Wednesday 18 January 2017

Exploring And Exploiting The Solar System II

In Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series, human beings colonize the Moon, Venus, Mars and the Saturnian moons. Of course, the Time Patrol is a historical time travel series, not a tenth future history. However, this involves extending the same science fictional imagination in the opposite temporal direction. Further, the Time Patrol presents an implicit future history, giving many hints about future periods. See The Time Patrol Timeline.

Poul Anderson wrote:

more future histories than any other sf author;
a time travel series, the Time Patrol, to which nothing else is comparable.

Like Heinlein's Future History and Anderson's own Psychotechnic History, the Time Patrol series can be appropriately collected in two dense volumes. See here. In fact, it has been although I slightly disagree with the order in which the installments are presented.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

I remember, you disagreed with the editor's decision to put Anderson's last Time Patrol story, "Death And The Knight," with the other stories in THE TIME PATROL. You would have preferred to have placed "Death" after THE SHIELD OF TIME in the volume of that name.

I thought some readers might like some background here!

Sean