Book Chase

Much of Nick Hornby’s previous work has centered on sympathetic and likable male characters who are finally, inevitably forced to do a bit of growing up. It may come a little late for some of Hornby’s guys, but get there they usually do, and in the meantime the books are a fun ride for the rest of us. With Slam, Nick Hornby turns his hand to Young Adult fiction for the first time and introduces his readers to another likable male character, Sam Jones. The difference this time around, however, is that fifteen-year-old Sam manages to do most of his growing up by the time he turns eighteen instead of waiting until he closes in on thirty.

Sam Jones is a fairly typical London teenager, an adequate student who hopes to attend an art school after his basic studies are done and who spends all of his spare time with video games and skating (he assumes everyone understands that he means skateboarding when he calls himself a skater). He absolutely worships the great skater, Tony Hawk, and holds regular, two-sided conversations with the Tony Hawk poster displayed in his bedroom. He likes girls, sure, but has never really had a serious girlfriend and does not seem to be in too big a rush to find one.

Sam lives alone with his mother who is only sixteen years older than him and who, at times, treats him more like a friend than a son. But little could he imagine when he reluctantly agreed to accompany his mother to a party to meet her friend’s teenaged daughter, that his life was about to change forever. As his mother promised, Alicia was indeed a beauty, and best of all she seemed as attracted to Sam as he was to her. That was the good news – and the bad news – because, almost before he knew what happened, Sam’s new girlfriend was pregnant and determined to keep her baby.

That is where the story really begins and, despite its serious subject, Hornby, in the voice of young Sam Jones tells it with the usual combination of humor and insights into human nature that his readers have come to expect from him. Sam’s immediate reaction to run for his life landed him in nearby Hastings where he lasted exactly one night before realizing what a terrible mistake he was making. Returning to London to reluctantly face the fact that he is going to be a sixteen-year old father and that he has turned his mother into a thirty-two-year-old grandmother, Sam hopes to do the right thing by Alicia and their baby.

Novels about teenage pregnancies are not uncommon, of course, but Slam is one of the few such novels that explore the problem almost strictly from the male’s point-of-view. As such, the novel will likely appeal more to young male readers than to young females but Hornby makes his points in a way that should appeal to both sexes.

Early on, for instance, Sam finds it difficult to understand why many young girls find the idea of having a baby of their own so appealing: “There were a couple of young mums at my school, and they acted like a baby was an iPod or a new mobile or something, some kind of gadget that they wanted to show off. There are many differences between a baby and an iPod. And one of the biggest differences is no one’s going to mug you for your baby. You don’t have to keep your baby in your pocket if you’re on the bus late at night. And if you think about it, that must tell you something, because people will mug you for anything worth having…”

And, when his relationship with Alicia was still new and going a whole day without seeing her was akin to “torture” for him, Sam offers his own thoughts on the nature of torture: “…I will never join the army, by the way. I would really, really hate to be tortured. I’m not saying that people who join the army would like to be tortured. But they must have thought about it, right? So they must have decided it wouldn’t be as bad as other things, like being on the dole, or working in an office. For me, working in an office would be better than being tortured. Don’t get me wrong. I wouldn’t be happy doing a boring job, like photocopying a piece of paper over and over again, every single day, until I died. But on the whole I’d be happier doing that than having cigarettes put out in my eye. (What I’m hoping is those aren’t my choices.)”

This is vintage Nick Hornby disguised as a Young Adult novel. If you are already a fan, don’t be scared away by the YA tag.

Rated at: 3.5

>Much of Nick Hornby’s previous work has centered on sympathetic and likable male characters who are finally, inevitably forced to do a bit of growing up. It may come a little late for some of Hornby’s guys, but get there they usually do, and in the meantime the books are a fun ride for the rest of us. With Slam, Nick Hornby turns his hand to Young Adult fiction for the first time and introduces his readers to another likable male character, Sam Jones. The difference this time around, however, is that fifteen-year-old Sam manages to do most of his growing up by the time he turns eighteen instead of waiting until he closes in on thirty.

Sam Jones is a fairly typical London teenager, an adequate student who hopes to attend an art school after his basic studies are done and who spends all of his spare time with video games and skating (he assumes everyone understands that he means skateboarding when he calls himself a skater). He absolutely worships the great skater, Tony Hawk, and holds regular, two-sided conversations with the Tony Hawk poster displayed in his bedroom. He likes girls, sure, but has never really had a serious girlfriend and does not seem to be in too big a rush to find one.

