Flight of the Horse

The version I have is from the third printing in 1975. Good short stories, nice to have on the shelf to re-read from time to time and share with fantasy / sci-fi fans.

A collection of stories, several of which are about a time agent's missions to collect rare animals from earth's past from a far future time. They have a humorous bent as the hapless servant does the will of his political master. There is a Warlock story - What Good Is A Glass Dagger, and also his Flash Crowd look at mass teleportation.

One of Niven's best works. Svetz is an excellent character, and his animal-collecting adventures are hilarious. Niven has a vivid imagination, a good grounding in the lore of mythical beasts, and skillfully weaves the time-traveling thread in this enjoyable collection of tales. "Glass Dagger" has a great twist and is fun for anyone who likes the were-wolf genre; "Flash Crowd" is the only vignette that falls a little short of expectation. Definitely a "thumbs-up" for the fantasy reader.

They sent Svetz back in time to procure a horse for the Secretary-General of the United Nations, a very pleasant but rather inbred young man (that's what comes of having the same family rule the world for seven hundred years) who was fond of animals. He came back with a unicorn. Oops. Next assignment: go back in time and get a gila monster, also extinct by Svetz's time. He came back with a dragon. Oh, well. Such is the life of Svetz, the time-traveler with incomparably bad karma, whose misadventures are dealt with in five of the seven stories in "The Flight of the Horse." All are a comedic blend of science fiction/fantasy, involving parallel timelines, changing the past, and the problem that, if time travel is pure fantasy (as is frequently claimed) than a time traveler visits not the scientific past but fantasy offshoots of their timeline (Svetz doesn't know this, of course, which makes it all the more fun). The other two stories are "Flash Crowd" ! and "What Good Is A Glass Dagger?", the first involving displacement booths--the practical equivalent of teleportation--and the other a swords-and-sorcery tale about an ancient warlock, a young werewolf, and the dangers of magic depletion. All in all, an enjoyable collection. The character of Svetz, desperately trying to keep the Secretary-General happy without getting killed by various mythological animals, is a particular favorite of mine, dauntlessly going off into the wilds of history to return with dragons, unicorns, rocs, werewolves, and talking skeletons. Ah, well, it's all in a day's work. Enjoy!