An Effect Of Time Travel

On the third day of the arval (burial feast) for Tharasmund, the Wanderer attends. The following summer, he approaches the territory of the Teurings and asks, "'How fare Tharasmund and his kin?'" (Time Patrol, pp. 433-434) In astonishment, he is reminded that he had attended Tharasmund's grave-ale. Stunned, he claims to have misspoken and withdraws. Later, a cowherd relates that the Wanderer had met him and asked for the details of Tharasmund's death.

What does this mean? A Christian says that it shows that the old gods are fading. But sf fans with a knowledge of time travel have a different explanation. Or do we all? I met a reader of this story who did not understand why Carl had "forgotten" Tharasmund's death. After all, he was seen to attend the arval...

Poul Anderson expected his readers to understand a simple consequence of time travel. In terms of his own subjective experience, Carl attended the arval after the cowherd had told him about it. I expect that he missed the burial and the first two days of the arval precisely because he was told that he had not arrived until the third day of the arval. But, if at least one reader missed such a simple point, then there must still be a lot of confusion out there about time travel?

Points Of View In Time Travel Fiction

In The Time Machine, HG Wells describes a journey from London 1895 to 802,703 and beyond from the Time Traveler's point of view with first person narration. In "Time Patrol," Poul Anderson describes journeys from New York 1955 to the American Oligocene, Victorian Britain, post-Roman Britain and London 1944 from a Time Patrolman's point of view with third person narration.

Differences:

country and century of origin;
direction of travel;
number of journeys;
a single time traveler, the Time Traveler, as against a member of a time traveling organization, a Time Patrolman;
first as against third person narration;
mere time travel as against space-time travel;
subjective travel time as against instantaneous transition;
implicit as against explicit paradoxes.

Similarities:

a temporal vehicle that the traveler sits on, not in;
vivid descriptions of visited periods;
the time traveler's point of view.

Anderson's first two Time Patrol collections were Guardians Of Time (four stories), expanded to The Guardians Of Time (five stories), and Time Patrolman (two stories).

The first four stories are narrated from the point of view of Patrolman Manse Everard. The fifth is narrated from the point of view of Patrolman Tom Nomura. The sixth returns to Everard. The seventh alternates between the point of view of Patrolman Carl Farness and the collective viewpoint of the Goths visited by Farness. At last, a time travel story presents not only the point of view of a time traveler but also that of the people he visits.

Kinds Of Change

Poul Anderson, The Boat Of A Million Years (London, 1991).

Deathless asking:

"'Who can make a medicine against time?'" (p. 250)

- echoes Carl Farness of the Time Patrol saying that, against time, the gods themselves are powerless.

A Taoist, asked how he would survive under Mao, responded, "Would it not be laughable if a life-long follower of the Lord Lao were to fear change?" However, human beings experience two qualitatively different kinds of change. Taoists like Tu Shan and shamans like Deathless are familiar with the cyclical seasonal change of agricultural societies but not with the linear historical change of urban civilizations. (I suggest elsewhere that Christianity, with its death-and-resurrection presented not as a perennial myth but as an historical event, is at the crossroads between two kinds of time - time being a function of change.)

Deathless says:

"'I have known change. I have felt time rush by like a river in flood...'" (ibid.)

- but this, as he has just indicated, has been the immemorial change of birth and death, not the disruptive change of technological innovation. He stops seeking omens because "'The future has become too strange...'" (p. 253). He has learned that nothing is forever. When his people must or will change their way of life, he walks away to seek renewal or death.

Resonance II

See here.

I suggested that a refusal by Carl Farness to complete a causal circle might have two consequences but now I doubt the second consequence.

We are imagining a timeline in which:

in 372 AD, Carl, in the role of Odin, appears on his timecycle, a metal-boned "...skeletal horse..." (Time Patrol, p. 454), and betrays his Gothic followers;

Manson Everard, roving the period from end to end, confirms that the Volsungasaga story of Odin betraying his followers originated specifically in this action by Carl;

in 1935, Everard tells Carl that he must travel to 372 to betray his followers.

Carl complies but the question is: what would have happened if he had refused?

