Sunday, 5 October 2025

Time Patrol Records

 

See blog search result for Patrol records.

There must be two complete sets of records of all Time Patrol activities:

in the Danellian civilization over a million years in our future;

at the dawn of time when such records would be immune to any later reality alterations.

For the period, 1850-2000, the Patrol has three milieus, each with a headquarters in 1890-1910. Are 20 years long enough to handle business covering 150 years plus messages and visits from other milieus and periods? Automatic shunts prevent message shuttles or couriers from:

"...piling up at one instant."
-Poul Anderson, "Time Patrol" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, December 2010), pp. 1-53 AT 2, p. 13 -

- but would there not be just too many arrivals and messages at every instant?

In "Star of the Sea," the number of years guarded by the Patrol has shrunk from a million to:

"...half a million years or more..." (2, p. 485)

Is this an indication to us readers if not also to the Time Patrol agents that they are guarding a different timeline from that which they had guarded at the beginning of the series?

Who knows? ("Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?")

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Kaor, Paul!

But that "...half a million years or more" could easily be expanded to a full million years.

Ad astra! Sean