Wednesday, 4 May 2022

General Observations

Some General Observations About The Time Patrol Universe
(i) In discussing this universe, we must refer to multiple timelines before we consider whether or in what sense such timelines exist.

(ii) A time traveller who enters and remains in a deleted timeline is deleted with it, whatever "deleted" turns out to mean in this context.

(iii) A time traveller who enters and leaves a deleted timeline remembers experiences and events that do not occur in the current timeline.

(iv) In "Star of the Sea," it seems that sociologists visiting Rome in the early second century travel a short interval futureward into a divergent timeline, return pastward to before the divergence point and then travel futureward again to the twentieth century of the timeline guarded by the Patrol. This kind of passage into and back out of a divergent, although not yet (in their experience) "deleted," timeline does not occur anywhere else in the series.

My idea was to apply these observations to "The Year of the Ransom" but first I will have a food break.

3 comments:

S.M. Stirling said...

It happens again in THE SHIELD OF TIME, repeatedly, doesn't it?

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

Well, yes, that sort of stuff. It is difficult to unravel.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

Trying again, my comment disappeared.

VERY difficult to unravel.

Ad astra! Sean