I suggest that there have been three peaks of time travel fiction:
Poul Anderson's two Time Patrol volumes;
Jack Finney's two Time novels;
Audrey Niffeneger's The Time Traveler's Wife.
For a while, there were two peaks, then The Time Traveler's Wife was published.
The following works are close seconds:
"By His Bootstraps" by Robert Heinlein;
The Anubis Gates by Tim Powers;
There Will Be Time by Poul Anderson.
As ever on any such lists, Anderson must appear at least twice. Even on these lists, only those works that confine themselves to the circular causality paradox avoid any logical problems.
I would like to find a fourth peak. Either it has not been published yet or it has been published but I do not know about it yet. I have been given an anthology of twenty five relatively recent time travel stories. However, another factor intervenes. Unless we are professional critics, we need to have some reason to think that a work of fiction might be worth reading before we are motivated to begin reading it. This does not involve prejudging anything. I never set out to read a formulaic Mills and Boon romantic novel although no doubt many of these are good at what they do and it remains possible, however unlikely, that one such will transcend its genre to become a fully rounded novel.
I have read some of the new time travel stories but am having trouble reading them all. In "Palely Loitering," Christopher Priest builds what seems to be an elaborate circular causality structure, then spoils it, in my opinion, with a sudden causality violation. The events described cannot fit into a single timeline but, if our hero has initiated and remained in a divergent timeline, then he cannot return home as he sets out to do at the very end because he is now in a timeline where his younger self's life went differently - although maybe we are supposed to realize this?
I continue to derive more aesthetic and intellectual pleasure from rereading and reassessing the Time Patrol than from reading most other accounts of time travel.
3 comments:
Hi, Paul!
I would have included L. Sprague De Camp's LEST DARKNESS FALL as one of those "peaks" of the time traveling genre you listed. And I'm almost sure Poul Anderson admired that book so much that it was one of the inspirations for his own time travel stories.
Sean
Hi Sean,
PA said in correspondence that Twain and de Camp were major influences. Of course tastes differ as to what to include in a "best" list. For me, LEST DARKNESS FALL is important but specialized, one particular application of causality violation to a historical context whereas the works I cited seem more comprehensive.
Paul.
Hi, Paul!
Yes, I see your point. DeCamp's LEST DARKNESS FALL seems to have been a one off, if major work in its genre, by him. I would argue that LEST DARKNESS FALL was important in showing writers like Poul Anderson how to speculatively use causality violations in varying historical contexts. PA picked up the gauntlet thrown by De Camp and wrote very good time traveling stories and novels examining many different concepts and scenarios.
One concept I regret PA not experimenting with is how he never wrote a story speculating about what might have happened if the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand had been prevented in 1914. Would the results have been good or bad? We don't know! But, I can see how the Timie Patrol, and Manse Everard, would have felt compelled to thwart any such attempts, because to do so would have nullified the history which led to them and the Danellians.
Needless to say, of course, S.M. Stirling wrote a Time Patrol story for MULTIVERSE exploring precisely that idea. A story I consider one of the better entries in that book. I do think he could have speculated in more detail about what an Austria-Hungary which had not been destroyed might have turned out. But the glimpses we get SEEMS to indicate it was not such a bad thing. So, I'm rather glad to think, given your arguments on this point, that this alternate Dual Monarchy might have continued to survive on a separate timeline the Time Patrol became unable to access after Manse Everard "nullified" it.
Sean
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