Saturday 25 July 2015

Time Patrol: Revised Edition

I think of Time Patrol not in its 2006 Baen Books edition but slightly rearranged to acknowledge the actual contents of the stories. Thus, "Death and the Knight" would be relocated to the end of The Shield Of Time and the remaining nine works would appear in this order:

"Time Patrol"
"Brave To Be A King"
"The Only Game In Town"
"Delenda Est"
"Gibraltar Falls"
"The Sorrow Of Odin The Goth"
"Star Of The Sea"
"The Year Of The Ransom"
"Ivory, And Apes, And Peacocks"

Apart from Manson Everard, these nine installments present a fascinating cast of time traveling characters:

Mr Gordon, Dard Kelm born 9573, Charles Whitcomb from London 1947, Elizabeth Gray from 1972, a veteran of the Martian war of 3890, Mainwethering, Stane from 2987.
Cynthia Denison, Keith Denison.
John Sandoval.
Piet Van Sarawak from twenty fourth century Venus, a man from the Scientific Renaissance, a nineteenth century Colonel Blimp type, Neldorians from the two hundred and fifth millennium.
Tom Nomura recruited in 1972, and Feliz a Rach, a First Matriarchy aristocrat.
Carl Farness based in 1930's New York, Herbert Ganz in 1858.
Janne Floris and the Patrol chief of operations in late twentieth century Amsterdam, Jens Ulstrup.
Stephen Tamberly born 1937, Helen Tamberly born 1856, Wanda Tamberly born 1965, twenty second century Andean Julio Vasquez, Exaltationists from the thirty first millennium, Luis Castelar from 1533 [Julian].
Chaim and Yael Zorach recruited in 1975, Epsilon Korten from twenty ninth century New Edom on Mars.

And there are a lot more in the following volume. It is not just Everard although he does dominate the series to a great extent.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

I agree there are good arguments for including "Death and the Knight" as an appendix to THE SHIELD OF TIME. Which is what some editions of THE HIGH CRUSADE do with its short story sequel,"Quest." But, the problem is there are also good arguments for including "Death" with the other shorter Time Patrol stories. So, I'm not sure which alternative is best.

Sean