"The Threads of Time" (Cherryh 2-22)

[Lincoln, Temporal Jester]

C.J. Cherryh is an American science fiction and fantasy writer. She used her initials early in her career in order to disguise the fact that she was a female science fiction writer. She is the recipient of the Hugo Award and the Locus Award, among others, and has had an asteroid named after her. This story was first published in 1978 in the Darkover Grand Council Program Book IV and later in The Collected Short Fiction of C.J. Cherryh.

[James]

Maybe I'm just getting old and jaded, but this seemed to be another story that just petered out.

Changing the past is bad. Time travelers outlast others, when time is changed. The hero lasts to the end. Time is endlessly changed, by interference. The end.

Am I simply missing something? It seems very obvious and simplistic.

[Cheryl]

yeah, I'm noticing a pattern too - the editors pf this anthology love this version of a TT story? Too much melancholy (and worse) for me by now...

[Lincoln, Temporal Jester]

Found a PDF work book associated with the story...The Story is also included in full. If any interested in reading the story and don't have access to the almanac.

https://d358g57815banh.cloudfront.net...

[Nate, First Tiger]

I really enjoyed this one. I liked the real difficulties addressed by Cherryh's world building. In a universe where time travel is possible, especially gates to the future, or special gates to the past, stability becomes the goal of society. Everyone wants to believe that their present is the "now." We all labor under that impression ourselves, believing that we are continually riding the edge of present and future. If we knew for a fact that we were existing in the past or the future to the universe's idea of now, I suspect we would feel some of the fear that this character expresses. The idea that at any moment someone could fiddle with the past and erase everything we hold dear—It's a terrifying concept when you really wrap your mind around it.
I like that Cherryh took the time to build a character's life into that chaos.

[Mark]

James wrote: "Maybe I'm just getting old and jaded, but this seemed to be another story that just petered out.

Changing the past is bad. Time travelers outlast others, when time is changed. The hero lasts to t..."

Just left me thinking "So what?" I saw no new concepts, and nothing that a time-travel fan wouldn't have contemplated before.

[Samantha]

Yeah this one felt like a less well-executed version of "Needle in a Timestack."