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Past Times
Science fiction
288 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1984
About the author
Poul Anderson
1,623 books1,128 followersPseudonym A. A. Craig, Michael Karageorge, Winston P. Sanders, P. A. Kingsley.
Poul William Anderson was an American science fiction author who began his career during one of the Golden Ages of the genre and continued to write and remain popular into the 21st century. Anderson also authored several works of fantasy, historical novels, and a prodigious number of short stories. He received numerous awards for his writing, including seven Hugo Awards and three Nebula Awards.
Anderson received a degree in physics from the University of Minnesota in 1948. He married Karen Kruse in 1953. They had one daughter, Astrid, who is married to science fiction author Greg Bear. Anderson was the sixth President of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, taking office in 1972. He was a member of the Swordsmen and Sorcerers' Guild of America, a loose-knit group of Heroic Fantasy authors founded in the 1960s, some of whose works were anthologized in Lin Carter's Flashing Swords! anthologies. He was a founding member of the Society for Creative Anachronism. Robert A. Heinlein dedicated his 1985 novel The Cat Who Walks Through Walls to Anderson and eight of the other members of the Citizens' Advisory Council on National Space Policy.[2][3]
Poul Anderson died of cancer on July 31, 2001, after a month in the hospital. Several of his novels were published posthumously.
Series:
* Time Patrol
* Psychotechnic League
* Trygve Yamamura
* Harvest of Stars
* King of Ys
* Last Viking
* Hoka
* Future history of the Polesotechnic League
* Flandry
Poul William Anderson was an American science fiction author who began his career during one of the Golden Ages of the genre and continued to write and remain popular into the 21st century. Anderson also authored several works of fantasy, historical novels, and a prodigious number of short stories. He received numerous awards for his writing, including seven Hugo Awards and three Nebula Awards.
Anderson received a degree in physics from the University of Minnesota in 1948. He married Karen Kruse in 1953. They had one daughter, Astrid, who is married to science fiction author Greg Bear. Anderson was the sixth President of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, taking office in 1972. He was a member of the Swordsmen and Sorcerers' Guild of America, a loose-knit group of Heroic Fantasy authors founded in the 1960s, some of whose works were anthologized in Lin Carter's Flashing Swords! anthologies. He was a founding member of the Society for Creative Anachronism. Robert A. Heinlein dedicated his 1985 novel The Cat Who Walks Through Walls to Anderson and eight of the other members of the Citizens' Advisory Council on National Space Policy.[2][3]
Poul Anderson died of cancer on July 31, 2001, after a month in the hospital. Several of his novels were published posthumously.
Series:
* Time Patrol
* Psychotechnic League
* Trygve Yamamura
* Harvest of Stars
* King of Ys
* Last Viking
* Hoka
* Future history of the Polesotechnic League
* Flandry
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
September 11, 2010
Read the first short story. It was so-so, not good but not altogether bad either. A few good lines, thoughts. To be honest, it went back on the shelf where I may or may not get back to it.
I've got plenty more better books I'd rather spend my time on.
I've got plenty more better books I'd rather spend my time on.
July 21, 2019
Okay. This book came from a estate sale. And the one person who dies must have been a die hard scifi fan because there were mountains and mountains of these worn out, tattered, yellowed paged science fiction books. They ranged from HG Wells to Phillip K. Dick to Issac Asmov to people I never heard of before. And the people selling the books made me a offer. As many books that you can fit in a bag for a dollar and like a big nerd I got as many as I can. And the book I’m reviewing now came out of that collection. Its called Past Times by Poul Anderson. He is a author I never heard of before but as the bold letters state on the book, he must have been a “Winner of Seven Hugo Awards.” So he must have been somebody at one point.
So what is it about? Well that’s a bit complicated. The back of the books says it is a tale of physician who is trapped in the future. But that is very deceiving because that is a description of one of many short stories. It is an anthology despite what the write up says. The book is a set of short stories centering on even in a world where time travel exists, making up a scattered brained but at the same time somewhat brilliant timeline to this world. And the stories could not be further apart in variety. One is about some company workers drilling for oil in the Jurassic handling day to day life and having the main character reflect on the dangers, and insanity of it all when one of his friends is killed by a dinosaur. Another one was about a man who accidentally go in the past to encounter the first ancestors of the human kind and questions what makes us human. Another is a odd one set in early Cenozoic where people from all walks of life were sent back to work. The people range from knights, to spies, to soliders. But there is chaos as evil men from the future such as Nazis escaped to this time and formed clans to created dominance. This is one of the nuttier stories. But it is extremely fun at the same time. The fourth major one is a man investigating the multiple branching timelines as a result of changing things in the past and learning from them. The last major one is about a man who can not travel in the past because his time machine is broken, so he continues to travel further and further into the future to find someone who knows how to fix it so he can go home. He gets to witness the eternal rise and fall of man kind through the centuries. There’s a couple other shorts too, but really not worth mentioning compared to these other big ones. So yeah. That was a lot. So now to the good and bad.