Sam lives alone with his mother who is only sixteen years older than him and who, at times, treats him more like a friend than a son. But little could he imagine when he reluctantly agreed to accompany his mother to a party to meet her friend’s teenaged daughter, that his life was about to change forever. As his mother promised, Alicia was indeed a beauty, and best of all she seemed as attracted to Sam as he was to her. That was the good news – and the bad news – because, almost before he knew what happened, Sam’s new girlfriend was pregnant and determined to keep her baby.

That is where the story really begins and, despite its serious subject, Hornby, in the voice of young Sam Jones tells it with the usual combination of humor and insights into human nature that his readers have come to expect from him. Sam’s immediate reaction to run for his life landed him in nearby Hastings where he lasted exactly one night before realizing what a terrible mistake he was making. Returning to London to reluctantly face the fact that he is going to be a sixteen-year old father and that he has turned his mother into a thirty-two-year-old grandmother, Sam hopes to do the right thing by Alicia and their baby.

Novels about teenage pregnancies are not uncommon, of course, but Slam is one of the few such novels that explore the problem almost strictly from the male’s point-of-view. As such, the novel will likely appeal more to young male readers than to young females but Hornby makes his points in a way that should appeal to both sexes.

Early on, for instance, Sam finds it difficult to understand why many young girls find the idea of having a baby of their own so appealing: “There were a couple of young mums at my school, and they acted like a baby was an iPod or a new mobile or something, some kind of gadget that they wanted to show off. There are many differences between a baby and an iPod. And one of the biggest differences is no one’s going to mug you for your baby. You don’t have to keep your baby in your pocket if you’re on the bus late at night. And if you think about it, that must tell you something, because people will mug you for anything worth having…”

And, when his relationship with Alicia was still new and going a whole day without seeing her was akin to “torture” for him, Sam offers his own thoughts on the nature of torture: “…I will never join the army, by the way. I would really, really hate to be tortured. I’m not saying that people who join the army would like to be tortured. But they must have thought about it, right? So they must have decided it wouldn’t be as bad as other things, like being on the dole, or working in an office. For me, working in an office would be better than being tortured. Don’t get me wrong. I wouldn’t be happy doing a boring job, like photocopying a piece of paper over and over again, every single day, until I died. But on the whole I’d be happier doing that than having cigarettes put out in my eye. (What I’m hoping is those aren’t my choices.)”

This is vintage Nick Hornby disguised as a Young Adult novel. If you are already a fan, don’t be scared away by the YA tag.

Rated at: 3.5

Much of Nick Hornby’s previous work has centered on sympathetic and likable male characters who are finally, inevitably forced to do a bit of growing up. It may come a little late for some of Hornby’s guys, but get there they usually do, and in the meantime the books are a fun ride for the rest of us. With Slam, Nick Hornby turns his hand to Young Adult fiction for the first time and introduces his readers to another likable male character, Sam Jones. The difference this time around, however, is that fifteen-year-old Sam manages to do most of his growing up by the time he turns eighteen instead of waiting until he closes in on thirty.

Sam Jones is a fairly typical London teenager, an adequate student who hopes to attend an art school after his basic studies are done and who spends all of his spare time with video games and skating (he assumes everyone understands that he means skateboarding when he calls himself a skater). He absolutely worships the great skater, Tony Hawk, and holds regular, two-sided conversations with the Tony Hawk poster displayed in his bedroom. He likes girls, sure, but has never really had a serious girlfriend and does not seem to be in too big a rush to find one.

Sam lives alone with his mother who is only sixteen years older than him and who, at times, treats him more like a friend than a son. But little could he imagine when he reluctantly agreed to accompany his mother to a party to meet her friend’s teenaged daughter, that his life was about to change forever. As his mother promised, Alicia was indeed a beauty, and best of all she seemed as attracted to Sam as he was to her. That was the good news – and the bad news – because, almost before he knew what happened, Sam’s new girlfriend was pregnant and determined to keep her baby.

