SOJALS rating:

Mediocre (2/5)

I first read this in 1967 and most recently on the 5th May 2011

Manse Everard is recruited into a secret organization. An organization dedicated to protecting our history from the predations of those who would destroy our history and therefore our futuree. It is the Time Patrol. Note the novel is really four previously-published short stories that had previously appeared (in a slightly different form) in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction": In fact it may be a collection of related short stories. However, I don't review short stories and have deemed it to be a novel.

• "Time Patrol", May 1955, copyright 1955
• "Brave to Be a King", August 1959, copyright 1959
• "The Only Game In Town", January 1960, copyright 1960
• "Delenda Est

  It's odd reading it now. Poul Anderson was a great writer, and this is one of my favourites. Perhaps it wasn't quite as good as I thought at the time. Is it dated? Well, not really, if you don't mind stumbling blindly, waving away the smoke from the pipes, cigars and omnipresent cigarettes, in order to enter his world. Oh, yes and the alcohol, the straight whiskeys for breakfast, for shock, for the night, to bring you round and to send you to sleep.

  Thank God I haven't quite given up the tequila and the smoking. If I had I might have found this less than utopia.

  Loaded on the 12th March 2012.