A Few Details In The Time Machine

HG Wells, The Time Machine (Pan Books, London, 1973).

Present At Both Dinners
the Time Traveller
the outer narrator
the Medical Man or Doctor
the Psychologist

Present Only At The First Dinner
the argumentative Filby
the Very Young Man
the Provincial Mayor

Present Only At The Second Dinner
the Editor ("Blank")
the Journalist ("Dash")
the Silent Man ("Chose")

"'Where's - ?' I said, naming our host." (Chapter 3, p. 18)

"'Has Mr - gone out that way?' said I." (Chapter 16, p. 100)

Thus, the characters name each other but not to us.

"'...I seemed to see Hillyer for a moment...'" (Chapter 15, p. 96)

We deduce that Hillyer is the outer narrator. See here. Thus, we know the names of only two of the ten men, Filby and Hillyer.

Temporal Intelligence

When James Bond gathers intelligence during his mission to Japan or when Dominic Flandry gathers intelligence by penetrating the Merseian Roidhunate, the gathered intelligence is accessible to Bond's or Flandry's colleagues after, not before, it has been gathered but how does this work in the Time Patrol?

Herbert Ganz, based in the 1850s, suggests that the Patrol can begin to record the history of the Gothic milieu by retrieving oral stories and poems from the Dark Ages. To this end, Carl Farness, based in the 1930s, spends a lot of time in the period 300-372. Before Carl and his wife have moved to the 1930s from later in the twentieth century and before Carl's first journey to 300, Manse Everard, Unattached agent, reviews Carl's proposed mission with him in 1980. At this stage, Everard agrees that Ganz's proposal is:

"'...an opening wedge, the single such wedge we've found, for getting the history of that milieu recorded.'"
-Poul Anderson, "The Sorrow Of Odin The Goth" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (New York, 2006), pp. 333-465 AT p. 356.

In any other context, if the history has not yet been recorded, then the historians and their colleagues do not yet have access to the history but this is the Time Patrol. When Carl returns from 372 to the 1930s with all his data recorded, then those data become accessible to any Patrol member who may need them including Ganz in the 1850s, Carl Farness in the 1930s and Everard in 1980. However, the data must be withheld from Carl pre-mission so that he will be able to gather those data without prejudice.

Further Digging

Alan Moore, Jerusalem (London, 2016), "Rough Sleepers," pp. 95-123.

"Rough sleepers" are homeless people, sleeping out of doors. Only on p. 109 did I begin to understand that one of them, Freddy, was time traveling:

"As he reached the entrance to the gardens he slowed down, knowing that if he were to get back to the place where she was waiting for him, further digging was required." (p. 109)

Digging? Rereading p. 106, I get a better understanding of what had happened earlier. Thorn hedge had grown where Georgie Bumble's office was. Freddy would have to "...get stuck in..." to this hedge in order to "...dig back to it." (p. 106) Back to what? To "...Georgie's time..." (p. 106), apparently. Freddy starts by pushing "...all the present stuff to one side..." (p. 106). This did sound odd the first time I read it. He shoves the hedge away like smoke, squashes and bends construction machinery like modelling clay and uncovers Georgie's door, then brushes smears of stale time from his coat! (He ate a magic mushroom before doing this.)

To get back to where Patsy awaits him, he "...shoulder[s] his way into all the rubbish piled up from the fifties." (p. 109) "...the fifties..." means the decade, the 1950s. Now we understand what Freddy meant by saying on p. 96 that he had just been "'...up there in the twenty fives...'" - 1925 - and why he learned that he was in 2006 by looking at a calendar. Continuing his journey to Patsy:

"He pushed through the glory days of Mary Jane and further still, back through the blackout and the sirens, folding pre-war washing lines and cockle-sellers to one side like reeds until the sudden stench and lack of visibility told Freddy that he'd reached his destination, back in the high twenties when somebody else's wife was waiting for him." (p. 109)

In case we still do not get it, we are told:

"Freddy began to walk across the patch of designated recreation area with its swings, its slide and Maypole, that extended where the central avenue of Bath Street flats had been moments before, or where it would be nearly eighty years from now, depending how you saw things." (p. 109)

OK. He really has traveled physically back in time. This is a fantasy or sf plot element - unless Freddy is just imagining it - but so far it does not as yet introduce the concept of Eternalism - unless, of course, it is argued that time travel implies Eternalism because how can someone travel from 2006 to the 1920s if the 1920s do not still exist?

Addendum: OK. I have misunderstood this. Freddy somehow merges with his younger self and relives an earlier experience. Or something.

