Individuals And Organizations

HG Wells' Time Traveller invented the Time Machine whereas Poul Anderson's Manse Everard was recruited by the Time Patrol. Individual and organizational approaches to time travel contrast. Let us consider two intermediate cases.

Anderson's Jack Havig time travels alone and wonders whether he is alone. Then he is contacted by agents of the Eyrie and is recruited into that organization. Later, subjectively speaking, he contacts other mutant time travellers and founds a rival organization. Whereas Time Patrollers ride timecycles to prevent causality violations and guard the past, Havig and his cohorts time travel by their own volition in order to complete a causal circle and build a future. Anderson really did address every option.

Audrey Niffenegger's Henry DeTamble time travels alone. When child Henry is contacted by an adult time traveller also called "Henry," he thinks that there is a time travelling organization but later learns that there is only him. He says that it is as if Robinson Crusoe found that the footprint was his own. Eventually, Henry is joined by his daughter, Alba, who has to explain to him that a CDP is a Chrono-Displaced Person so maybe there are more of them by then? Meanwhile, for the first time in fiction, time travel has become a family affair.

It is all good, isn't it?