Entropy Ranch
- by Kevin J. Anderson
- Short Story
- Adults
- Definite Time Travel
- English
- “Entropy Ranch” by Kevin J. Anderson, in Starshore, Winter 1990.
After surviving a close call with a moving bus, Edmond Jersey finds himself on an isolated ranch among a group of researchers who seem to have good intentions for their power to manipulate timelines and fix various wrongs that have happened within the past ten hours.
—Michael Main
We are Baptists here, Mr. Jersey, not Calvinists. If you want to talk about predestination, you’ll have to find a Presbyterian.”
Tags
(9)
- Time Periods
- Circa AD 1970 to 1999: presumed to be in the 1990s
- Timeline Models
- Multiple Naive Timelines: Entropy ranch is isolated outside of all the timelines that flow around it. But it doesn’t appear to be a true hypertime because they flow along with some sort of “subjective time.” So for now, we’re leaving it as multiple naive timelines.
- Time Travel Methods
- Limited Span Time Machine: The travelers voluntarily limit themselves to no more than ten hours of travel.
- Unexplained Time Travel Methods: Engineering and handwaving are both involved, but no actual time travel method is explained.
- Themes
- Fix Happenstance: They attempt to fix issues that affect ordinary people rather than making vast changes to history.
- Fix History!: The group is just starting out, fixing things they have seen happen in the past ten hours.
- Repeat until You Get It Right
- Time Corps: Entropy Ranch is a nascent Time Corps with little reach at the time of the story.
- Groupings
Variants
(2)
- “Entropy Ranch” by Kevin J. Anderson, in Starshore, Winter 1990.
- audio reading.
“Entropy Ranch” by Kevin J. Anderson, in Selected Stories: Science Fiction, vol. 2 (WordFire Press, September 2019) [audio]..
Indexer Notes
(1)
- We don’t know whether the 2019 audio reading was narrated by Bryan Anderson or by Sonya Anderson.