Monday 14 July 2014

Time Patrol Villains

Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series presents:

two individual time criminals, Stane and Charles Whitcomb;
a collective villain, the Neldorians;
a continuing collective villain, the Exaltationists;
a continuing individual villain, Merau Varagan of the Exaltationists.

All these characters appear in only five of the thirteen Time Patrol stories. After them, it emerges that the ultimate problem that the Patrol has to address is not an intelligent opponent but chaos, random changes in space-time-energy, which can be manifested through a personal causal nexus, an individual whose world-line interacts with so many others that small fluctuations in his life events can alter the course of history. Unknowingly, his activities have similar effects to those of a time criminal.

The three Time Patrol stories in Multiverse (see recent posts) introduce new villains:

unknowns who prevent the assassination of an Archduke at Sarajevo in 1914;
the last Exaltationist;
green-skinned terrorists from about 9999 AD, early in the Chorite Heresiarchy, who murder the Founders of the Time Patrol.

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