A Prayer

Poul Anderson, Time Patrol (New York, 2006).

I think that Poul Anderson's Time Patrol novel, "Star Of The Sea," incorporates perhaps five kinds of writing.

(i) Three passages might count as fantasy because they treat gods as really existing. However, I think that these passages go further than this to become mythological writing because they imaginatively reproduce earlier stages of Northern European mythology. In the wider context of the entire text, these narratives of divine liaisons and conflicts recount not literal events but myths believed in at successive stages by some of the human characters in the story.

(ii) Several passages recount only the experiences and activities of human beings living in the period of the Roman Empire. Thus, these passages are historical fiction.

(iii) Several of the historical passages begin by describing seasonal changes - "Winter brought rain..." (p. 494) - before proceeding to human affairs. This is because of the importance of nature and the elements to the people living then. Nevertheless, these descriptive passages transcend historical fiction to become relatively timeless accounts of the Terrestrial environment.

(iv) In some passages, it is clear that the characters are time travelers whether in the twentieth century or much earlier so these passages are science fiction.

(v) The concluding section is a prayer, I think written by Anderson, but conveying a complete purity of devotion to the figure being addressed:

"Mary, mother of God, mother of sorrows, mother of salvation, be with us now and at the hour of our death." (p. 639)

- "mother" not as preceding God in eternity but as giving birth to the divine incarnation, "of sorrows" because life is both light and dark, "of salvation" because her son is the Savior, "now and at...death," thus encompassing both the immediate present and the entirety of life.

The rest of the prayer on the following page continues with the same gentle entreaty and adoration.