That is where the story really begins and, despite its serious subject, Hornby, in the voice of young Sam Jones tells it with the usual combination of humor and insights into human nature that his readers have come to expect from him. Sam’s immediate reaction to run for his life landed him in nearby Hastings where he lasted exactly one night before realizing what a terrible mistake he was making. Returning to London to reluctantly face the fact that he is going to be a sixteen-year old father and that he has turned his mother into a thirty-two-year-old grandmother, Sam hopes to do the right thing by Alicia and their baby.

Novels about teenage pregnancies are not uncommon, of course, but Slam is one of the few such novels that explore the problem almost strictly from the male’s point-of-view. As such, the novel will likely appeal more to young male readers than to young females but Hornby makes his points in a way that should appeal to both sexes.

Early on, for instance, Sam finds it difficult to understand why many young girls find the idea of having a baby of their own so appealing: “There were a couple of young mums at my school, and they acted like a baby was an iPod or a new mobile or something, some kind of gadget that they wanted to show off. There are many differences between a baby and an iPod. And one of the biggest differences is no one’s going to mug you for your baby. You don’t have to keep your baby in your pocket if you’re on the bus late at night. And if you think about it, that must tell you something, because people will mug you for anything worth having…”

And, when his relationship with Alicia was still new and going a whole day without seeing her was akin to “torture” for him, Sam offers his own thoughts on the nature of torture: “…I will never join the army, by the way. I would really, really hate to be tortured. I’m not saying that people who join the army would like to be tortured. But they must have thought about it, right? So they must have decided it wouldn’t be as bad as other things, like being on the dole, or working in an office. For me, working in an office would be better than being tortured. Don’t get me wrong. I wouldn’t be happy doing a boring job, like photocopying a piece of paper over and over again, every single day, until I died. But on the whole I’d be happier doing that than having cigarettes put out in my eye. (What I’m hoping is those aren’t my choices.)”

This is vintage Nick Hornby disguised as a Young Adult novel. If you are already a fan, don’t be scared away by the YA tag.

Rated at: 3.5

Written in 1970, this pessimistic time travel novel, a Hugo Award finalist, begins in 1978 when Brain Cheney is more or less drafted into a mysterious government project. Chaney is a Biblical scholar of sorts whose book debunking certain ancient scrolls has irritated many Christians around the country but he is also a professional demographer and has already produced one report for the government predicting how current trends will impact the near future. The government believes him to be perfect for this new project. Who better to send into the future in the new time machine invented by the Bureau of Weights and Measures than a man experienced in predicting that very future?

Interestingly, Brian Cheney and the two military officers drafted into the project with him travel only as far as twenty years into the future, to the turn of the new century, because government officials are so concerned with what they see as a dark future for the United States that they hope to learn enough from the time travel to change that future. Today’s readers, of course, have lived beyond the years visited by these time travelers so their adventurous trip into the future has become our past. As a result, The Year of the Quiet Sun reads as much like an alternate history novel at times as it does as a story of time travel.

Cheney, the only civilian time-traveler of the team, has little regard for politicians and resents the way that the President and his staff order that the first trip into the future be only to 1980 so that the President can determine whether or not he will be re-elected. The three travelers, who can go into the future only one-at-a-time due to the limitations of their vehicle, get that information for him but they also return to 1978 with news of the tremendous unrest and violence that is already impacting the future of America’s major cities, especially Chicago. It is when they are sent forward to 2000, and just beyond, to learn the effectiveness of the President’s attempt to save the country that the novel really takes off.

The second half of the book centers itself around realistic military skirmishes between government troops and the rebels who are intent on overthrowing the government with help from the Chinese, but it also details the evolving relationships of the three time- travelers and the head of their project, the beautiful Katherine with whom two of the men have become particularly smitten. Readers who may have found the pace of the book’s first half to be a bit slow in its set-up of the second half action will find themselves well-rewarded for staying with the book to the end. Tucker’s vision of the horrible future that could have resulted from the radicalism of the 1960s and early 1970s is a horrifying one.

Tucker even saves a nice little surprise for his readers until near the end, one that more astute readers than me may figure out earlier, but one that made me laugh out loud at its cleverness.