1st Consequence
The Carl who had appeared and enacted the betrayal in 372 arrives in 1935, so Carl has duplicated himself. Patrol members have to avoid this kind of paradox.

2nd Consequence (which I now doubt)
Anyone traveling to a date earlier than 372 and returning futureward might arrive in a timeline in which history was different because the betrayal had not happened.

But I now think that, if someone travels pastward along a timeline in which the betrayal happened, then he should return futureward along that same timeline unless, while he is 372 or earlier, he does something (I don't know exactly what) to prevent Carl from making the betrayal. (Our hypothetical new time traveler might prevent Carl's/Odin's followers from attacking King Ermanaric so that they would not be present in Ermanaric's hall when Odin appeared in order to betray them?)

However, this is all speculative. What the Patrol definitely wants to do is, first, to prevent the paradox of Carl duplicating himself and, secondly, as far as possible, to prevent even the slightest possibility of a timeline in which the betrayal did not happen. Both these purposes are served by getting Carl to leave 1935 with the intention of appearing in 372 and betraying his followers. This completes the circle and prevents anything else from happening.

But this leads me back to the question; what does Everard mean by "...a resonance..."? (p. 449)

Another Causal Loop

Manson Everard of the Time Patrol has Merau Varagan, the Exaltationist time criminal, at gunpoint. Varagan keeps Everard talking until his, Varagan's, older self appears above them on a timecycle, fires at Everard and rescues his younger self. One of Everard's colleagues comments:

"'...a causal loop of that sort...didn't he have any idea of the dangers?'"
-Poul Anderson, Time Patrol (New York, 2006), p. 281.

Everard replies:

"'Doubtless he did, including the possibility that he would make himself never have existed...'" (ibid.)

How could Varagan make himself never have existed? He and Everard are in Colombia, 1826. The Exaltationists are from the thirty-first millennium. If Varagan's self-rescue attempt fails, what might happen?

(i) Everard kills the arriving older Varagan and takes the unrescued younger Varagan into custody.
(ii) Everard kills both Varagans.
(iii) Something else?

None of this would prevent Varagan from being born up in the thirty-first millennium. And, in any case, he is unconcerned about preventing his own birth. Everard continues:

"'But then, he'd been quite prepared to wipe out an entire future, in favor of a history where he could have ridden high.'" (ibid.)

An Exaltationist's only concern is to survive into a timeline where his ego is ascendant and his will is unconfined (p. 279). It does not matter to him whether, in that timeline, he has an ancestry, birth or earlier life.

People From The Future II

Epsilon Korten, director of Jerusalem Base, man of action and scholar of profundity, responsible for temporal activities between the birth of David and the fall of Judah, born in twenty ninth century New Edom on Mars, was recruited by the Time Patrol both because of his computer analyses of early Semitic texts and because of his exploits as a spaceman during the Second Asteroid War. Potentially, a very complicated future history emerges from such scattered hints in the Time Patrol texts.

In Harfleur, chief seaport of northwestern France, 1307, the resident Patrol agent is Boniface Reynaud from nine hundred years later but we are told nothing about his home period. However, Harfleur is fascinating, a "...rookery of merchant adventurers. From harbors like this, a few life-times hence, men would set sail for the New World."
-Poul Anderson, Time Patrol (New York, 2006), p. 754.

The future is being made in the past.

The Wanderer

Carl Farness:

born in 1934;
recruited to the Time Patrol in 1980;
attends the Patrol Academy in the Oligocene Period;
is supervised by Unattached Agent Manson Everard, based in New York, 1980;
relocates with his wife to 1930's New York; 
visits and studies four generations of Goths, 300-372;
fetches a doctor from the Moon, 2319, to 302;
meets the Christian missionary, Ulfilas, on a journey lasting from 341 to 344; 
reports to Herbert Ganz in Berlin, 1858;
plays the role of Odin in the Volsungasaga in 372;
recuperates in the Patrol's Hawaiian Lodge in 43.

And, unfortunately, that is all that we know of Carl. This part of his career is spread across the first, fourth, nineteenth, twentieth and twenty fourth centuries.

Battle At Sea

Poul Anderson, Time Patrol (New York, 2006).

