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Revision as of 17:16, 3 October 2006 by FDR (talk | contribs)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)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.
In it the secret society was endowed by Rhodes in his in 1893 and was modeled on the Jesuits. It is not quite a brotherhood, so it calls itself the Otherhood. The main character is named Caspar Last. He meets with a British with a British colonial administrator named Sir Geoffrey Davenant who he works for at the begininng of the book. Davenant reveals to him that he is part of a secret society that has the ability to alter time and asks him to join it. Eventually in the book it is stated that this secret society, which calls itself the Otherhood, wants to go back in time to change the past and prevent the mistakes caused World War One, World War Two, the fall of the British Empire and the other European colonial empires, Hitler, and Bolshevism.
The Otherhood eventually reveal to Last that they want him to go back in time at the beginning of their group, 1893, and murder Cecil Rhodes.
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.
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.
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