Rated at: 4.0

>Written in 1970, this pessimistic time travel novel, a Hugo Award finalist, begins in 1978 when Brain Cheney is more or less drafted into a mysterious government project. Chaney is a Biblical scholar of sorts whose book debunking certain ancient scrolls has irritated many Christians around the country but he is also a professional demographer and has already produced one report for the government predicting how current trends will impact the near future. The government believes him to be perfect for this new project. Who better to send into the future in the new time machine invented by the Bureau of Weights and Measures than a man experienced in predicting that very future?

Interestingly, Brian Cheney and the two military officers drafted into the project with him travel only as far as twenty years into the future, to the turn of the new century, because government officials are so concerned with what they see as a dark future for the United States that they hope to learn enough from the time travel to change that future. Today’s readers, of course, have lived beyond the years visited by these time travelers so their adventurous trip into the future has become our past. As a result, The Year of the Quiet Sun reads as much like an alternate history novel at times as it does as a story of time travel.

Cheney, the only civilian time-traveler of the team, has little regard for politicians and resents the way that the President and his staff order that the first trip into the future be only to 1980 so that the President can determine whether or not he will be re-elected. The three travelers, who can go into the future only one-at-a-time due to the limitations of their vehicle, get that information for him but they also return to 1978 with news of the tremendous unrest and violence that is already impacting the future of America’s major cities, especially Chicago. It is when they are sent forward to 2000, and just beyond, to learn the effectiveness of the President’s attempt to save the country that the novel really takes off.

The second half of the book centers itself around realistic military skirmishes between government troops and the rebels who are intent on overthrowing the government with help from the Chinese, but it also details the evolving relationships of the three time- travelers and the head of their project, the beautiful Katherine with whom two of the men have become particularly smitten. Readers who may have found the pace of the book’s first half to be a bit slow in its set-up of the second half action will find themselves well-rewarded for staying with the book to the end. Tucker’s vision of the horrible future that could have resulted from the radicalism of the 1960s and early 1970s is a horrifying one.

Tucker even saves a nice little surprise for his readers until near the end, one that more astute readers than me may figure out earlier, but one that made me laugh out loud at its cleverness.

Rated at: 4.0

Written in 1970, this pessimistic time travel novel, a Hugo Award finalist, begins in 1978 when Brain Cheney is more or less drafted into a mysterious government project. Chaney is a Biblical scholar of sorts whose book debunking certain ancient scrolls has irritated many Christians around the country but he is also a professional demographer and has already produced one report for the government predicting how current trends will impact the near future. The government believes him to be perfect for this new project. Who better to send into the future in the new time machine invented by the Bureau of Weights and Measures than a man experienced in predicting that very future?

Interestingly, Brian Cheney and the two military officers drafted into the project with him travel only as far as twenty years into the future, to the turn of the new century, because government officials are so concerned with what they see as a dark future for the United States that they hope to learn enough from the time travel to change that future. Today’s readers, of course, have lived beyond the years visited by these time travelers so their adventurous trip into the future has become our past. As a result, The Year of the Quiet Sun reads as much like an alternate history novel at times as it does as a story of time travel.

Cheney, the only civilian time-traveler of the team, has little regard for politicians and resents the way that the President and his staff order that the first trip into the future be only to 1980 so that the President can determine whether or not he will be re-elected. The three travelers, who can go into the future only one-at-a-time due to the limitations of their vehicle, get that information for him but they also return to 1978 with news of the tremendous unrest and violence that is already impacting the future of America’s major cities, especially Chicago. It is when they are sent forward to 2000, and just beyond, to learn the effectiveness of the President’s attempt to save the country that the novel really takes off.

The second half of the book centers itself around realistic military skirmishes between government troops and the rebels who are intent on overthrowing the government with help from the Chinese, but it also details the evolving relationships of the three time- travelers and the head of their project, the beautiful Katherine with whom two of the men have become particularly smitten. Readers who may have found the pace of the book’s first half to be a bit slow in its set-up of the second half action will find themselves well-rewarded for staying with the book to the end. Tucker’s vision of the horrible future that could have resulted from the radicalism of the 1960s and early 1970s is a horrifying one.

Tucker even saves a nice little surprise for his readers until near the end, one that more astute readers than me may figure out earlier, but one that made me laugh out loud at its cleverness.

Rated at: 4.0

Time-travel novels tend to come in two basic types: those in which the time-travelers have to fight for their survival and those in which they find romance in the past and are tempted to stay there. Of course, even those time-travelers forced to fight for their lives often manage to find romance along the way but they seldom want to stay in the violent era in which they find themselves.

