Havig And Haertel

Also comparable to Poul Anderson's Jack Havig experimenting with time travel is James Blish's Adolph Haertel experimenting with space travel. Dolph has no superhuman physical abilities but, since he is the intellectual successor of Einstein, he is able first to discover antigravity, secondly to fly his tree house to Mars and thirdly, later, to design the first FTL drive. Havig's group supervises the research and development that leads to the first STL interstellar travel. Thus, both characters play pivotal roles in founding interstellar civilizations. Haertel's branching futures include The Quincunx Of Time, quoted recently.