John Barnes' "Things Undone" (novelette, time travel, free)

I would not have posted this had this not come with high recommendation both from Rich Horton & from Gardner Dozois. I gave up a quarter of the way through - too much jargon put me off in the first few paras, & too much info-dumping about pseudo-Physics & pseudo-sociology of time travel & too many tired cliches of the genre made me finally give up.

Story seems to be about time cops trying to catch an illegal time jumper. Don't know if remaining 3 quarters of the text changes this theme in some way.

Collected in.

1. Gardner Dozois (Ed)'s "The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Seventh Annual Collection" (2010).
   

Fact sheet.

First published: Jim Baen's Universe, Vol 4 No 4 (December 2009).
Download full text from Webscription.
Rating: C.

Rich Horton's "best of 2009" recommendations from "Jim Baen's Universe"

Actually, his post talks of many stories, but I read only two real recommendations here:

1. John Barnes' "Things Undone"; download; December 2009: 'a very long novelette (over 17,000) words, and a stunning one. about an aristocrat (of sorts) and his partner who have a job trying to minimize the effects on history of time travelers. In the end it’s very moving, very involving -- I was reminded of one of my favorite time travel stories of all time, John Brunner’s "The Fullness of Time". Clearly one of the best stories of the year, a definite Hugo contender, and probably the best story Baen's Universe has ever published.'
2. Naomi Kritzer's "The Good Son"; download; February 2009: "about a faery who comes to our world for the love of a woman, and in so doing creates himself a past and a family -- and learns what it is to be part of a family."

I haven't read either yet. On second thoughts, I might have read Kritzer's story, but cannot recollect much off-hand.

Related.

1. JBU fiction.
2. My "best of 2009" list (includes others' "best of 2009" lists at bottom).
3. "best of" lists.
   
4. Horton's works.