Back In Timeline 1

What becomes of timeline 1 if a time traveler departs that timeline and enters timeline 2? Imagine two horizontal parallel straight lines, each extending from point A to point D with B and C as intermediate points:

the lower line represents timeline 1;
the higher line represents timeline 2;
C represents the moment when a time traveler departs timeline 1;
B represents the moment when he enters timeline 2.

Clearly there is no reason why timeline 1 should terminate at C. Indeed, we have already stipulated that timeline 1, like timeline 2, extends as far as D. The horizontal dimension represents a first temporal dimension whereas the vertical represents a second temporal dimension:

in the first temporal dimension, timeline 1 remains in existence until D;
in the second temporal dimension, the entire timeline 1, from A to D, ceases to exist when the entire timeline 2, from A to D, begins to exist;
inhabitants of timeline 2, familiar only with the events and history of their timeline, would say, if asked, that timeline 1 did not exist and had never existed;
anyone who did not understand that two temporal dimensions were involved might alternate between saying that timeline 1 has ceased to exist and that it had never existed.

The blurb on the back cover of SM Stirling's Dies The Fire (New York, 2005) informs us that the Change occurred after an electrical storm above Nantucket. After reading the Nantucket Trilogy, we are back in timeline 1.

Time Travel Synthesis

In Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series, the Danellians appear in different forms. At the beginning of his Patrol career, Manse Everard sees a blazing shape. Much later, he meets a benign humanoid being of indeterminate race, age or sex. In Doctor Who, the Time Lords periodically "regenerate." They are rejuvenated and their appearance changes, i.e., a different actor plays the part. Both groups are masters of time travel. Thus, could they be the same group? See here.

Is the Doctor's humanoid appearance a mere appearance? On TV, he once said that the TARDIS's appearance was here but that its real being was outside time. Another character commented, "Ah, you are a true philosopher!"

On its original publication in Tales Of The Knights Templar (New York, 1995), edited by Katherine Kurtz, the last Time Patrol story, "Death And The Knight," was doubly introduced by editor and author. Kurtz wrote that, if time is fluid and mutable, then we must hope that there are or will be Time Lords to perform policing tasks:

"...to make certain that crucial aspects of our past are not changed, so that all our yesterdays will unfold into our desired tomorrows...
"Poul Anderson writes of the Time Lords thus:..." (p. 273)

Anderson does not use the term "Time Lords" but, in this passage, he does not name the Danellians either. He writes of "...the superhumans who dwell in the ages beyond..." (p. 274)

There is much scope here for creative sequels.

The Bird of Time has but a little way
To fly — and Lo! the Bird is on the Wing.
-copied from here.

Future Histories And Time Travel

(Most of today so far has been spent driving back to Lancaster.)

Robert Heinlein
Heinlein's Future History was complete in five volumes but unfortunately he added three or four inauthentic novels. The first of these, Time Enough For Love, concludes with a time travel section, "Da Capo," that includes an ingenious passage on how Lazarus Long sends messages home from the early twentieth century but otherwise is appalling drivel. (I go further and add that at times Heinlein's later obsession with sex became frankly offensive.)

Isaac Asimov
Asimov's The End Of Eternity is an incoherent time travel novel (see here) that concludes by initiating the timeline of his Galactic Empire future history.

Poul Anderson
Anderson did not connect the Time Patrol to the Technic History but did connect There Will Be Time to the Maurai History.

However, in the Technic History, two characters present the germ of a time travel story. See here. Let us expand it:

the Marchwardens of the Lauran System have reason to expect an attack from the future and prepare defenses;
the attack arrives and is defeated;
five centuries later, the Merseians have a time machine and consider attacking the Lauran System five centuries earlier;
however, historical records inform them that that attack arrived and was defeated;
therefore, they do not launch the attack.

By the Time Patrol rules of time travel, this could happen. The cancellation of the launch of the attack cannot prevent the earlier arrival of the attack.

Time Travel Villains

Copied from here.

First, see here.

The Master's problem is how to disrupt and rule history without being stopped by extratemporal counterintervention. To get help, he travels in his TARDIS and rescues Merau Varagan, Raor and some Neldorian thugs from the exile planet. Seeking military intelligence, the Three (The Master and the two Exaltationists), helped by the Neldorians, abduct Manson Everard from his New York apartment, the Doctor from UNIT HQ and Captain Jack from Torchwood.

The Time Traveler has redesigned his Time Machine so that it can travel in any direction of space or time as originally intended. He spies on UNIT by traveling through its space-time in order to learn about the mysterious time traveler called the Doctor. Thus, he witnesses the appearance of the Master's TARDIS, the abduction of the Doctor and the TARDIS's disappearance. Traveling back in time and forward in space, the Time Traveler enters the TARDIS. He must now rescue the captives and help them to overcome the Three. He can travel through the space and time within the TARDIS as it travels through external space-time.