Two Ravens

The Shield Of Time, 1989alpha A. D., pp. 306-310.

Wanda Tamberly arrives in a divergent timeline although it will take her a while to understand what has happened. She sees and feels:

blue overhead;

fog dazzling white in morning light;

cool breeze from unseen ocean;

leaves rustling on toyon;

dark green glowing cypress;

two ravens that croak and flap from a solitary oak. 

Odin's ravens? Why not? Of course, the integrity of the Time Patrol series as historical sf will never be compromised by the intrusion of literal gods. However, Poul Anderson's readers are free to imagine that Huginn and Muninn fly between universes and that Odin is kept informed of temporal upheavals in the Danellian timeline.

Onward.

Three American Future Historians

Robert Heinlein wrote the five-volume Future History. Also, five of his Scribner Juvenile novels comprise a Juvenile Future History.

Poul Anderson imitated the Future History, then wrote seven other future histories.

James Blish wrote two future histories, Cities In Flight and The Seedling Stars, and also a non-linear future historical sequence in which later works refer to common earlier works despite diverging from each other.

See:

James Blish And Poul Anderson

The Haertel Scholium

I know that there are other future historians but I focus on these three!

(Right now, I am pleased with my succinct summary of Blish's complicated Haertel Scholium. About to walk out for Sunday lunch.)

Time Patrol Unattached Agents

Manse Everard is one of the most important Unattached agents working in the past three millennia but the Patrol covers a million years so there must be Unattached agents very unlike him operating in future millennia. We are shown one.

Just as Poul Anderson's Technic History extends from post-Chaos recovery to the period of the Commonalty, the Time Patrol history extends from the Academy in the Oligocene period through other past periods visited by Everard and future periods guarded by agents like Komozino to the civilization of the Danellians.

The most remarkable fact that we learn about Komozino is that she might have spent years of lifespan in research and preparation between learning of the temporal upheaval and contacting Everard. Dealing with the upheaval is a matter of urgency but a time traveller can spend years on something urgent.

Behind The Scenes

I never got into Fritz Leiber's time travel series - which seems to be about a lot of things other than time travel - but I remember that one of its characters remarked that, if you imagine a conspiracy big enough, then you can explain anything, even the universe!

Is there someone behind the scenes pulling the strings on a historical or cosmic scale? Poul Anderson's Time Patrol operates behind the scenes of history, ensuring that every event, even the Holocaust, happens on schedule. The Patrol has counterparts in mythology and fiction:

pantheons include gods of the elements;

Rupert Bear (see image) meets Imps of Spring, Elves of Autumn and a Clerk of the Weather;

Neil Gaiman's The Sandman series features anthropomorphic personifications of seven aspects of consciousness - Destiny, Death, Dream, Desire, Despair and Destruction.

Time Patrollers are in good company. Maybe.