A Tyrian ship is en route to Cyprus. On board are:

the crew, including Pum, a Time Patrol spy who has learned to swim and conceals a radio transmitter under his loincloth;

seven passengers, Sinim/Exaltationists, with concealed life jackets and energy weapons.

The ship enters a storm. Either half a dozen (p. 324) or seven (p. 326) Exaltationist timecyclists appear and fire at the ship, intending to destroy it and kill its crew but rescue their colleagues. Pum transmits. Forty Patrol timecyclists waiting at a distance triangulate, then jump forwards in space and backwards in time to englobe the enemy vehicles at the moment of Pum's transmission. They intend to:

kill the flying Exaltationists;
capture the seven who were on the ship;
rescue Pum, who should be swimming;
ensure that one other crew member, Gisgo, survives to tell the tale.

Their only failure is that "...three [timecycles] got away, but would be hunted, would be hunted." (ibid.)

I took "...would be hunted..." to mean simply that the Patrol's work continues, not that there would be a sequel beginning with the Patrol's continued hunt for the escaped Exaltationists. However, both a prequel and a direct sequel were written later. Thus, the Exaltationists came to be the collective continuing villain of the Time Patrol series - but the last of them are rounded up in the following installment.

There are several typically evocative phrases from Anderson. Gisgo's shipmates and friends:

"...died and their kin mourned them, as would be the fate of seafarers for the next several thousand years...and afterward spacefarers, timefarers..." (p. 325)

We do not usually think of sea, space and time as three successive ways to fare but it makes sense here.

When the Time Patrol squadron meets to take stock on a small Aegean island:

"Far and far away, a sail passed by. It could have been driving the ship of Odysseus." (p. 326)

It could indeed.

Merau Varagan's Procedure

Poul Anderson, Time Patrol (New York, 2006).

Manson Everard thinks that the Exaltationists must have done their basic Tyrian research in the court of King Abibaal twenty six years earlier "...after bombing the temple, leaving the ransom note, and probably making the attempt on Everard - after, that is, in terms of their world lines, their continuity of experience." (p 318)

Why must they have issued their threat to commit the crime before researching their ability to commit it? Surely it would have been the other way around?

Everard reasons that it would have been easy to pick their initial target and that:

"The preliminary mischief would have given Varagan an idea as to the feasibility of his entire scheme. Having decided that it would be worth a substantial investment of lifespan and effort, he thereupon sought the detailed knowledge, the kind that seldom gets into books, which he would need in order to do a really thorough job of wrecking this society." (ibid.)

This does make more sense as I transcribe it. However, it remains a deduction on Everard's part. What Anderson wants is a neat resolution of the story. If the Exaltationists had in fact done their research first, then, when the Patrol attacks the Exaltationists back during King Abibaal's reign, they might kill or apprehend a particular Exaltationist and thus prevent him from traveling twenty six years forward, staking out the Patrol base and attempting to kill Everard. Thus, the Everard who, with Pum's help, had foiled an assassination attempt (on himself) will travel forward in time to encounter an Everard who had not had to foil any assassination attempt. I think that this kind of duplication would occur more often than Anderson recognized. (In fact, I discussed this with Anderson.)

In "The Year Of The Ransom," Vasquez reports from a timeline in which a conquistador and a friar had disappeared from inside a treasure house. But the Patrol puts them back in the treasure house. Therefore, there is no longer a timeline in which it was reported that they had disappeared and the Vasquez who was in that timeline no longer exists. But will this not prevent Vasquez from reporting to Everard about that timeline in 1885? No doubt the Patrol understands to what extent it can alter events without causing greater, undesirable changes.

Time Travel Detective Work

Poul Anderson, Time Patrol (New York, 2006).

The Exaltationists threaten to destroy Tyre so they must have done some research at a safely earlier date, for example before the Tyrian Time Patrol Base was established, in order to learn how most effectively to wreck that society. Tyre, ruled by Hiram, was recently built on an artificial island that had previously been two skerries. Inquiries during the reign of Hiram's father, Abibaal, should reveal the plans for building Tyre.

