Monday 24 March 2014

Past Times: Revised Edition

My proposed revised version of Poul Anderson's Past Times (New York, 1984) would contain:
 
 "Wildcat"
Jurassic
"The Nest"
Oligocene
"The Little Monster"
Pleiocene
"The Man Who Came Early"
Vikings
"Welcome"
2497 AD
"Time Heals"
2837 AD
"Flight To Forever"
the circle of time



"Time Patrol" would have made a good concluding story if it were not the opening story of Time Patrol. Past Times introduces time travelers and Time Patrol presents time travelers changing the past.

In "Welcome" (1960),Tom Barlow has gone from 1997 to 2497.

In "Time Heals" (1949), Philip Hart goes from 1952 to 2837 and is about to go further.

In "Flight To Forever" (1950), Martin Saunders goes from 1973 to 2073, then does go further, all the way around time and back to 1973.

I discussed "Flight To Forever" a while back and "Welcome" yesterday. The next task is to compare and contrast "Welcome" and "Time Heals." To start with, I imagine that "superenergy," in "Welcome," and "level-entropy," in "Time Heals," are opposite ways of saying the same thing?

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