Given that the first story in the book Guardians of Time by SF grand master Poul Anderson, "Time Patrol" was published in 1955, and taking into account the technology of the period, that story and all the others in the Guardians of Time were an extremely impressive achievement, as well as a thoroughly entertaining read. The book contains five stories, all featuring the same principal character and in (his) chronological sequence.[Spoiler Alert] – I'm going to mainly talk about the themes and concepts of the book, but inevitably it will reveal some of the story outlines. Decide for yourself if that is too big a risk.First of all, although the "science" of time travel and the various risks and effects of doing so are satisfactorily covered, unlike in the stories of many other authors for the time or since, the book is not about the metaphysics of it or clever twists in the logic of time, any more than Star Trek is about the warp drive.Revealed early on, so it is not really a spoiler, is that the Time Patrol is not a human creation. Although the agents are all human from various periods of time, the masters of the Patrol are the Danellans, beings from the very far future, presumably our descendants, who have evolved so much that they no longer resemble us in body or thought. So the stories are not really about the invention and the consequences of time travel either.So what then is the book about? It is about choices. Human choices. Time, as it affects human lives, is all about choices. The choice of a tribe of primitive men to migrate across land bridges to populate distant continents, or to stay where they were. The choice of people to live by hunting and gathering or by herding animals or planting crops. Each decision, big and small, makes up the fabric of time itself, just as a single dot forms part of a high resolution printed photograph.What about when people have the ability to affect their own past and thus change their future? In order to maintain the status quo, the "reality" we all know, the Patrol has to protect the past from change. But the Patrol is made up of normal human beings, plucked from all eras of time. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Who watches the watchmen? So the agents of the Patrol must also deal with their own who are tempted to use their power for personal reasons. Simple enough, it would seem. Find the change and reverse it. But what if the interference has saved innocent lives, and nothing bad seems to have happened as a result. No Patrol office in any era looking forward in time detects any changes. Does that mean that the event was "meant" to happen all along? Would changing it back actually cause the damage they are trying to prevent? Not quite so simple after all.And then there are the accidents. The Patrol intervenes and the wrong person is killed. History books are notoriously inaccurate and incomplete. What if something completely different was happening than what was in the records? The agents of the Patrol have to deal with these as well, and a wrong choice could doom everyone and everything they ever knew.Then the worst possibility of all. The Patrol fails to catch a change. All of history is altered. New empires and societies are born. People who had never existed are also born to live and love and struggle. Perhaps the Patrol agents can "fix" it by finding the original interference and preventing it. But that would mean wiping out the billions of lives, men women and children, that already exist in all the periods of the new "now". Would that be a genocide worse than any ever perpetrated? Does anyone have the right to do that?Finally, what if the agents of the Patrol find out that the Danellans are not as devoted to maintaining the "natural order" as it seems? That the Danellans are shaping their own past. What to do then?These are the kinds of questions and problems raised and worked out in the five stories in Guardians of Time. Choices. Good, bad, ultimately someone has to decide.This book has flashy lights, big bangs, exciting battles, and fascinating historical insights, but it is not these that make it interesting and worth reading. It is the choices.
The best ScFi is concerned with the question "What if ?" Well, what if someone threatened to travel back in time and stop your father meeting your mother so you were never born ? That's when you'd want to call in Poul Andeson's Time Patrol, recruited from everywhere and everywhen, to counter such mischievous intererence with the proper order of things. Anderson's hero is recruited in the mid 20th Century, then plunged into a series of temporal scenarios where, amongst other things, the Carthaginians win the Punic Wars, and the Mongols discover America and only he can get the historical record back on track.A glorious romp from thr Golden Age of SciFi.
What do You think about Guardians Of Time (1977)?
Grossa delusione. Raramente ho faticato così tanto a finire un libro: lasciato da parte più volte, alla fine mi sono deciso perchè non ne ho mai realmente abbandonato uno in vita mia.Comunque: "mediocre" è la prima parola che mi viene in mente - non vedo una singola ragione per consigliare a qualcuno questa raccolta (o meglio selezione) di racconti, pur apprezzando solitamente l'autore. Diciamo che con la serie della "Time Patrol" non ha propriamente dato il meglio di sè: forse la peggior teoria sui viaggi nel tempo in cui mi sia mai imbattuto, alla base di storielle adolescenziali completamente prive di spessore o del benchè minimo spunto innovativo (pur considerando che la serie è stata scritta a cavallo tra gli anni '50 e '60).Concedo la seconda stella perchè, se non altro, Anderson denota una certa passione per la storia, ed in ogni episodio si inventa uno spicchio di "passato alternativo" nuova (non sempre interessante, in ogni caso). Purtroppo questo non può bastare, visto che tutto il resto non sta in piedi, in particolare l'interazione tra i personaggi, di una banalità soncertante....inaccettabile da un plurivincitore di Premi Hugo.
—Andrea Bampi
See, this is exactly the wrong way to go about time travel. Acknowledgement of paradox, but with a technical but garbled and meaningless explanation instead of a clearly thought out consistency (Bring the Jubilee) or a hallucinogenic inconsistency (Empire Star). Let's toss in an elitist group of guardians who seem to spend all their time bending the rules for pure nepotism. Maybe we can make them essentially disinterested in death and suffering except insofar as it directly affects their friends and lovers. Let's have that be mostly lovers, and those mostly women who can't take care of themselves. Every comedy ends with a wedding, right? The ladies of the past and future are, I guess, the spoils of the time wars. Fuck that noise. My verdict? Someone should go back in time and prevent Poul Anderson from using the word amanuensis twice, in unrelated situations, in this book. Once was bad enough.
—Gabriel C.
