Another Futureward Time Traveller

Sometimes this blog focuses on a particular work by Poul Anderson. We will return to his Vault Of The Ages. At other times, we consider the wider sf context in which Anderson is always prominent although sometimes we also address comparable works by other authors. I suppose that Isaac Asimov's Pebble In The Sky belongs in the list in the previous post although I did not think of it at the time. However, Asimov's futureward time traveller merely arrives in the Galactic Empire that we already knew from this author's Foundation series whereas every other listed author presents an exotic new vision of a future. As I said recently when discussing Anderson's The Boat Of A Million Years, Hanno and the other immortals could have survived into the author's Technic History - however, their completely different high tech future was preferable.

Anderson's Terran Empire is a less implausible interstellar projection of the Roman Empire than Asimov's Galactic Empire. Anderson presents the real Roman Empire in his Time Patrol series and The King Of Ys (with Karen Anderson). Asimov's time travel novel, The End Of Eternity, is overtly contradictory and has no historical content whereas the Time Patrol is subtly contradictory and full of historical content. But we have said all this before.