There Won't Always Be Time, Though

Poul Anderson's foreword for There Will Be Time is a bit curious. I believe he's saying that some of is related in the story comes from notes he received from a relative of his, a medical man. He doesn't insist the story is true, he merely notes where some of the ideas came from. The story itself is told by a town doctor, who is relating the life of one of his charges, as that man has related it to him.

Jack Havig can travel through time. He doesn't know why or how precisely, though he suspects it's the result of some fortunate happenstance in his genetics. He's been able to do so since he was a baby, and as a child, used it as a way to go exploring, to escape from unhappy times at home, and in one circumstance, to defend himself from bullies. The only person he confides in is the doctor who delivered him, and handled his childhood ailments.

The problem for Jack comes as he starts going forward (he's born in 1933) and sees civilization will be largely destroyed by way. Jack is faced with two problems. First, he feels the need to do something about what he's seen, though he never seems to much contemplate trying to stop it. His focus is more on how to best put things together afterward. The second problem is to try and find more people like himself.

Poul deals with the challenges of both goals rather well, I thought. For starters, time travel itself presents difficulties. He can't move through space, so either he has to find some way to get where he wants to be after he reaches his chosen time, or he has to go there first, then move through time. There's also the matter of how to hit the time he wants to hit. Language barriers, money problems, trying not to stand out too much, but still being able to reach people who could be useful. Simply being able to comprehend what he's seeing. He's only one man, can only be in one place at a time, how readily can he understand a culture from centuries in the future? If Jack can understand what he's seeing, can he deduce what needs to be done to either help it come about, or avert it? Can one person pull it off on his own, which is where finding more time travelers comes in, and the initial solution makes a certain amount of sense, in a limited way. Then there's the issue of whether or not Jack wants to be associated with the travelers he finds.

Anderson doesn't present Jack as someone with an intense focus for most of the book. As often happens in fiction, a loss is required to spur him on. Until then, Jack would consider what he should do, but he also took time to have flings with girls in different times, and even married a young woman after the sack of Constantinople in 1204*. I suppose since the 'Day of Judgment' wasn't going anywhere, there was no rush to getting around to guiding what comes after.

As with a lot of time travel stories, things feel inconsistent to me. Jack tells the doc he can't change the past. As an example, he describes trying to go back and warn his father not to enlist during World War 2. He says when he appeared in the house, he immediately tripped over a power cord, fell, and broke his arm, prompting him to jaunt back uptime. By the time he'd recovered, his mother he saw his mother had two sons with her second husband, which somehow convinces him he can't - or shouldn't - change what happens. Except we see time travelers with drive off Crusaders from certain locations in Constantinople with firearms so the travelers can sack them instead, or that it was supposed to be that Jack would marry that girl, because otherwise, those are changing things in at least some minute way. It's even suggested at the end that the mutation allowing time travel may have been engineered in the future and sent back to humanity, which sure as hell sounds like changing things. The argument seems to be those were preordained to happen, so they can, but John warning his father is not, so it can't. Which sounds like bunk to me.

I don't think it's a great book, but there are parts of it, and certainly concepts I like. The idea that one person would find it difficult to shape progress, would find it hard to even know where or when to act was a nice touch. Seems like in a lot of time travel stories, the characters always know exactly what they have to prevent, or who they have to kill, or whatever, which will magically make it all better**.

* What bothers me is Jack befriended her father, a goldsmith, when she was about five. Then jumped ahead a year or so to maintain the friendship. When the sack occurred, Jack was able to rescue her and some of the rest of the family, and after she spent some time in a nunnery for safety, they got married. Even though he had to be at least in his mid-20s when she was five. Admittedly, with him jumping forward in time, so that she was aging years as he was aging minutes or seconds, the gap closed, but still. Offended my sensibilities a bit.

** I guess the Terminator franchise is an exception since, no matter how many time John Conner avoids death, or destroys the remains of the one from the first movie that served as the blueprint for Skynet, or whatever, the war always happens, and they just keep sending machines to kill him. Neither side can ever seem to get it right in that conflict. I think it'd be kind of funny if Skynet succeeded, killed John as a kid, and all that happened was some other persistent human brought it down.