With Maggie Again, John Husband offers up the gentlest of the second type, a novel in which not one real villain appears even for a moment, a novel in which even New York City policemen and mental institution employees fall in love with the three young men who arrived there in 1984 believing that it was still 1926.

Life in rural Cobblers Eddy, Indiana, was a good in 1926. Teenagers of the time went to school and worked hard to support the farming efforts of their parents but they had plenty of time to be kids. And, although these were more innocent times, they fell in love and looked forward to raising families of their own right there in Cobblers Eddy. Just when Tom and Maggie seemed to be heading that way, Maggie’s father accepted a Wall Street position and she found herself beginning a whole new life without Tom.

Things took a strange turn when Maggie’s three best friends, Tom, Alphie and Gordy, hopped into an empty boxcar that they hoped would take them to New York City at her invitation. They never showed up and no trace of them was ever found. Maggie, grief stricken though she remained for her entire life, eventually married and had a son whom she name Tom in memory of her first love. But in 1984, widowed and having lost her son, and preparing to retire from a lifetime of work, Maggie got the surprise of her life. Tom, Alphie and Gordy were in the city looking for her and they have not aged a day since she had last seen them fifty-eight years earlier in Cobblers Eddy.

And the best is yet to come, as Maggie and the boys find when she decides to help acclimate them to their new world by taking them back to Cobblers Eddy to see if anyone they remember still lives there. Maggie Again is more than a nostalgic look at simpler times. It is a book about second chances and being wise enough to take advantage of those chances when they fall from the sky. This one will be published in January 2008 and will make a nice start to the reading year for those who spot it.

Rated at: 3.5

>Time-travel novels tend to come in two basic types: those in which the time-travelers have to fight for their survival and those in which they find romance in the past and are tempted to stay there. Of course, even those time-travelers forced to fight for their lives often manage to find romance along the way but they seldom want to stay in the violent era in which they find themselves.

With Maggie Again, John Husband offers up the gentlest of the second type, a novel in which not one real villain appears even for a moment, a novel in which even New York City policemen and mental institution employees fall in love with the three young men who arrived there in 1984 believing that it was still 1926.

Life in rural Cobblers Eddy, Indiana, was a good in 1926. Teenagers of the time went to school and worked hard to support the farming efforts of their parents but they had plenty of time to be kids. And, although these were more innocent times, they fell in love and looked forward to raising families of their own right there in Cobblers Eddy. Just when Tom and Maggie seemed to be heading that way, Maggie’s father accepted a Wall Street position and she found herself beginning a whole new life without Tom.

Things took a strange turn when Maggie’s three best friends, Tom, Alphie and Gordy, hopped into an empty boxcar that they hoped would take them to New York City at her invitation. They never showed up and no trace of them was ever found. Maggie, grief stricken though she remained for her entire life, eventually married and had a son whom she name Tom in memory of her first love. But in 1984, widowed and having lost her son, and preparing to retire from a lifetime of work, Maggie got the surprise of her life. Tom, Alphie and Gordy were in the city looking for her and they have not aged a day since she had last seen them fifty-eight years earlier in Cobblers Eddy.

And the best is yet to come, as Maggie and the boys find when she decides to help acclimate them to their new world by taking them back to Cobblers Eddy to see if anyone they remember still lives there. Maggie Again is more than a nostalgic look at simpler times. It is a book about second chances and being wise enough to take advantage of those chances when they fall from the sky. This one will be published in January 2008 and will make a nice start to the reading year for those who spot it.

Rated at: 3.5

Time-travel novels tend to come in two basic types: those in which the time-travelers have to fight for their survival and those in which they find romance in the past and are tempted to stay there. Of course, even those time-travelers forced to fight for their lives often manage to find romance along the way but they seldom want to stay in the violent era in which they find themselves.

With Maggie Again, John Husband offers up the gentlest of the second type, a novel in which not one real villain appears even for a moment, a novel in which even New York City policemen and mental institution employees fall in love with the three young men who arrived there in 1984 believing that it was still 1926.