When Everard arrives in Tyre during Hiram's reign, he is approached by Pum(mairam) who offers to be his paid guide - just as Fr Axor arriving on the planet Imhotep in another timeline is approached by Diana Crowfeather for the same purpose. Pum with his sling saves Everard from an Exaltationist assassin, then advices Everard to befriend Sarai of the palace staff. Through Sarai, Everard meets another servant whose aged and retired father is old enough to remember the visit to Abibaal's court of inquisitive foreigners answering the description of Exaltationists.

Everard learns that the Exaltationists covered their tracks by leaving Tyre in a ship that was lost in a storm, although they would have been rescued by colleagues on timecycles, but he does not know when. Pum tracks down a survivor of the shipwreck, Gisgo, who does know when:

"'An even one score and six years, come fifteen days before the fall equinox, or pretty near to that.'" (p. 316)

Gisgo knows that Egyptian priests must keep a close calender and that seamen beyond the Pillars of Melqart must heed the tides and noticed that the Sinim (Exaltationists) were very precise about their exact departure date. Realizing that such precision might be profitable, Gisgo, even though not yet able to read or write, decided to remember one major event each year, keep those events in order and count back when necessary. Thus, the loss of the Sinim was in the year between a venture to the Red Cliff Shores and his catching of the Babylonian disease. What Gisgo remembers is not only the loss of a ship but also the Patrol's capture of the Exaltationists.

Everard's detective work has been helped by Pum, Sarai and Gisgo and Pum is astute enough to be recruited to the Patrol.

Ivory, and Apes, and Peacocks IV

Poul Anderson, Time Patrol (New York, 2006).

Epsilon Korten, the director of Jerusalem Base extrapolates:

"'If Tyre is destroyed, Europe may take decades to show any major effects, the rest of the world centuries - millennia, in the Americas or Australia. But it will be an immediate catastrophe for Solomon's kingdom. Lacking Hiram's support and the prestige it confers, he probably can't hold his tribes together long; and without Tyre at their backs, the Philistines won't be slow to seek revenge. Judaism, Yahwistic monotheism, is weak and frail, still half pagan. My extrapolation is that it won't survive either. Yahweh will sink to being one more character in a crude and mutable pantheon.'" (p. 308)

Earlier, Everard had reflected that:

"Yahweh would not really be the sole Lord of the Jews until the Babylonian Captivity forced them to it, as a means of preserving an identity that ten of their tribes had already lost." (p. 249)

(Anderson's "The House of Sorrows" presents a timeline in which the Jews did not return from Babylon.) Everard goes on to speculate that "...foreign alliance and domestic religious tolerance...might well have saved the country from its eventual destruction." (ibid.)

- but, of course, the Patrol must protect what did happen which, in this case, is prophetic intolerance of Phoenician paganism. So how would the Patrol have been able to minimize the effects on Solomon's kingdom of the destruction of Tyre? It seems that they would have had to:

help Solomon to maintain his tribal confederation;
hold off the Philistines;
maintain the drive towards monotheism;
resist a return to polytheism;
do all this without coming to the attention of historians.

This sounds (a) difficult and (b) not enough to restore the exact history that would have occurred without the destruction of Tyre. Would the Danellians and the Patrol be content, if necessary, with an altered timeline that was broadly similar to the original? Thus, for example, an advance to monotheism even if not exactly along the lines of post-Exilic Judaism and early Christianity?

When Korten spells out the extent of the extrapolated catastrophe, Everard irritates him by in turn spelling out, purely for the benefit of the reader, that Judaism influenced philosophy as well as Greek and Roman events and that, without it, there would be no Christianity or Western or Byzantine civilizations. This happens a few times in the series. The reader must be informed so, for example, Everard and Vasquez irritate Helen Tamberly by discussing the Spanish Conquest instead of getting straight to how they might find her missing husband.

Ivory, and Apes, and Peacocks III

Poul Anderson, Time Patrol (New York, 2006).

Having detonated a bomb inside a Tyrian Temple of Tanith, the Exaltationists threaten to destroy the whole city if their blackmail demand is not met. (Sometimes in the text, "Tyrian" is misprinted as "Tynan": r and i have become n.)

