Guardians Of Time (4 stories);
The Guardians Of Time (5);
Annals Of The Time Patrol (7) (The Guardians Of Time + Time Patrolman);
The Time Patrol (9);
Time Patrol (10) -
- and is followed by the long tri-partite novel, The Shield Of Time, although the tenth story, "Death and the Knight," was written after, and is set later than, the novel.
Guardians Of Time culminates in "Delenda Est" about a temporal crisis. In The Guardians Of Time, the single additional story, "Gibraltar Falls," is placed at the mid-point of the volume. Thus, "Delenda Est" remains the culmination. The Shield Of Time culminates in PART SIX, "Amazement of the World," which elaborates and complexifies the temporal crisis concept but we might discuss this tomorrow after your blogger has recovered from a day-trip to London.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
I would argue, however, for there being at least SIX, not five stages in what I might call the gradual "coalescing" of the Time Patrol series. I have a copy of the 1961 Victor Gollancz edition of GUARDIANS OF TIME, and the acknowledgements page states the four stories in that collection were first pub. in THE MAGAZINE OF FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION like this: "Time Patrol" (May 1955), "Brave To Be A King" (August 1955), "The Only Game In Town" (January 1960), "Delenda Est" (December 1955).
What I found interesting is that, at first, "Delenda Est" culminated the series after only the first TWO stories had been published. "Delenda" would be moved from third to fourth place in the 1961 GUARDIANS after "The Only Game In Town" was published in Jan. 1960.
In conclusion, the original magazine publication of the first four Time Patrol stories should be thought of as the first stage of what would become the repeated collecting of the stories.
Ad astra! Sean
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