The good? The overall experimental writing this piece of work, is a very intriguing and amazingly imaginative. The author always moving into something new. It doesn’t drag and the overall idea of allowing the reader to piece together a timeline where time travel exist I thought was very smart. I always like something that makes me think.
The bad? Well the first one I must say is that book tries to be scientific without knowing any science at all. There are scenes where saber tooth tigers and dinosaurs exist at the same time. The reasoning as to why workers are drilling for oil in the Jurassic is ridiculous and doesn’t make much sense. There’s other things as well but you get the point. But being this is written in the late sixties I’ll cut them some slack. Another thing is that detail is weak. It is incredibly weak forcing you to make up bits and pieces to fill in the blanks. I really don’t like that. Then the biggest crime is the bait and switch in the beginning. I’m not talking about the back cover. The first seventy pages are what make up the Jurassic story that has the same theme sof Teranova TV show, was amazing world with rich characters. The book at that point feels like the beginning of a great novel, and with nothing telling anyone otherwise I was very surprised when it quickly and suddenly switched to something else. The moment I found out it was a anthology, I was disappointed.
Overall, the cons do outweigh the great imagination here. So I would be hard to recommend this to many. If you love old school science fiction this is your thing. For the rest of us, it is more of a curiosity than a good book.
1 ½ smoothies out of four.
Overall Rating: Rich Imagination and Scattered Brained Storylines Intertwine
So what is it about? Well that’s a bit complicated. The back of the books says it is a tale of physician who is trapped in the future. But that is very deceiving because that is a description of one of many short stories. It is an anthology despite what the write up says. The book is a set of short stories centering on even in a world where time travel exists, making up a scattered brained but at the same time somewhat brilliant timeline to this world. And the stories could not be further apart in variety. One is about some company workers drilling for oil in the Jurassic handling day to day life and having the main character reflect on the dangers, and insanity of it all when one of his friends is killed by a dinosaur. Another one was about a man who accidentally go in the past to encounter the first ancestors of the human kind and questions what makes us human. Another is a odd one set in early Cenozoic where people from all walks of life were sent back to work. The people range from knights, to spies, to soliders. But there is chaos as evil men from the future such as Nazis escaped to this time and formed clans to created dominance. This is one of the nuttier stories. But it is extremely fun at the same time. The fourth major one is a man investigating the multiple branching timelines as a result of changing things in the past and learning from them. The last major one is about a man who can not travel in the past because his time machine is broken, so he continues to travel further and further into the future to find someone who knows how to fix it so he can go home. He gets to witness the eternal rise and fall of man kind through the centuries. There’s a couple other shorts too, but really not worth mentioning compared to these other big ones. So yeah. That was a lot. So now to the good and bad.
The good? The overall experimental writing this piece of work, is a very intriguing and amazingly imaginative. The author always moving into something new. It doesn’t drag and the overall idea of allowing the reader to piece together a timeline where time travel exist I thought was very smart. I always like something that makes me think.
The bad? Well the first one I must say is that book tries to be scientific without knowing any science at all. There are scenes where saber tooth tigers and dinosaurs exist at the same time. The reasoning as to why workers are drilling for oil in the Jurassic is ridiculous and doesn’t make much sense. There’s other things as well but you get the point. But being this is written in the late sixties I’ll cut them some slack. Another thing is that detail is weak. It is incredibly weak forcing you to make up bits and pieces to fill in the blanks. I really don’t like that. Then the biggest crime is the bait and switch in the beginning. I’m not talking about the back cover. The first seventy pages are what make up the Jurassic story that has the same theme sof Teranova TV show, was amazing world with rich characters. The book at that point feels like the beginning of a great novel, and with nothing telling anyone otherwise I was very surprised when it quickly and suddenly switched to something else. The moment I found out it was a anthology, I was disappointed.
