Monday 1 August 2022

Starting "The Year of the Ransom"

Poul Anderson, "The Year of the Ransom" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 641-735.

Continuing the line of thought from the previous post: devolution into Morlocks and Eloi and evolution into Danellians are two alternative future evolutionary histories. The Time Traveller must go to the Morlocks and Eloi whereas the Danellians come to 19352 AD and earlier.

"The Year of the Ransom" was originally published as a single volume. The Time Patrol is not mentioned until p. 657. As in "The Sorrow of Odin the Goth," the text alternates between first and third person narration. 

Wanda has a:

"...dream of joining the research staff at Darwin Station..." (10 September 1987, p. 642)

However:

"...another dream could come along meanwhile and take me." (ibid.)

That is the kind of phrase, appearing early in a text, that becomes significant later if we remember it. Otherwise, we recognize the significance on rereading. Similarly, we might guess that "Uncle Steve" (p. 641), planted in the opening paragraph, will become an active character.

We might recognize an outsize wheelless motorcycle hanging in the air as a Patrol timecycle. (p. 645) This vehicle can hover, fly, jump to a different set of spatial coordinates, jump to a different set of temporal coordinates and is armed. More than just a time machine.

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