Talk:The Proteus Operation

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The plot described is not a true respresentation of the plot of the book. The plot in the article is more like an overview of the 'Proteus' universe. The plot does not describe the significant events in the order that the book presents them and does not describe the actions of the principal characters.

I agree. One of the points started at the end of chapter 10 and expanded in different part of the book is that time travel may not work the way they were led to believe it did:

'“In the front office, Anna Kharkiovitch was showing Mortimer Greene a summary of the study she had been conducting for the past few weeks, comparing everyday events as reported in the news with the corresponding items contained in the records from their own times. She had uncovered a whole list of further discrepancies. "I can't find any differences before the date of our arrival here in January," she said. "But from then on, these things keep appearing—small things, admittedly, but how can they be explained?" (...)

“Here's another. Item: The Joe Louis versus John Henry fight at the beginning of February. According to our microfilms, Henry was knocked out in the second round for a full count. But at Madison Square Garden a couple of months ago, the fight was stopped at the count of five in the first. Item: Pope Pius XI died in February—except it happened a day earlier in our records than was reported here. Here are samples of the same day's issues of the same newspaper—they're not the same." (...)

”“I could go on, but you can see the kind of thing. This sounds insane, I know, but it's almost as if we're, well . . . somehow in a different world. . . . But how could that be?”'

Chapter 22 goes whole hog on the explanation but here are the highlights:

"“Einstein looked at Scholder. "So, the unpredictability would follow not from one outcome's being selected randomly from a possible six, but from uncertainty about which of the six branches an individual would experience," he said. "In other words, which outcome would come to correlate with his sense of identity. His memories would be a correlated set of outcomes of previous interactions, a kind of path traced through a tree of constantly branching possibilities.”

“Yes," Scholder said.

There was a short silence, interrupted only by the sound of Szilard's pacing and Paynes voice from the far side of the partition, muttering numbers to somebody. "But there would have to be a different copy of him in each of the six worlds," Szilard said at last. He stopped, and his eyes widened as the full implication registered. "Copies of everything, in fact—the world, everything—not just six times over, but for everything happening, everywhere. . . ."

"Now I think I am beginning to see a little more clearly where this is leading." Einstein said. He took out his pipe and began filling it.”'

The final explanation of what is really going on comes in Chapter 48 where it is explained the time travel was in reality "an alternate-reality transfer system”--2606:A000:7D44:100:DCF6:81A5:263D:5EF2 (talk) 15:33, 10 June 2017 (UTC)

Easy to fix

Describing the plot of a book is a cheap and easy way out - and something that is undesirable and frowned on. Giving an overview of the place and meaning of the book is actually a much more desirable thing to go. So, the titles in the the article referring to the "plot" are going into the trash can.74.249.79.103 (talk) 22:58, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Unimportant?

That is a very silly thing to say, since this book is a very solid one, well-written, and well-constructed. It also deals with the Nazi era - a crucial one in human hostory.74.249.79.103 (talk) 22:58, 28 September 2008 (UTC)