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A review by hoppy500
There Will Be Time by Poul Anderson
5.0
There Will Be Time by Poul Anderson (1972)
As an infant Jack Havig learns that he can move through time at will, and later on an older version of himself warns him to hide that ability from other people. The story employs a traditional storytelling device by having it narrated through Havig’s childhood doctor, Robert Anderson, through whose eyes the reader gets to know the protagonist and watches him develop as a person.
The premise of the story encourages the reader to consider how life could or should be lived by an individual with such a gift. Of course, on the one hand time travel could be very useful in mapping out your personal future and avoiding danger. On the other hand, however, it could be highly unpredictable and hazardous too. And in what time and location could you hope to find other people with the same natural ability (assuming there are any), and why might you want to contact them? One obvious place (which has also been used by other writers of time-travel stories) might be First Century Jerusalem, especially around the supposed time of Jesus’ ministry and death.
The somewhat idealistic Havig hopes that fellow time travelers can unite to create a bright future for mankind, and he discovers that an organization apparently engaged in such a mission is already in operation. Alas, abuse of power is a powerful temptation, and prejudices and hatreds brought from the ages in which the individual travelers were born are not easily overcome. When Jack’s secret idyll which he creates in ancient Byzantium (which is beautifully and poignantly described, as it is in Anderson’s book The Boat of a Million Years) is ruthlessly and mercilessly destroyed by other members of the organization, he resolves to establish his own to counter their nefarious disregard for basic human decency.
The book employs time travel as a means to show that societies and political entities naturally develop and disintegrate, and that it is impossible for them to endure forever. The intelligence and perspicacity of the author as a thoughtful observer of human nature is also powerfully manifested in this work.
There Will Be Time is relatively short at less than 180 pages, but there is so much packed into it that it may give the impression of being longer. That it is probably one of Poul Anderson’s better works is evidenced by the fact that it was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1973.
Here are some passages which I particularly enjoyed:
The air was cold and smelled of earth. Birds twittered. “Beyond one or two hundred years back,” Havig once said to me, “the daytime sky is always full of wings.”
“If anything does change man,” he said, “it’s science and technology. Just think about the fact--while it lasts--that parents need not take for granted some of their babies will die. You get a completely different concept of what a child is.”
I’ve seen photographs which he took on different occasions, and can well imagine this scene. It was less gaudy than you may suppose, who live in an age of aniline dyes and fluorescents. Fabrics were subdued brown, gray, blue, cinnabar, and dusty.
“Give them their religion, make the priests cooperate, and you have them.”
I’ve seen what happens when you try to straitjacket man into an ideology.
Mortal combat corrupts, and war corrupts absolutely.
A man can do but little. Enough if that little be right.
Nature never has been in perfect balance--there are many more extinct species than live--and primitive man was quite as destructive as modern. He simply took longer to use up his environment. Probably Stone Age hunters exterminated the giant mammals of the Pleistocene. Certainly farmers with sickles and digging sticks wore out what started as the Fertile Crescent.
But there are no happy endings. There are no endings of any kind. At most, we are given happy moments.
“…our freedom lies in the unknown.”
Above everything else, perhaps, was today’s concept of working together. I don’t mean its totalitarian version, for which Jack Havig had total loathing, or that “togetherness,” be it in a corporation or a commune, which he despised. I mean an enlightened pragmatism that rejects self-appointed aristocrats, does not believe received doctrine is necessarily true, stands ready to hear and weigh what anyone has to offer, and maintains well-developed channels to carry all ideas to the leadership and back again.
As an infant Jack Havig learns that he can move through time at will, and later on an older version of himself warns him to hide that ability from other people. The story employs a traditional storytelling device by having it narrated through Havig’s childhood doctor, Robert Anderson, through whose eyes the reader gets to know the protagonist and watches him develop as a person.
The premise of the story encourages the reader to consider how life could or should be lived by an individual with such a gift. Of course, on the one hand time travel could be very useful in mapping out your personal future and avoiding danger. On the other hand, however, it could be highly unpredictable and hazardous too. And in what time and location could you hope to find other people with the same natural ability (assuming there are any), and why might you want to contact them? One obvious place (which has also been used by other writers of time-travel stories) might be First Century Jerusalem, especially around the supposed time of Jesus’ ministry and death.
The somewhat idealistic Havig hopes that fellow time travelers can unite to create a bright future for mankind, and he discovers that an organization apparently engaged in such a mission is already in operation. Alas, abuse of power is a powerful temptation, and prejudices and hatreds brought from the ages in which the individual travelers were born are not easily overcome. When Jack’s secret idyll which he creates in ancient Byzantium (which is beautifully and poignantly described, as it is in Anderson’s book The Boat of a Million Years) is ruthlessly and mercilessly destroyed by other members of the organization, he resolves to establish his own to counter their nefarious disregard for basic human decency.
The book employs time travel as a means to show that societies and political entities naturally develop and disintegrate, and that it is impossible for them to endure forever. The intelligence and perspicacity of the author as a thoughtful observer of human nature is also powerfully manifested in this work.
There Will Be Time is relatively short at less than 180 pages, but there is so much packed into it that it may give the impression of being longer. That it is probably one of Poul Anderson’s better works is evidenced by the fact that it was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1973.
Here are some passages which I particularly enjoyed:
The air was cold and smelled of earth. Birds twittered. “Beyond one or two hundred years back,” Havig once said to me, “the daytime sky is always full of wings.”
“If anything does change man,” he said, “it’s science and technology. Just think about the fact--while it lasts--that parents need not take for granted some of their babies will die. You get a completely different concept of what a child is.”
I’ve seen photographs which he took on different occasions, and can well imagine this scene. It was less gaudy than you may suppose, who live in an age of aniline dyes and fluorescents. Fabrics were subdued brown, gray, blue, cinnabar, and dusty.
“Give them their religion, make the priests cooperate, and you have them.”
I’ve seen what happens when you try to straitjacket man into an ideology.
Mortal combat corrupts, and war corrupts absolutely.
A man can do but little. Enough if that little be right.
Nature never has been in perfect balance--there are many more extinct species than live--and primitive man was quite as destructive as modern. He simply took longer to use up his environment. Probably Stone Age hunters exterminated the giant mammals of the Pleistocene. Certainly farmers with sickles and digging sticks wore out what started as the Fertile Crescent.
But there are no happy endings. There are no endings of any kind. At most, we are given happy moments.
“…our freedom lies in the unknown.”
Above everything else, perhaps, was today’s concept of working together. I don’t mean its totalitarian version, for which Jack Havig had total loathing, or that “togetherness,” be it in a corporation or a commune, which he despised. I mean an enlightened pragmatism that rejects self-appointed aristocrats, does not believe received doctrine is necessarily true, stands ready to hear and weigh what anyone has to offer, and maintains well-developed channels to carry all ideas to the leadership and back again.