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.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
While interesting to play with, if we start seriously imagining there is someone/something pulling the strings behind the scenes, on a cosmic scale, we are going to succumb to paranoid delusions. Stirling used that secret conspiracy idea in his Shadowspawn books.
I think the plots hatched by Aycyharach* against the Terran Empire in the Flandry stories was Anderson's contributions to the secret conspiracy idea.
Ad astra! Sean
*E.g., in THE DAY OF THEIR RETURN, HUNTERS OF THE SKY CAVE, A KNIGHT OF GHOSTS AND SHADOWS, and THE GAME OF EMPIRE.
Post a Comment