May 2, 2005
Mastodonia
Clifford D. Simak. Del Rey: 1978.
An alien possessing innate powers of time travel crash-lands (guess he's not as good at space-travel) on Earth one million years ago, only to be discovered by an archaeology professor who is then visited by his ex-girlfriend of 20 years ago who immediately sleeps with him. Fortunately for Asa, Rila has "business sense" and they work out schemes to make big money - all of which collapse when the alien Catface "evolves" into a higher life-form, but he fortunately leaves Asa with the time travel ability.
Simak may never be known for the quality of his writing or coherence of his plots, but at least he has been prolific.
I am always disappointed with time travel books that don't consider the consequences of, say, shooting a bunch of dinosaurs, but this did have an interesting little subplot about Christians not wanting them to travel to Christ's era. Which reminds me, this whole business of someone being transformed into what is described as "a god" and being the only one of its kind on a planet smacks of one of the more far-fetched tenets of some Mormons, and I wonder if there's any connection?
Clifford D. Simak. Del Rey: 1978.
An alien possessing innate powers of time travel crash-lands (guess he's not as good at space-travel) on Earth one million years ago, only to be discovered by an archaeology professor who is then visited by his ex-girlfriend of 20 years ago who immediately sleeps with him. Fortunately for Asa, Rila has "business sense" and they work out schemes to make big money - all of which collapse when the alien Catface "evolves" into a higher life-form, but he fortunately leaves Asa with the time travel ability.
Simak may never be known for the quality of his writing or coherence of his plots, but at least he has been prolific.
I am always disappointed with time travel books that don't consider the consequences of, say, shooting a bunch of dinosaurs, but this did have an interesting little subplot about Christians not wanting them to travel to Christ's era. Which reminds me, this whole business of someone being transformed into what is described as "a god" and being the only one of its kind on a planet smacks of one of the more far-fetched tenets of some Mormons, and I wonder if there's any connection?
Labels: science fiction
posted by Scott Givens at 10:25 AM
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