Tuesday, 4 February 2014

The Time Patrol III

(I do not know why anyone has produced what is not a real book image.)

Poul Anderson's Time Patrol guards a million years of Terrestrial prehistory and history. Time travel is discovered in 19352 AD. Our post-human evolutionary successors, the Danellians, who found the Patrol, exist more than a million years after the time of Patrolman Dard Kelm, who is from 9573 AD, and are preceded by an Era of Oneness.

For a long time after 19352, it is known that time travel occurs. Scientists, historians and tourists visit the past. Time travel is policed by the Patrol. Presumably, citizens of future societies can apply for jobs with the Patrol whereas, pre-19352, the outfit recruits potential candidates by approaching them with initially unexplained aptitude tests, then, if appropriate, revealing the truth.

This premise entails many future societies, "...higher civilization[s]...," to quote Patrolman Everard (The Shield Of Time, p. 264), which know of and use time travel and which differ significantly from the civilizations described in any of Anderson's many futuristic sf novels. However, in this series, the Danellians, and the future human societies, exist only as background for stories about twentieth centurians visiting their past. The series is a perfect example of historical science fiction and it is no surprise to learn that its author also wrote several volumes of straight historical fiction.

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