Overall, the cons do outweigh the great imagination here. So I would be hard to recommend this to many. If you love old school science fiction this is your thing. For the rest of us, it is more of a curiosity than a good book.
1 ½ smoothies out of four.
Overall Rating: Rich Imagination and Scattered Brained Storylines Intertwine
August 22, 2018
Time Travel With Limits
6 short time travel stories and a novella all of which avoid paradox with the plot device that traveling into the past is limited.
It begins with "Wildcat" (1958), a Cold War cautionary tail about pending nuclear war in the present and a society that solves its energy needs by fending off dinosaurs and drilling for oil in the mid-Cretaceous period while the main character, Herries, an engineering boss, wonders about the futility of it all. This is followed with "Welcome" (1960). Tom Barlow takes a one way jump 500 years into the future to find himself honoured as the very first time traveler and has to cope with the mores a somewhat stratified world with a population of 15 billion. The tale's denouement is somewhat similar to that of Heinlein's Farnham's Freehold, which was published 4 years later. In "The Nest", which takes place in the Pleistocene era, a group of time travelers from the future are outwitted by a medieval duke who steals their device and builds a patchwork society filled with people from all sorts of eras who seem to have little to do but war with each other. The society itself is a bit implausible as it would need at least a couple of hundred years to evolve with multiple seedings of groups, something I found a bit dissatisfying as the whole purpose seemed to be to create a backdrop for a fight scene at the end.
"Eutopia" (1967) sidelines time travel for a multiverse in a world where Christianity, described as a failed heretical offshoot of Judaism, never took hold and America never was born. In it's place are a collection agrarian societies who made better accommodation with the native societies than we did. and some of our technological advances including cars, helicopters and nuclear weapons. Iason is a cross-time explorer from a different world based on the ideals of Greek philosophy and reason who runs afoul with odd sets of religious mores of the society that he visits, albeit from the present POV the ending is rather predictable.
"The Little Monster" (1974), written to suit younger readers, is about culture clash. Teenager Jerry Parker is accidentally "projected" into the past for exactly 36 hours (the technical restriction) and has to survive both a hostile human tribe and a hungry lion using the skill he learned as a scout. He speculates as what might happen to his component parts if the lion eats him. In the end both he and the tribe that he meets are changed forever. "The Light" (1957) takes back to a cold war era where American astronauts believe that they have beaten the Russians to the moon, only to find that someone has beaten them to it, which, if true, might threaten the balance of power. There's a nice time travel twist at the end which depends on a clue left in in a painting by Da Vinci. The last piece is a novella "Flight Without End", classic space opera, where protagonist Martin Saunders goes for a 100 year jaunt to the future only to find that he can't go home again as the energy required increases asymptotically to a limit at 70 years into the past. Travel into the future however is downhill all the way and requires very little energy. Anderson echoes the historical theories of Ibn Khaldun as Saunders observes the rise and fall of various civilizations.
The book also includes an essay "The Discovery of the Past", on the relationship between SF and history and serves to give us some insight as to how Anderson frames his voice as a writer. An enjoyable read, a bit retro but then so is my checkered kitchen table. I'd rate at just under 3.5*.
6 short time travel stories and a novella all of which avoid paradox with the plot device that traveling into the past is limited.
It begins with "Wildcat" (1958), a Cold War cautionary tail about pending nuclear war in the present and a society that solves its energy needs by fending off dinosaurs and drilling for oil in the mid-Cretaceous period while the main character, Herries, an engineering boss, wonders about the futility of it all. This is followed with "Welcome" (1960). Tom Barlow takes a one way jump 500 years into the future to find himself honoured as the very first time traveler and has to cope with the mores a somewhat stratified world with a population of 15 billion. The tale's denouement is somewhat similar to that of Heinlein's Farnham's Freehold, which was published 4 years later. In "The Nest", which takes place in the Pleistocene era, a group of time travelers from the future are outwitted by a medieval duke who steals their device and builds a patchwork society filled with people from all sorts of eras who seem to have little to do but war with each other. The society itself is a bit implausible as it would need at least a couple of hundred years to evolve with multiple seedings of groups, something I found a bit dissatisfying as the whole purpose seemed to be to create a backdrop for a fight scene at the end.
