There Will Be Time

The details that I have summarized from Poul Anderson's There Will Be Time (New York, 1973) are scarcely presented at greater length in Anderson's text. 170 pages recount the past, present and future of Jack Havig's career on Earth before he leaves it forever.

Although interstellar travel and alien contacts are common themes in Anderson's fiction, the build-up to the identity of the Star Masters renews the reader's sense of wonder at these concepts. The biggest change is in Leonce who screams and flees back to the past the first time she sees an extraterrestrial but, twenty four pages later, says, "'The Star Masters are our people.'" (p. 174)

Several important plot elements are stated briefly just once. It can be hard to remember them, which is why I like to summarize the plots. We never see Phase Two/Polaris House although its role is pivotal.

In the second last paragraph, the narrator, Robert Anderson, speculates that the time travel gene will be created in "...some unimaginably remote tomorrow..." (p. 176) and a virus carrying that gene spread in a chosen past period. The novel concludes:

"I walk beyond town, many of these nights, to stand under the high autumnal stars, look upward and wonder." (ibid.)