Great Work of Time
Encyclopedia
Great Work of Time is a novella
by John Crowley
. A science fiction
story involving time travel
, it concerns a secret society
created by the will of Cecil Rhodes to preserve and expand the British Empire
.
Originally published in Crowley's 1989
collection Novelty, Great Work of Time was also published on its own in a Bantam paperback edition in 1991. It is now available as part of the omnibus volume Novelties and Souvenirs.
The story was also published as part of a collection of short stories in A science fiction omnibus in 2007, edited by Brian Aldiss
.
It won the World Fantasy Award for Best Novella
in 1990.
's poem about Oliver Cromwell
, who, Marvell said,
Therefore, Last determines to make one use and one only of his invention - to travel to 19th Century British Guiana
, make himself wealthy by obtaining a very rare stamp, and thereafter never use it or let it be used by others. However, the energetic Britons of the Otherhood think otherwise; having found out about Last's invention, they take it over and embark on making a sustained and intensive use of time-travel for preserving the peace of the world and the existence of the British Empire (aims which they consider to be virtually sinonimous).
The story moves in the second chapter to a timeline in which the British Empire
has survived as a dominant world power throughout the Twentieth Century. The main character, Denys Winterset, a promising young official in the Colonial Service at Africa, is invited by an enigmatic civil servant named Sir Geoffrey Davenant to join a secret society that has the ability to alter time. This society, which calls itself the Otherhood (because it is not quite a brotherhood), was endowed by Cecil Rhodes in 1893 with the goal of preserving and expanding the British Empire.
The secret society is modeled on the well-known Roman Catholic order of the Jesuits (one early version of Rhodes' will did indeed call for the creation of a pan-English-speaking secret society based on the Jesuits; although this never—so far as is known—came into existence, this is where the author got his idea).
Invited to the Otherhood's secret headquarters, located out of normal time and space, Winterset is told that there had been "An Original Situation", whose description suggests our own familiar history. There, what Winterset knew as the six-month-long "War of 1914" had degenerated into a mass four-year long bloodletting
. It was followed by the rise of various dictatorships
and tyrannies
, more terrible wars
and unimaginable mass murders, and finally the development of terrible destructive weapons capable of utterly destroying the world
. The calamity also involved the complete dissolution of the British Empire, to which Winterset is staunchly loyal and which he regards as the main guarantor of the world's peace and stability.
All this was averted only due to the ability of the Otherhood's agents to go back in time, change the past, and create the peaceful, British-dominated world which Winterset had hitherto taken for granted. However, in the Otherhood's timeless headquarters, all this is still to be done.
Then Winterset is told that there is a vital role which he is predestined to play (or that he has, in this universe of non-linear time, already played) and nobody else could fulfill: he must travel back to the beginning of the group in 1893 and assassinate Rhodes. Otherwise, in the late 1890s Rhodes would change his will and dissipate much of his fortune, the Otherhood would never come into being, and the terrible nightmare of "The Original Situation" Twentieth Century would be restored.
When the President pro tem, later revealed to be Winterset, travels into the future, something previously outlawed by the Otherhood, he learns that the future they have created is not at all what they aimed for and in fact is a weak fabric, constantly changing and fluctuating. He learns that this alternate history has to be destroyed and the "true" one restored.
Meanwhile, a younger Winterset aims to kill Cecil Rhodes, but the moment of opportunity slips due to an outside interference, which Winterset assumes to have been purposely created. Rhodes survives, the Otherhood is therefore never formed, and Winterset is trapped in the past and enters the service of Rhodes.
In the final chapter, Winterset, a young man, now living in the "true" history, enters the Colonial Service nevertheless, meets his older self in 1956 in Africa and learns of the truth. He helps his older self to escape from Africa and returns to London, where the story ends with their last meeting many years later.
As noted by critic Susan Young , "Great Work of Time" has the same basic outline as Isaac Asimov
's The End of Eternity
- i.e. a secret society of well-meaning time travelers bent on remodeling history, and a young man recruited into the society in order to make a specific change that would bring this society itself into being. The details of what the time travelers do and where in time they operate are much different from those in Asimov's book. However, in both books, the society's operations come to a halt through the influence of people from the future, because the society's actions endanger the existence of the future.