"Eutopia" (1967) sidelines time travel for a multiverse in a world where Christianity, described as a failed heretical offshoot of Judaism, never took hold and America never was born. In it's place are a collection agrarian societies who made better accommodation with the native societies than we did. and some of our technological advances including cars, helicopters and nuclear weapons. Iason is a cross-time explorer from a different world based on the ideals of Greek philosophy and reason who runs afoul with odd sets of religious mores of the society that he visits, albeit from the present POV the ending is rather predictable.
"The Little Monster" (1974), written to suit younger readers, is about culture clash. Teenager Jerry Parker is accidentally "projected" into the past for exactly 36 hours (the technical restriction) and has to survive both a hostile human tribe and a hungry lion using the skill he learned as a scout. He speculates as what might happen to his component parts if the lion eats him. In the end both he and the tribe that he meets are changed forever. "The Light" (1957) takes back to a cold war era where American astronauts believe that they have beaten the Russians to the moon, only to find that someone has beaten them to it, which, if true, might threaten the balance of power. There's a nice time travel twist at the end which depends on a clue left in in a painting by Da Vinci. The last piece is a novella "Flight Without End", classic space opera, where protagonist Martin Saunders goes for a 100 year jaunt to the future only to find that he can't go home again as the energy required increases asymptotically to a limit at 70 years into the past. Travel into the future however is downhill all the way and requires very little energy. Anderson echoes the historical theories of Ibn Khaldun as Saunders observes the rise and fall of various civilizations.
The book also includes an essay "The Discovery of the Past", on the relationship between SF and history and serves to give us some insight as to how Anderson frames his voice as a writer. An enjoyable read, a bit retro but then so is my checkered kitchen table. I'd rate at just under 3.5*.
April 8, 2015
Past Times (1984) 288 pages by Poul Anderson.
Seven short stories with [primarily] a time travel theme.
"Eutopia" (1967) had an alternate time line story, we find out at the end of the story what faux pas Iason committed to end up being chased.
"Flight to Forever" (1950) starts with the first 100 year leap to the future to find out why the automatic drones did not return. There had been no trouble going twenty years ahead and coming back. Turns out that 70 years back is as far as you can get. So Martin Saunders tries a different tactic, going ahead to see if future generations have an answer. He stops at many different time periods, some for moments, others for longer.
"The Nest" (1953) A time traveler from the future had his time vehicle stolen by Hugo, who then went through time raiding places, gaining followers and slaves, hiding in the distant past. The story is told by Trebuen, which starts with what looks like a chivalrous act, but turns out to get him into deep trouble.
"Wildcat" (1958) All the action takes place in 100 million B.C. but in the present the world is locked in a cold war.
"Welcome" (1960). "The Little Monster" (1974). "The Light" (1957).
Even a $1.50, I would have passed on this book, had I took the time to open it and see it was short stories. The stories were OK, but I have hundreds of unread Analog, F&SF, and other magazines piling up. The essay was a clunker, but the seven stories were good, all by Anderson, and were loosely themed together.
Seven short stories with [primarily] a time travel theme.
"Eutopia" (1967) had an alternate time line story, we find out at the end of the story what faux pas Iason committed to end up being chased.
"Flight to Forever" (1950) starts with the first 100 year leap to the future to find out why the automatic drones did not return. There had been no trouble going twenty years ahead and coming back. Turns out that 70 years back is as far as you can get. So Martin Saunders tries a different tactic, going ahead to see if future generations have an answer. He stops at many different time periods, some for moments, others for longer.
"The Nest" (1953) A time traveler from the future had his time vehicle stolen by Hugo, who then went through time raiding places, gaining followers and slaves, hiding in the distant past. The story is told by Trebuen, which starts with what looks like a chivalrous act, but turns out to get him into deep trouble.
"Wildcat" (1958) All the action takes place in 100 million B.C. but in the present the world is locked in a cold war.
"Welcome" (1960). "The Little Monster" (1974). "The Light" (1957).
Even a $1.50, I would have passed on this book, had I took the time to open it and see it was short stories. The stories were OK, but I have hundreds of unread Analog, F&SF, and other magazines piling up. The essay was a clunker, but the seven stories were good, all by Anderson, and were loosely themed together.
July 3, 2010
A collection of some of Anderson's Time Travel Short Stories...not bad...nothing really great though
January 18, 2011
Grade C-. Related stories.
March 7, 2013
Quite an improvement from the last Anderson books I read. Even though the info on dinosaurs is very very dated (it was the '70s) still a very engaging read. Even the essay was good.
January 4, 2018
Fun short stories dealing with time travel including a couple with dinosaurs and one with a preteen boy.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews