Prevented Timelines

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

Four times in the Time Patrol series, Patrol members experience a timeline, then set out to "delete" it. In these deleted timelines:

Patrol Specialist Keith Denison lived for sixteen years as Cyrus the Great;
Carthage won the Second Punic War;
the Popes won the medieval church-state conflict;
the Emperors won the medieval church-state conflict.

We can say that the Patrol prevented these timelines provided we understand that what was prevented was each of these timelines remaining the current timeline, not each of these timelines becoming the current timeline.

However, we also know of some timelines that were prevented from coming into existence. Such timelines can be discussed but not experienced. We discuss such a timeline whenever we ask, "What if the Spanish Armada had conquered England? What if the Confederates had won the American Civil War? What if Germany had won the Second World War?"

The first prevented timeline in the series is discussed in the first story, "Time Patrol." In this timeline, if it had been allowed to exist, Stane, arriving in England after the Roman withdrawal, would have:

united Britons and invaders against the Picts;
united England as a single kingdom "'...with Saxon strength and Roman learning...'" (p. 40), that would later unite Europe, then the world;
reappeared at fifty year intervals, thus becoming a legend able to guide history.

Everard projects that, in the twentieth century of Stane's timeline, the Solar System would be united under a presiding Emperor and an elected Senate.

In "Gibraltar Falls," the prevented timeline is the death of a single woman. In "The Only Game In Town," it is the Mongol conquest of North America.