Life in rural Cobblers Eddy, Indiana, was a good in 1926. Teenagers of the time went to school and worked hard to support the farming efforts of their parents but they had plenty of time to be kids. And, although these were more innocent times, they fell in love and looked forward to raising families of their own right there in Cobblers Eddy. Just when Tom and Maggie seemed to be heading that way, Maggie’s father accepted a Wall Street position and she found herself beginning a whole new life without Tom.

Things took a strange turn when Maggie’s three best friends, Tom, Alphie and Gordy, hopped into an empty boxcar that they hoped would take them to New York City at her invitation. They never showed up and no trace of them was ever found. Maggie, grief stricken though she remained for her entire life, eventually married and had a son whom she name Tom in memory of her first love. But in 1984, widowed and having lost her son, and preparing to retire from a lifetime of work, Maggie got the surprise of her life. Tom, Alphie and Gordy were in the city looking for her and they have not aged a day since she had last seen them fifty-eight years earlier in Cobblers Eddy.

And the best is yet to come, as Maggie and the boys find when she decides to help acclimate them to their new world by taking them back to Cobblers Eddy to see if anyone they remember still lives there. Maggie Again is more than a nostalgic look at simpler times. It is a book about second chances and being wise enough to take advantage of those chances when they fall from the sky. This one will be published in January 2008 and will make a nice start to the reading year for those who spot it.

Rated at: 3.5

Despite having been written in 1957, The Winds of Time remains an interesting twist on the usual time travel novel because these time travelers don’t use any sort of time machine to project themselves more than 15,000 years into the future. Rather, they use a potent drug to place themselves into suspended animation and let time itself travel at its normal pace. When they awaken, they are in the future. But all is not well.

Doctor Wes Chase, on a fishing vacation with his wife in Colorado, has his life forever changed when he is taken prisoner near a remote mountain lake by one of a group of aliens who crash landed on Earth some 15.000 years before his fateful encounter with them. When they crashed, these explorers, who closely resembled Earthlings, had been on a mission to find another race of men with whom they could partner up for the good of both groups. They quickly realized that Earth humans were in such a primitive stage of development that their only chance to ever see their home planet again required them to travel approximately 15,000 years into the future. Unfortunately for them, they awoke to find themselves still 200 years too early to expect any help from the people of Earth.

That’s where Wes Chase’s life changing adventure begins.

Chad Oliver, who died in 1993, was an anthropologist and his science fiction focused primarily on the kind of culture clash that results from the sudden contact of different cultural systems. Such a culture clash, and the way that both sides adapt and change each other in the process, is the most fascinating part of The Winds of Time. Oliver’s style and his vision of what alien contact would be like influenced countless writers who followed him and he is regarded by many to be the equal of Robert A. Heinlein, Ray Bradbury and Arthur C. Clarke.

I have a fondness for time travel novels that goes back all the way to my teen years and that’s why I picked up The Winds of Time. I was disappointed when I first realized that the novel did not employ the use of some kind of time travel hardware and relied instead on medicine to get the job done. But the longer that I read, and the more that I considered this twist, the more I realized that if time travel is ever to occur, Oliver’s idea is one of the more likely ways that it could actually happen. This isn’t a complicated novel, nor one filled with exotic battles and weaponry, but it is definitely one that fans of the genre will enjoy. It deserves to be remembered as one Science Fiction’s early classic volumes.

Rated at: 3.0

Despite having been written in 1957, The Winds of Time remains an interesting twist on the usual time travel novel because these time travelers don’t use any sort of time machine to project themselves more than 15,000 years into the future. Rather, they use a potent drug to place themselves into suspended animation and let time itself travel at its normal pace. When they awaken, they are in the future. But all is not well.

Doctor Wes Chase, on a fishing vacation with his wife in Colorado, has his life forever changed when he is taken prisoner near a remote mountain lake by one of a group of aliens who crash landed on Earth some 15.000 years before his fateful encounter with them. When they crashed, these explorers, who closely resembled Earthlings, had been on a mission to find another race of men with whom they could partner up for the good of both groups. They quickly realized that Earth humans were in such a primitive stage of development that their only chance to ever see their home planet again required them to travel approximately 15,000 years into the future. Unfortunately for them, they awoke to find themselves still 200 years too early to expect any help from the people of Earth.

That’s where Wes Chase’s life changing adventure begins.

