"'The Danellians are part of the future - our future, more than a million years ahead of me.'"
-Poul Anderson, "Time Patrol" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 1-53 AT 2, pp. 7, 11.
"With half a million years or more to guard, the Patrol's forever undermanned..."
-"Star of the Sea," 2, p. 485.
This downsizing to half a million years is very noticeable. Are there subtle clues that the timeline defended in the first story, "Time Patrol," is not the one defended later in the series?
In "Ivory, and Apes, and Peacocks," Everard refers to:
"'...the Era of Oneness that precedes the Danellians.'"
Time Patrol, p. 259.
How long is this Era and does the Patrol operate within it? The Era is one of several features of the Danellian timeline that are referred to once only and never explained any further.
2 comments:
It's probably good practice not to detail the Patrol future any more than is necessary for plot purposes, and an occasional aside like "the era of oneness" which add color and set the reader thinking.
From a close reading, I think that originally the Danellians were pictured as the product of ordinary Darwinian evolution; later, of deliberate modification. But since Poul was (cleverly) never excessively specific, that's impossible to really prove.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
We also get a few hints that the Danellians were FRIGHTENING, as we see in "Time Patrol," and later, with Guion, a Patrol agent who lived nearer the Danellian era.
Ad astra! Sean
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