#paratime — Public Fediverse posts

John F Carr will turn 80 this Christmas, and it looks like he's retired from writing.¹ I've just finished #reading "The Wizard Traders War," the final story in his 2020 collection, _Paratime War_.² #AlternateHistory

It also looks like Carr has put away his toys with this tale, wrapping up his additions to H Beam Piper's #Paratime canon. Home Time Line has survived for ten thousand years living off of the ideas, resources, and people it has taken from other timelines. Not anymore. #AltHistory

[Spoilers]

In this story he has Hadron Tharn, megalomaniac little brother of Hadron Dalla (Verkan Vall's wife, and Paratime Police Chief since he decided he didn't want the desk job), lead a prole revolt on Home Time Line. It was meant to make Hadron Tharn the Leader of Home Time Line, but the prole generals betrayed him. He went scorched earth on them. The Paratime Police Tower, as well as most of the residential megatowers in Dhergabar³ were nuked. Same in other cities. #SciFi

Most of the Citizens who were on HTL are killed in the bombings, or slaughtered by blood-crazed prole rebels. Three quarters of the Citizenry were off-timeline when the revolt occurred, but transtemporal conveyors mostly drop people off and return to base, so they're stranded. Even if they had a conveyor onsite, those used by regular Citizens are inalterably locked to only shuttle between HTL and a set destination, so all they could do is return to Home Time Line and be killed by radiation or rebels.

The timeline hosting the Paratime Police Terminal has also been thoroughly nuked, so the ParaCops are no more, but their unlocked conveyors allow many of them to flee to their prepared boltholes on other timelines. Some characters we care about – Verkan Vall, Hadron Tharn, Tortha Karf, and various associates – do so. But as a civilization, Home Time Line is dead.

Thus endeth the Paratime stories. #ScienceFiction

[1] He edited a couple of War World anthologies in 2023, but it doesn't look like he's written anything since this 2020 story.

[2] Later renamed _The Paratime Police Chronicles, Volume Two_, to go better with 2018's Volume One, but you'll see why I went with the original title.

[3] The largest and most important city on First Level, which I always thought was in India-equivalent, but which in this story is revealed to be cognate to Nice, France.

I'm getting near the end of _The Paratime Police Chronicles, Volume 1_¹, and have just started "Paratime Paradox". This is a meta #ScienceFiction story that could go very dark, though I doubt John F. Carr will take it in that direction. #SciFi

The highest law of the Paratime Police, and First Level society in general, is to keep the Paratime Secret – the reality that other timelines exist, that people can travel between them, and that citizens of one line are exploiting other lines – safe from outsiders. In this tale, routine monitoring by the Bureau of Outtime Intelligence on the Europo-American Subsector has turned up a possible major leak. #AltHist

It seems that someone name H. Beam Piper is writing #paratime stories in _Astounding Science Fiction_ magazine. He's even using "Verkan Vall" and "Tortha Karf" as a characters, among other actual people's names. Piper tells about actual events that these people have been engaged in, like the capture of an escaped Venusian Nighthound. #crosstime

Given that it's not unusual for people who discover the Paratime Secret to be killed, and that in reality H. Beam Piper committed suicide in the mistaken belief he was a failure (his agent died, leaving Piper unaware he'd sold several stories), it's theoretically possible that Verkan might have to kill Piper to save the former's civilization. #AlternateHistory

Now, it's not likely that Carr will kill the author whose oeuvre has been the basis for half of his own stories, but at the start of the story, it's a possibility. #SFF

[1] Really should have epub-split this; will the next.