Although the explosion in the Temple disturbs the Tyrians, it is not difficult for them to explain it: "...it could have been a quarrel among the gods" (p. 254). Besides which:

"'To them, the world isn't entirely governed by laws of nature; it's capricious, changeable, magical.'" (ibid.)

Everard thinks:

"And they're fundamentally right, aren't they?" (ibid.)

Tyre, significant in the Bible, is the chief civilizing influence on Solomon's kingdom so the response of the director of the Time Patrol Jerusalem Base in that period is of particular interest:

"'...I don't believe [the Patrol] should concentrate all available effort on rescuing Tyre. If that happens, and we fail, everything is lost; the chances of our being able to restore the original world become vanishingly small. No, let us establish a strong standby - personnel, organization, plans - in Jerusalem, ready to minimize the effects there. The less that Solomon's kingdom suffers, the less powerful the change vortex will be. That should give us more likelihood of damping it out altogether.'" (pp. 308-309)

Told that this is playing fast and loose with history, he agrees. "...damping it out altogether..." would surely have to mean that, although Tyre had been destroyed as if by a volcano or an asteroid strike, the Biblical and other records would have to be such that subsequent generations would believe that it had continued to exist. Surely this is impossible? Earlier, Everard had reflected that:

"A few tons of high explosive would leave [Tyre] in ruins. The devastation needn't even be total. After such a terrifying manifestation of supernatural fury, no one would come back here. Tyre would crumble away, a ghost town, while all the centuries and millennia, all the human beings and their lives and civilizations, which it had helped to bring into existence...those would be less than ghosts." (p. 256)

Jerusalem Base would need to have exceptionally effective personnel, organization and plans to counteract that.

Ivory, and Apes, and Peacocks II

http://www.theotherpages.org/poems/masef01.html

Poul Anderson, Time Patrol (New York, 2006).

In "Ivory, and Apes, and Peacocks," Poul Anderson quotes 1 Kings 10.22 which contains his title phrase. However, I knew the phrase from John Masefield's poem, "Cargoes." (Barely legible in the third and fourth lines in the attached image.)

In Time Patrol, "Ivory..." begins on p. 229 but it is not until p. 260 that Manson Everard ventures to suggest that "'[t]he organizing brain...of genius level. But with a touch of childishness -'" (pp. 259-260) of a new threat to the timeline guarded by the Patrol might be Merau Varagan. If we are reading the stories in the order of their publication, then this name means nothing to us as yet whereas if instead we have first read the later written prequel, "The Year Of The Ransom," then we already know of Varagan both as an "Exaltationist" and as a major villain in the Time Patrol series.

(Similarly, Dominic Flandry first meets his main adversary, Aycharaych, in "Honorable Enemies," but the reader of the completed Technic History has already met Aycharaych in The Day Of Their Return, written later though set earlier.)

When, in "...Ransom," Everard tells Wanda, "We've had to cope with results of [Exaltationists'] doings before now - 'before now' in terms of my life, that is - but they've always avoided capture" (p. 718), he may be referring to an incident that he describes to the Zorachs in "Ivory...", although, in that incident, one of the Exaltationists, Varagan's mistress, was captured.

The Shield Of Time informs us that, for Everard, "...Ransom" occurs immediately before "Ivory..." which, in turn, occurs immediately before The Shield... "Death And The Knight" interrupts Everard's and Wanda's holiday begun at the end of The Shield... In the later written "Star Of The Sea," Everard ends his relationship with Janne Floris in 1986 and we know that he meets Wanda, in "...Ransom", in October of that year.

When Janne asks, "'What will you do next, Manse?'", and he replies:

"'Who knows? We never have a dearth of problems.'" (p. 631)

- Anderson, writing this, knows that Everard's next problem will be the Exaltationists and a conquistador on a timecycle.

Thus, that entire concluding section of the series, describing the conflict with the Exaltationists and its aftermath, is tightly chronologically interconnected whereas between the earlier stories there are gaps in which we know that Everard has had other adventures, for example with the Vikings and Vinland, that have not been described to us.

Ivory, and Apes, and Peacocks

Poul Anderson, Time Patrol (New York, 2006).