Novella
A novella is a written, fictional, prose narrative usually longer than a novelette but shorter than a novel. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Nebula Awards for science fiction define the novella as having a word count between 17,500 and 40,000...
by John Crowley
John Crowley
John Crowley is an American author of fantasy, science fiction and mainstream fiction. He studied at Indiana University and has a second career as a documentary film writer...
. A science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
story involving time travel
Time travel
Time travel is the concept of moving between different points in time in a manner analogous to moving between different points in space. Time travel could hypothetically involve moving backward in time to a moment earlier than the starting point, or forward to the future of that point without the...
, it concerns a secret society
Secret society
A secret society is a club or organization whose activities and inner functioning are concealed from non-members. The society may or may not attempt to conceal its existence. The term usually excludes covert groups, such as intelligence agencies or guerrilla insurgencies, which hide their...
created by the will of Cecil Rhodes to preserve and expand the British Empire
British Empire
The British Empire comprised the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom. It originated with the overseas colonies and trading posts established by England in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. At its height, it was the...
.
Originally published in Crowley's 1989
1989 in literature
The year 1989 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:* February 24 - Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini places a US$3 million bounty for the death of The Satanic Verses author Salman Rushdie.-Literature:...
collection Novelty, Great Work of Time was also published on its own in a Bantam paperback edition in 1991. It is now available as part of the omnibus volume Novelties and Souvenirs.
The story was also published as part of a collection of short stories in A science fiction omnibus in 2007, edited by Brian Aldiss
Brian Aldiss
Brian Wilson Aldiss, OBE is an English author of both general fiction and science fiction. His byline reads either Brian W. Aldiss or simply Brian Aldiss. Greatly influenced by science fiction pioneer H. G. Wells, Aldiss is a vice-president of the international H. G. Wells Society...
.
It won the World Fantasy Award for Best Novella
World Fantasy Award for Best Novella
This World Fantasy Award is given to the fantasy novella or novellas voted best by a panel of judges, and presented each year at the World Fantasy Convention...
in 1990.
Explanation of the novel's title
The title comes from Andrew MarvellAndrew Marvell
Andrew Marvell was an English metaphysical poet, Parliamentarian, and the son of a Church of England clergyman . As a metaphysical poet, he is associated with John Donne and George Herbert...
's poem about Oliver Cromwell
Oliver Cromwell
Oliver Cromwell was an English military and political leader who overthrew the English monarchy and temporarily turned England into a republican Commonwealth, and served as Lord Protector of England, Scotland, and Ireland....
, who, Marvell said,
Could by industrious valour climb
To ruin the great work of Time,
And cast the kingdoms old
Into another mould.
Chapters
The story sub-divides into chapters which initially seem to be completely separate, but a connection is starting to be formed in Chapter III.- I: The Single Excursion of Caspar Last
- II: An Appointment in Khartoum
- III: The Tale of the President Pro Tem
- IV: Chronicles of the Otherhood
- V: The Tears of the President Pro Tem
- VI: The Boy David of Hyde Park Corner
Plot
The first chapter is connected to the story only in that it explains the origins of the time machine later used by the Otherhood. Caspar Last, an unambitious, reclusive middle-aged mathematical genius, has created a time machine more as a solution for a mathematical riddle than in order to make use of it. He is well aware that use of time travel is hazardous, and that however careful the traveler, the act of time travel is bound to introduce random changes into history and present day reality far beyond those intended and deliberately caused by the traveler. In fact, the present to which the traveler returns "is not truly the one from which he departed". This effect would increase and multiply, the more that time travel is used.Therefore, Last determines to make one use and one only of his invention - to travel to 19th Century British Guiana
British Guiana
British Guiana was the name of the British colony on the northern coast of South America, now the independent nation of Guyana.The area was originally settled by the Dutch at the start of the 17th century as the colonies of Essequibo, Demerara, and Berbice...
, make himself wealthy by obtaining a very rare stamp, and thereafter never use it or let it be used by others. However, the energetic Britons of the Otherhood think otherwise; having found out about Last's invention, they take it over and embark on making a sustained and intensive use of time-travel for preserving the peace of the world and the existence of the British Empire (aims which they consider to be virtually sinonimous).
