SF In General

 

It has a sequel! I have not yet finished The Coils of Time but I am getting the picture. An intriguing idea: an object sent (apparently) through time returns with our hero's dead wife's fingerprint on it so it has been to a time when she is alive. He follows...

But the setting is the sf cliche of a scientific base on Venus. There is some kind of conflict going on and the characters point guns at each other. He has travelled into a parallel timeline, not into the past, so the paradoxes of time travel are side-stepped.

My points, if I have them:

I would once have welcomed this kind of narrative but not any more;

Poul Anderson did write this kind of narrative but I still reread his works because he always did more with the extra-terrestrial settings and sf cliches.

I remain a fan of Anderson but am not getting into Chandler.