"Ivory, and Apes, and Peacocks" was originally published as the first story in a second Time Patrol collection, Time Patrolman, so it had to summarize the Patrol scenario for new readers or to remind old readers:

"When humans built their first time machine...the Danellian supermen had arrived from farther yet, to organize the police force of the temporal lanes." (p. 250)

The very first Patrol story, "Time Patrol," had presented a lot more detail:

the Nine discover time travel - as a by-product of the search for instantaneous transportation - in 19352 AD, the 7841st year of the Morennian Triumph, during the break up of the Chorite Heresiarchy, an age of galactic commercial and genetic rivalry;

like instantaneous transportation, travel into the past "...requires infinitely discontinuous functions for its mathematical description..'." and "'...involves the concept of infinitely valued relationships in a continuum of 4N dimensions, where N is the total number of particles in the universe'" (p. 9);

the Nine would have prevented the births of their enemies "'[b]ut then the Danellians appeared.'" (p. 11)

All this hard sf background material is unnecessary for the historical science fiction of the Time Patrol series and is omitted in later installments.

Incidentally, when a Patrol recruit remarks:

"'...an event cannot both have happened and not happened. That's self-contradictory.'" (p. 9)

- I agree with her. Her instructor's reply:

"'Only if you insist on a logic which is not Aleph-sub-Aleph-valued...'" (p. 10)

- is gobbledygook - unless anyone can tell me what it means?

An event can have happened in an original timeline and not have happened in a divergent timeline. The Time Patrol would have us believe that, in that case, the original timeline simply does not exist. That is a paradoxical proposition but the Patrol is obliged to consider the consequences even of supposedly nonexistent timelines:

"'...that source perhaps does not exist in our yet, our reality.'"
-The Shield Of Time (New York, 1991), p. 135)

The Complete Time Patrol Series

Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series, with its appropriately long publishing history from 1955 to 1995, is complete as one omnibus collection and one long novel.

The collection of the Time Patrol stories has expanded four times and changed its title three times - although, on the third occasion, merely by losing the definite article. Each expansion has incorporated only one or two newer works. Of these, two are shorter than the original four but another four are considerably longer. Thus, the collection has more than doubled its length both in terms of the number of items included and, even more so, in terms of word count.

There have been:

The Guardians Of Time with four stories, "Time Patrol," "Brave To Be A King," "The Only Game In Town" and "Delenda Est," all originally published in The Magazine Of Science Fiction (FSF);

The Guardians Of Time with five stories, incorporating "Gibraltar Falls," which had subsequently been published in FSF;

Annals Of The Time Patrol with seven stories, incorporating "Ivory, and Apes, and Peacocks" and "The Sorrow Of Odin The Goth," which had subsequently been published together as Time Patrolman;

The Time Patrol with nine stories, incorporating "The Year Of The Ransom," which had subsequently been published as a single volume, and the new "Star Of The Sea";

Time Patrol with ten stories, incorporating "Death And The Knight," which had subsequently been published in an anthology of original short stories about the Knights Templar.

Thus, The Guardians Of Time remains the complete FSF Time Patrol collection.

The novel, The Shield Of Time, is divided into six Parts. The odd numbered Parts are one brief prelude and two brief interludes whereas the even numbered Parts could each have been published as a distinct work although they also contain flashback chapters connecting them into a single narrative. Thus, the entire series has thirteen installments.

How the series needs to be tidied up:

"Death And The Knight" is a sequel to The Shield Of Time so should in future be collected at the end of the novel, not at the end of the omnibus collection;

"The Year Of The Ransom" is a prequel to "Ivory, and Apes, and Peacocks," which is the direct prequel to The Shield Of Time, so "Ivory..." should be moved to the end of the collection after "The Year Of The Ransom," which was placed at the end, I think, in the mistaken belief that it was the direct prequel to The Shield...;

"Gibraltar Falls" was placed in the middle of The Guardians Of Time so that "Delenda Est" would remain the climax of that volume but I think that, in the omnibus collection, "Gibraltar Falls" belongs after "Delenda Est" because its text reflects the passage of time between the publication of the original tetralogy and this new addition to the series.

