Short Story
Great Work of Time
- by John Crowley
- in Novelty (Doubleday Foundation, May 1989)
When a secret society called the Otherhood acquires Caspar Last’s time machine in 1983, they set out to change history so that the British Empire never declines (although it may be infused with various Lovecraftian species such as the Draconics), an endeavor for which in 1956 they recruit Denys Winterset, one of the Colonial Service’s many assistant district commissioners of police.
Of course the possible worlds we make don’t compare to the real one we inhabit—not nearly so well furnished, or tricked out with details. And yet still somehow better. More satisfying. Perhaps the novelist is only a special case of a universal desire to reshape, to ‘take this sorry scheme of things entire,’ smash it into bits, and ‘remold it nearer to the heart’s desire’—as old Kyayyám says. The egoist is continually doing it with his own life. To dream of doing it with history is no more useful a game, I suppose, but as a game, it shows more sport.
