Manson Everard reflects that the crowded streets and towers of Manhattan are:
"...all one swirl on a river that swept from the peaceful prehuman landscape where he had been to the unimaginable Danellian future." (TP, p. 17)
- and again:
"History. The stream of events, great and small, running from cavemen to Danellians." (ST, p. 120)
This temporal setting contrasts with the spatial setting:
"'So many, many stars...a hundred billion in this one lost lonely dust-mote of a galaxy...and we on the edge, remote in a spiral arm where they thin toward emptiness...what do we know...?'"
- Anderson, Young Flandry (New York, 2010), p. 217.
- of the History of Technic Civilization. (Later civilizations spread through several spiral arms.)
Everard contemplates the inhabitants of this river or stream of time:
"How many billions and trillions of human creatures lived, laughed, wept, worked, hoped, and died in its currents!" (TP, pp. 17-18)
"But what about the eddies, the bubbles, the insignificant little individuals and happenings that are also soon forgotten, whose being or nonbeing makes no difference to the course of the stream?" (ST, p. 120)
Each story focuses on a few "eddies."
There is a dramatic contrast between the fact that, on the one hand, the course of the stream is laid out with its major turning points and destination known at least in their broad outlines but, on the other hand, throughout the series, Time Patrolmen have new experiences and adventures within the river of time. The entire series is only the title page of a potential series that could continue indefinitely.
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