Great Work of Time

"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.

Explanation of the novel's title

The title comes from Andrew Marvell's poem about Oliver Cromwell, who, Marvell said,

:Could by industrious valour climb :To ruin the great work of Time, :And cast the kingdoms old :Into another mould. [http://www.bartleby.com/106/65.html]

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 term"
* IV: Chronicles of the Otherhood
* V: The tears of the President "pro term"
* VI: The boy David at Hyde Park corner

Plot

The first chapter, which is connected to the story only so far as it explains the origins of the time machine later used by the Otherhood. Caspar Last, an unambitious, middle-aged man who has created a time machine, travels to British Guiana in an attempt to make himself wealthy through using his machine once only. His reason for his careful approach to his invention is the fact that he, correctly, fears, that the use of it, even in the most careful way, would alter history.

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 (interestingly, 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 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". There, what Winterset had learned of as the brief "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 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 term", 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.

ummary

"Great Work of Time" has the same basic outline as Issac 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. However, the details what the time travelers do and where in time they operate are incomparably different from those in Asimov's book. In both books however, the society's operations come to a halt through the influence of people from the future, and in both cases 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 [ [http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/c/john-crowley/novelties-and-souvenirs.htm fantasicfiction.co.uk] accessed: 3 October 2008]
* "A Science Ficton Omnibus", 2007, edited by Brian Aldiss, publisher: Penguin books, ISBN 9780141188928

External links

* [http://www.hatrack.com/osc/reviews/f&sf/92-01.html Books to Look For - Fantasy & Science Fiction January 1992] , By Orson Scott Card, review of "Great Work of Time"
* [http://www.bookslut.com/small_but_perfectly_formed/2005_09_006545.php Review on John Crowley] by bookslut.com

References