Monday, 10 March 2014

A Time Patrol War

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

The Time Patrol is a police force, not an army. However, I think that the Patrol's extended campaign against the Exaltationists counts as a small time war - it certainly involves two battles, at Machu Picchu and in the Aegean - whereas Everard's and Van Sarawak's operation against two Neldorians at the Battle of Ticinus is more like a police action.

The Neldorians are motivated by gross self-aggrandizement whereas the Exaltationists are more refined and sophisticated egoists. Only individual time criminals, like Stane or Castelar, are idealists, motivated by something other than personal gratification. The Patrol never faces a well-intentioned oppositional organization. Imagine if Stane's guard had been not a local Jute but a disguised time traveler, able to stun Everard and Whitcomb as soon as Everard used the password, "'Man from tomorrow.'" (p. 36)

I would join such a group. I would not believe that, by generating a new timeline, we were causing our original timeline never to have existed. And it would be worthwhile to take the opportunity to work towards a twentieth century without either of the World Wars.

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