Great Work of Time
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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.
It won the World Fantasy Award for Best Novella in 1990.
[edit] 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. [1]
[edit] Synopsis
The main character, Denys Winterset, is invited by an enigmatic British 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 a Roman Catholic secret society called the Jesuits (interestingly, one early version of Rhodes's 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 from). Agents of the Otherhood go back in time to change the past and prevent or lessen the impact of historical events like World War I, World War II, and the rise of fascism and communism.
The Otherhood eventually reveal to Winterset that they want him to travel back to the beginning of the group, 1893, and ensure its creation by murdering Rhodes.
