The Only Game in Town
- by Poul Anderson
- Novelette
- Adults
- Definite Time Travel
- English
- “The Only Game in Town” by Poul Anderson, Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, January 1960.
While on a two-man mission to stop a Mongol party from exploring North America in AD 1280, Patrolman John Sandoval gets a cracked skull, which leaves Manse Everard to figure out a way to save John and the mission while waxing philosophical about time travel and the Time Patrol.
—Michael Main
Thin lightnings winked from above. The cloven air boomed behind them. He felt a chill, deeper than the night cold. But he eased his pace. There was no more reason for hurry.
Tags
(20)
- Time Periods
- Circa AD 1950 to 1959: presumed home time of Everard in the “mid-twentieth century”
- Timeline Models
- Narrative Hypertime: The entire existence of the Time Patrol is predicated on their ability to rewrite the timeline as needed.
- New Timelines Are Theoretically Possible, but Forbidden: You know Patrol regs forbid us to make historical changes.
- Proper Timeline
- Remembering Other Timelines: Patrolmen are immune from changes while they are traveling.
- Single Consistent Timeline: Because of Manse’s rescue after the fact, there is a small suggestion that this particular story might have only a single static timeline: “Besides (an upsurging bitterness) what’s this whole mission been, except the future doubling back to create its own past? Without us, the Mongols might well have taken over America, and then there’d never have been any us.”
- Time Travel Methods
- Themes
- Language Difficulties: Manse and Sandoval picked up the languages they’d need in about an hour of hypnotics before heading to the 13th century.
- Rescue after the Fact: “That must be Manse Everard—who had returned to the Patrol vehicle and ridden it south in space and backward in time to this same instant.”
- Time Cops: The Patrol
- Real-World Tags
- Kublai Khan: He sent the expedition, but does not appear in the story.
- Mongol Empire
- Native Americans: The native Americans play only a minor role; most of the interaction is with the Mongol exploration party.
- Precolonial Americas: North America, west coast, AD 1280
- Groupings
Variants
(1)
- “The Only Game in Town” by Poul Anderson, Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, January 1960.