SHIELD OF TIME [Mass Market Paperback]

For 35 years Hugo and Nebula award winner Anderson ( The Boat of a Million Years ) has written stories about the Time Patrol, whose members are charged with keeping history on track, unaltered, accidentally or deliberately, by time travelers. With this first novel set in that universe, Anderson vividly demonstrates his mastery of ancient cultures and history. After several grueling cases, agent Manse Everard is taking leave of the Pleistocene Age when it is discovered that history beyond the mid-12th century has changed drastically. Manse moves uptime to the new 1980s, an era in which the Renaissance has never happened, in which the Church, via the Inquisition, has stifled most dissent and scientific development, and the New World has barely been colonized. Everard and his new love and protegee, Wanda Tamberly, determine that the key to the change lies in the premature death in battle of Roger II, count of Sicily, grandfather of Frederick II, who has thus never been born. Although the Time Patrol saves the count, they are not able to redirect history to its conventional course. Ensuring the birth of another key figure, Pope Gregory IX, becomes critical. Anderson has produced a lively, thought-provoking tale.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

As agents of the Time Patrol dedicated to preserving the integrity of the past, Manse Everard and Wanda Tamberly find themselves involved in ever-widening circles of intrigue that endanger the fabric of time itself. Based on his popular "Time Patrol" series of stories, this full-length novel by the author of The Boat of a Million Years (LJ 11/15/89) features many standard time-travel plot devices in addition to a wealth of historical backgrounds and alternate realities. Recommended for most sf collections.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Here is a science-fiction story of a man from the Unattached Agent of the Time Patrol with a time mission. But how much suffering, throughout human history, can he bear to "preserve"?.