for example, Alan Turing, Douglas [[Mac Arthur]] and Hermann Goering. The latter includes Newton, Leibniz, Hooke and just about every other important 17th-century natural philosopher, plus Blackbeard.
** Justified in that the primary protagonist of the ''Baroque Cycle'' was a member of the Royal Society (which included most of the prominent natural philosophers of the English-speaking world at the time) and therefore it makes sense that he would interact frequently with other Royal Society members and possibly even their rivals (Leibniz, who was encountered [[Young Future Famous People|before he was famous]]).
* The spirit of this trope is present in the ''[[Riverworld]]'' novels. Every human who has ever lived is resurrected on an alien planet, upwards of 10 billion people, and yet the protagonists keep running into notable historical figures, like [
* Justified in the ''[[Never Again]]'' series of novels, as the time travelers' whole objective is to [[Set Right What Once Went Wrong|change the past]], so of course they will run into famous people. It's really only played completely straight in the first book, because later books include people in the past who never existed in [[Real Life]] as major characters.
* Averted in the short story "The Gnarly Man" by [[L Sprague De Camp (Creator)|L Sprague De Camp]]. The title character is a 50,000 year Neanderthal who has managed to live a quiet, normal life over the millenia. The only famous person he ever encountered was Charlemagne, who he saw giving a speech in Paris.
* ''[[The Roman Mysteries (Literature)|The Roman Mysteries]]'' series has its main characters meet [
* Mostly averted by the [[Time Scout (Literature)|Time Scout]] series, but while investigating Jack the Ripper, the Ripper Watch Team runs into William Butler Yeats at a social club. Cue massive [[Squee|fangasm]] by the time guide in charge.
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[[Category:Time Travel Tropes]]
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