Friday, 5 September 2025

The Time Patrol And There Will Be Time

Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series and There Will Be Time make such a good contrast.

(i) There Will Be Time is a single time travel novel about the circular causality paradox whereas the Time Patrol is a time travel series about the causality violation paradox but with causal circles used to prevent causality violations.

(ii) Time Patrollers make instantaneous space-time jumps seated on timecycles whereas, in There Will Be Time, mutants travelling only through time not through space by an act of will experience reduced duration but not instant transition.

(iii) The Time Patrol Academy is in the Oligocene and the Patrol has a lodge in the Pleistocene whereas Jack Havig's group has a base much earlier in the Pleistocene.

(iv) A narrative of Dr. Watson influenced a Time Patrol case and a mutant time traveller influenced HG Wells.

(v) The two works present different visions of the future.

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