The story moves in the second chapter to a timeline in which the British Empire
British Empire
The British Empire comprised the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom. It originated with the overseas colonies and trading posts established by England in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. At its height, it was the...
has survived as a dominant world power throughout the Twentieth Century. The main character, Denys Winterset, a promising young official in the Colonial Service at Africa, is invited by an enigmatic civil servant named Sir Geoffrey Davenant to join a secret society that has the ability to alter time. This society, which calls itself the Otherhood (because it is not quite a brotherhood), was endowed by Cecil Rhodes in 1893 with the goal of preserving and expanding the British Empire.
The secret society is modeled on the well-known Roman Catholic order of the Jesuits (one early version of Rhodes' will did indeed call for the creation of a pan-English-speaking secret society based on the Jesuits; although this never—so far as is known—came into existence, this is where the author got his idea).
Invited to the Otherhood's secret headquarters, located out of normal time and space, Winterset is told that there had been "An Original Situation", whose description suggests our own familiar history. There, what Winterset knew as the six-month-long "War of 1914" had degenerated into a mass four-year long bloodletting
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
. It was followed by the rise of various dictatorships
Fascism
Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...
and tyrannies
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
, more terrible wars
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
and unimaginable mass murders, and finally the development of terrible destructive weapons capable of utterly destroying the world
Nuclear holocaust
Nuclear holocaust refers to the possibility of the near complete annihilation of human civilization by nuclear warfare. Under such a scenario, all or most of the Earth is made uninhabitable by nuclear weapons in future world wars....
. The calamity also involved the complete dissolution of the British Empire, to which Winterset is staunchly loyal and which he regards as the main guarantor of the world's peace and stability.
All this was averted only due to the ability of the Otherhood's agents to go back in time, change the past, and create the peaceful, British-dominated world which Winterset had hitherto taken for granted. However, in the Otherhood's timeless headquarters, all this is still to be done.
Then Winterset is told that there is a vital role which he is predestined to play (or that he has, in this universe of non-linear time, already played) and nobody else could fulfill: he must travel back to the beginning of the group in 1893 and assassinate Rhodes. Otherwise, in the late 1890s Rhodes would change his will and dissipate much of his fortune, the Otherhood would never come into being, and the terrible nightmare of "The Original Situation" Twentieth Century would be restored.
When the President pro tem, later revealed to be Winterset, travels into the future, something previously outlawed by the Otherhood, he learns that the future they have created is not at all what they aimed for and in fact is a weak fabric, constantly changing and fluctuating. He learns that this alternate history has to be destroyed and the "true" one restored.
Meanwhile, a younger Winterset aims to kill Cecil Rhodes, but the moment of opportunity slips due to an outside interference, which Winterset assumes to have been purposely created. Rhodes survives, the Otherhood is therefore never formed, and Winterset is trapped in the past and enters the service of Rhodes.
In the final chapter, Winterset, a young man, now living in the "true" history, enters the Colonial Service nevertheless, meets his older self in 1956 in Africa and learns of the truth. He helps his older self to escape from Africa and returns to London, where the story ends with their last meeting many years later.
As noted by critic Susan Young , "Great Work of Time" has the same basic outline as Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov was an American author and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, best known for his works of science fiction and for his popular science books. Asimov was one of the most prolific writers of all time, having written or edited more than 500 books and an estimated 90,000...
's The End of Eternity
The End of Eternity
The End of Eternity by Isaac Asimov is a science fiction novel, with mystery and thriller elements, on the subjects of time travel and social engineering....
- i.e. a secret society of well-meaning time travelers bent on remodeling history, and a young man recruited into the society in order to make a specific change that would bring this society itself into being. The details of what the time travelers do and where in time they operate are much different from those in Asimov's book. However, in both books, the society's operations come to a halt through the influence of people from the future, because the society's actions endanger the existence of the future.
Publication history
- Novelty: Four Stories , 1989,
- The Great Work of Time , 1992, publisher: Spectra, ISBN 0553293192
- Novelties & Souvenirs: Collected Short Fiction , 2004, publisher: Harper Perennial , ISBN 9780380731060
- A Science Fiction Omnibus, 2007, edited by Brian Aldiss, publisher: Penguin books, ISBN 9780141188928
External links
- Books to Look For - Fantasy & Science Fiction January 1992, By Orson Scott Card, review of Great Work of Time
- Review on John Crowley by bookslut.com