There Will Be Time Review - Cave To The Cross Apologetics

There Will Be Time By Poul Anderson

Synopsis:

Jack Havig has been able to time travel at will ever since he was well, born. The only friend he seems to have allowed for during his own time has been his doctor. The doctor gives an account of Jack’s travels in the past and how other time travels from the past and future but like, the past’s past which have some in the future but there are some real future people who are present but then go to the past to go to the future to maybe, hopefully, stop a nuclear war but some do stop it maybe don’t. Ahh time travel – it’s fantastic.

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Review

Jack Havig has a genetic mutation that allows him to travel through time and finds out that an apocalypse will occur to the human race unless he does something about it. He meets up with other mutated people where he finds out the leader is a racist who wants a culled people in the second age of man. What can Jack do and is it worth doing anything?

What a jumbled mess of a story this is. With time travel the reader is either at the fixed point in time hearing about the tale or you follow the traveler on his journey. With the fixed point, which this story is, there’s bound to be a lot of jumping around because that’s what it’d feel like from your stationary spot. The jumping around here is in Poul Anderson coming into paragraphs with about two previous ones missing. Plot points are picked up and then dropped. Jack goes to the date of the crucifixion to meet other time travelers so as to prevent the end of the world. No one bothers to look upon the scene of the most famous event in history; which would have been a really interesting perspective to show the “otherness” of time travelers but the reason for meeting up is really dropped. A change to the white ruler in the second age of man is brought about but the salvation from the apocalypse isn’t even discussed again.

There is some great understanding of Anderson to not just drop his time travel characters into the midst of the date where the traveler has to arrive. He understands how much information gathering would have to be accomplished. How slow it would take to amass any wealth and influence. However, the time length to carry this out is brushed over too quickly and it skips around from needing to find a way to carry out the Big Plan to I like this family to have fallen in love. Again, with the time travel aspect to this story, one might think it was done on purpose but that seems to be an excuse one would give for poor story structure.

The story is attempted to be told from the meetings Jack has with his childhood doctor who is the only “normal person” who knows he’s a time traveler. This is really an interesting point of view to take. However, it is quickly dropped just to follow Jack’s perspective with a few asides to bring the doctor back into focus. This is like a found footage film that forgets it needs to have the perspective of found footage to maintain the storytelling element it started off with.

The timing of everything is also way off. I know, a book about time travel can hand-wave this away. But the entirety of the book from Jack’s perspective still feels like a lifetime but it only shows him with a period of about 30 years under his belt. The amount of time Jack takes to fall in love is way too quick and without connection and is done to only provide a dramatic point or advance the plot for its sake. Emotion is tread on without the build-up to pay it off in the end. The final 20 pages of the book feels like the final act of the book so it’s rushed.

The hop, skip, and jump around you expect from a time travel book is obtained from only the clunky writing of Anderson. Character development is nonexistent – why do characters that supposedly care about Byzantine rulers and the end of the world not care about the crucifixion? Why is there any attempt to care about the apocalypse when there’s rare to no connection with anyone in the world due to their mutated power? The big questions of God, life, and time that the book brings up are only shrugged off without satisfaction while anything the characters care about suddenly becomes the only thing worth knowing. Most of the connecting pieces to the story are missing. One would have to go back in time and add them in.

Final Grade

D+