"Great Work of Time" is a

science fiction Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel uni ...

novella by American writer John Crowley, originally published in Crowley's 1989 book collection ''Novelty''. A story involving

time travel Time travel is the concept of movement between certain points in time, analogous to movement between different points in space by an object or a person, typically with the use of a hypothetical device known as a time machine. Time travel is a ...

, it concerns a secret society whose aim is to avert

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

in order to preserve and expand the

British Empire The British Empire was composed of the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates, and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom and its predecessor states. It began with the overseas possessions and trading posts e ...

Plot

Caspar Last uses his newly-created time machine to travel to 19th Century British Guiana in order to obtain the very rare

British Guiana 1c magenta The British Guiana 1c magenta is regarded by many philatelists as the world's most famous rare stamp. It was issued in limited numbers in British Guiana (now Guyana) in 1856, and only one specimen is now known to exist. It is the only major p ...

stamp. Last plans to sell the stamp, reap the profits, and thereafter never use time travel or let it be used by others. A shadowy group called the Otherhood buys his stamp and takes control of the time machine, which they wish to use to preserve the existence of the

. In the new timeline, the British Empire survives as a dominant world power throughout the Twentieth Century. Denys Winterset, a promising young official in the

Colonial Service The Colonial Service, also known as His/Her Majesty's Colonial Service and replaced in 1954 by Her Majesty's Overseas Civil Service (HMOCS), was the British government service that administered most of Britain's overseas possessions, under the aut ...

at Africa in the 1950s, travels the

Cape to Cairo Railway The Cape to Cairo Railway was an unfinished project to create a railway line crossing Africa from south to north. It would have been the largest and most important railway of that continent. It was planned as a link between Cape Town in Sout ...

where he meets a mysterious stranger, and is invited to join the Otherhood. Winterset is told that he must travel back to the beginning of the group in 1893 and assassinate its founder Cecil Rhodes. Otherwise, in the late 1890s, Rhodes will change his will and dissipate much of his fortune, the Otherhood will never come into being, and the original timeline will be restored. In another timeline, a different manifestation of Winterset travels into the future, something previously outlawed by the Otherhood. There, he learns that excessive tinkering with the timelines has generated countless unintended changes. The citizens of this world ask Winterset to go back, prevent the previous Winterset from killing Rhodes, and restore the "true" timeline. Meanwhile, the other Winterset has arrived in 1893

Cape Town Cape Town ( af, Kaapstad; , xh, iKapa) is one of South Africa's three capital cities, serving as the seat of the Parliament of South Africa. It is the legislative capital of the country, the oldest city in the country, and the second largest ...

and has no difficulty in gaining Rhodes' trust. At the moment of opportunity, a mysterious force (implied to be the future Winterset) prevents Winterset from pulling the trigger. The mission fails, trapping Winterset in the past. Winterset enters the service of Rhodes and witnesses first-hand the ugly and brutal side of Rhodes's independent colony-building. Later on, Winterset can only watch helplessly as "The Original Situation" reasserts itself, the world is convulsed by two World Wars and the second one is followed by the breakup of the British Empire. In the final chapter, Winterset, a young man, now living in the "true" twentieth century history, enters the Colonial Service, now a doomed institution, with the Empire's colonies being ceded to new independent nations in Africa. He meets his older self in 1956 in Africa and learns of the truth of time-travel. He helps his older self to escape from Africa amid the chaos, and returns to London, where the story ends with their last meeting many years later. Winterset notes in the ''

Times Time is the continued sequence of existence and events, and a fundamental quantity of measuring systems. Time or times may also refer to: Temporal measurement * Time in physics, defined by its measurement * Time standard, civil time speci ...

'' newspaper "the sale of the single known example of the 1856 magenta British Guiana" stamp, known to have been owned in 1956 by the Otherhood, and realises that time-travel means that his story is still vulnerable to being re-written.

Analysis

As noted by critic Susan Young:

Awards

The story won the

World Fantasy Award for Best Novella In its most general sense, the term "world" refers to the totality of entities, to the whole of reality or to everything that is. The nature of the world has been conceptualized differently in different fields. Some conceptions see the worl ...

in 1990.

Publication history

* ''Novelty: Four Stories'', 1989 * ''The Great Work of Time'', 1992, publisher: Spectra, * ''Novelties & Souvenirs: Collected Short Fiction'', 2004, publisher: Harper Perennial, * ''A Science Fiction Omnibus'', 2007, edited by Brian Aldiss, publisher: Penguin books,

Plot

Analysis

Awards

Publication history

References

Further reading