The Exaltationist Saga

(i) "Ivory, And Apes, And Peacocks", flashback.
(ii) "The Year Of The Ransom", originally published as a single volume, later collected in The Time Patrol.
(iii) "Ivory, And Apes, And Peacocks", originally published in Time Patrolman, then collected in The Time Patrol.
(iv) The Shield Of Time, Part One, "The Stranger That Is Within Thy Gates."
(v) The Shield Of Time, Part Two, "Women and Horses and Power and War."

That is the complete chronological sequence from Manson Everard of the Time Patrol's first meeting with Merau Varagan of the Exaltationists until the arrest by Patrol agents of the last Exaltationists, including Varagan's female clone, Raor.

My next project is to reread this sequence but it will take a while.

The Sorrow Of Odin The Goth

Poul Anderson, Time Patrol (New York, 2006).

Anderson's Time Patrolman contained two new long Time Patrol stories:

"Ivory, And Apes, And Peacocks"
"The Sorrow of Odin the Goth"

- since subsumed into the omnibus collection, The Time Patrol/Time Patrol.

"Ivory..." and "...Odin..." are different kinds of stories. In the former, Manson Everard tracks down the bad guys. In the latter, Carl Farness must struggle with his feelings towards the people he studies.

"Ivory..." is set entirely in Biblical Tyre whereas the sections of "...Odin..." alternate mainly between the fourth and twentieth centuries. This story introduced the practice, continued in The Year Of The Ransom, The Shield Of Time and "Death And The Knight," of dating each new section of narrative.

Although there are no chapter titles, apart from the dates, the opening phrase or sentence of a section often makes clear whether the point of view is that of a Goth or of a time traveler. The Goths live with the seasons and the elements.

  372       "Wind gusted out of twilight as the door opened." (p. 333)
1935       "I didn't change clothes till my vehicle brought me across space-time." (p. 341)
  300       "The home of Winnithar the Wisentslayer stood on a bluff above the River Vistula." (p. 347)
1980       "After basic training at the Patrol Academy, I returned to Laurie on the same day as I'd left her." (p. 351)
300-302  "Winter descended..." (p. 362)
2319       "I'd flitted uptime to nineteen-thirties New York..." (p. 374)
302-330  "Carl...watched while her kinfolk laid Jorith in the earth..." (p. 379)
1980       "Manse Everard was not the officer who raked me over the coals..." (p. 384)
  337       "Throughout that day, battle had raged." (p. 391)
1933       "'Oh, Laurie!'" (p. 395)
337-344  "Tharasmund was in his thirteenth winter when his father Dagobert fell." (ibid.)
1885       "Unlike most Patrol agents...Herbert Ganz had not abandoned his former surroundings." (p. 399)
344-347  "In the same year that Tharasmund returned...Geberic died..." (p. 404)
1934       "I came out of the New York base into the cold and early darkness of December..." (p. 407)
348-366  "Athanaric, king of the West Goths, hated Christ." (p. 409)
1935       "Laurie and I went walking in Central Park. March gusted..." (p. 422)
366-372  "Tharasmund led his men..." (p. 426)
1935       "I had fled home to Laurie." (p. 446)
  372       "Night had lately fallen." (p. 450)
1935       "Laurie, Laurie!" (p. 456)
  372       "Morning brought rain." (ibid.)
    43       "Here and there amidst the ages, the Time Patrol keeps places where its members may rest." (p. 459)
  374       "Ermanaric sat alone beneath the stars. Wind whimpered." (p. 463)

Poul Anderson's Time Travel

Poul Anderson's time travel fiction is in six volumes and two parts:

Novels of circular causality
The Dancer From Atlantis
The Corridors Of Time
There Will Be Time

Short stories and series
Past Times
Time Patrol
The Shield Of Time

I suggest that Past Times could be revised slightly and should certainly include "The Man Who Came Early." These half dozen or so stories are independent of each other and of the Time Patrol series which comprises the remaining two volumes. Nevertheless, Past Times makes a good conceptual introduction to Time Patrol, whereas the circular causality novels are a different category. The circular paradox is an ornamental garden obliging each completed work to stand alone unable to generate any sequels or series whereas "The Man Who Came Early" and "The Nest" present the kinds of situations and problems that are addressed in more detail by the Time Patrol.