At Jasper's Reading book signing, he said he was going to give up on the time travel theme in the books, which was a shame as I've often thought the Chronoguard would make an excellent spin-off series. Time Tavel is quantum - which means anything you write about it can and will come true, surely?! No problems for the writer there then. Any loopholes that appear - blame it on quantum. Besides, I don't believe the Colonel is the sort to hang up his watch and retire, however much Jasper might want him to. So, even though that may seem to be the case at the end of the book, I harbour secret hopes that JF may - with the Bookworld's help - have second thoughts re retiring Colonel Next.

Interesting also that, when I logged on to the 'What's New' page on this site and discovered Spec-ops have got their own section, one of the five departments NOT disbanded is... the Chronoguard! Question, does this entry on the Spec-ops page predate the latest book? If not, it raises interesting questions about the future, doncha think?

I do suspect the SpecOps page is meant to predate FAS, since he wouldn't want to give anything away if people hadn't read it yet. It is quite fun to have time travel stories of course, but I'm sure Jasper will continue to come up with new ideas to fill the void.

Arguably, if he did want another one, there's nothing to stop someone sneaking into HG Wells and nicking a time machine.

Read Asimov's 'The End of Eternity'.

While it has a mission in its plot it still raises the ideas of what could come.

it also raises the issue of free will even if you can manipulate time.

i think Harry Harrison's "The Technicolo(u)r Time Machine' is better.

I don't believe in the end of time travel because (even if it could be explained by the universal time-travel-excuse of being a paradoxon) that would mean that Granny Next didn't exist in the first books and that all life on earth didn't involve parts of Thursdays father and dream topping, which I think would be unforgivable.

...mirabile dictu...
-Vergil