Speculative History

The Shield of Time.

On the basis of known history, Poul Anderson's characters speculate. If Antiochus had captured Bactra early in his campaign, then:

he would have had the resources to succeed in India;

he would have been strengthened against Egypt and Rome;

he might have retained earlier gains and helped Carthage to survive the Third Punic War;

his descendant might have succeeded in the Biblically recorded attempt to crush Judaism;

then, no Christianity and maybe a different history guarded by an alternate Time Patrol;

Exaltationists shaping history by helping Antiochus and his descendants.

The opponents that the Time Patrol does face are:

an individual time criminal, Stane;

time bandits, the Neldorians;

more sophisticated criminals, the Exaltationists;

a personal causal nexus.

We might like to read:

a novel about what the Nine, the group that discovered time travel, did before the Danellians intervened and founded the Patrol;

a series about that alternate Time Patrol, its agents clashing with the Danellians' Patrol.