Chad Oliver, who died in 1993, was an anthropologist and his science fiction focused primarily on the kind of culture clash that results from the sudden contact of different cultural systems. Such a culture clash, and the way that both sides adapt and change each other in the process, is the most fascinating part of The Winds of Time. Oliver’s style and his vision of what alien contact would be like influenced countless writers who followed him and he is regarded by many to be the equal of Robert A. Heinlein, Ray Bradbury and Arthur C. Clarke.

I have a fondness for time travel novels that goes back all the way to my teen years and that’s why I picked up The Winds of Time. I was disappointed when I first realized that the novel did not employ the use of some kind of time travel hardware and relied instead on medicine to get the job done. But the longer that I read, and the more that I considered this twist, the more I realized that if time travel is ever to occur, Oliver’s idea is one of the more likely ways that it could actually happen. This isn’t a complicated novel, nor one filled with exotic battles and weaponry, but it is definitely one that fans of the genre will enjoy. It deserves to be remembered as one Science Fiction’s early classic volumes.

Rated at: 3.0

>Despite having been written in 1957, The Winds of Time remains an interesting twist on the usual time travel novel because these time travelers don’t use any sort of time machine to project themselves more than 15,000 years into the future. Rather, they use a potent drug to place themselves into suspended animation and let time itself travel at its normal pace. When they awaken, they are in the future. But all is not well.

Doctor Wes Chase, on a fishing vacation with his wife in Colorado, has his life forever changed when he is taken prisoner near a remote mountain lake by one of a group of aliens who crash landed on Earth some 15.000 years before his fateful encounter with them. When they crashed, these explorers, who closely resembled Earthlings, had been on a mission to find another race of men with whom they could partner up for the good of both groups. They quickly realized that Earth humans were in such a primitive stage of development that their only chance to ever see their home planet again required them to travel approximately 15,000 years into the future. Unfortunately for them, they awoke to find themselves still 200 years too early to expect any help from the people of Earth.

That’s where Wes Chase’s life changing adventure begins.

Chad Oliver, who died in 1993, was an anthropologist and his science fiction focused primarily on the kind of culture clash that results from the sudden contact of different cultural systems. Such a culture clash, and the way that both sides adapt and change each other in the process, is the most fascinating part of The Winds of Time. Oliver’s style and his vision of what alien contact would be like influenced countless writers who followed him and he is regarded by many to be the equal of Robert A. Heinlein, Ray Bradbury and Arthur C. Clarke.

I have a fondness for time travel novels that goes back all the way to my teen years and that’s why I picked up The Winds of Time. I was disappointed when I first realized that the novel did not employ the use of some kind of time travel hardware and relied instead on medicine to get the job done. But the longer that I read, and the more that I considered this twist, the more I realized that if time travel is ever to occur, Oliver’s idea is one of the more likely ways that it could actually happen. This isn’t a complicated novel, nor one filled with exotic battles and weaponry, but it is definitely one that fans of the genre will enjoy. It deserves to be remembered as one Science Fiction’s early classic volumes.

Rated at: 3.0

There have been three constants in my life for almost as long as I can remember: books, baseball and country music. That’s why when I stumbled onto Laura Watt’s Carry Me Back, I knew that I was holding a book that was meant for me. The only thing that could have made the book more perfect is if her main character, Webb Pritchard, had been an ex-baseball player rather than a recently released from prison construction worker. But, because I’m a sucker when it comes to well-crafted time travel stories, the icing on the cake was that the entire novel revolves around the fact that Webb Pritchard is able to travel back in time from 1994 to 1951.

Laura Watt knows country music. She understands that what passes for country music on FM stations today is little more than watered down ‘70s rock music produced by singers, bands, and record labels who wouldn’t know a real country song if it bit them on the…uh, the ankle. Most country music fans, if given the chance to climb into a time machine and pick a destination, would opt to attend a Hank Williams concert sometime in the year 1951. With Carry Me Back, Watt offers us the next-best thing.

When the book begins, 40-year-old Webb Pritchard has just been released from prison, having served four years for shooting in the knee a low-life petty thief he caught in the act of stealing his construction tools. Pritchard fancies himself to be a better-than-average banjo picker and the first thing he does upon his release is to buy a beautiful old banjo for himself. That’s when the fun begins, because the banjo he names Little Darlin’ has a way of transporting him back to 1951, and into the company of Hank Williams, when he least expects it to happen. 1951 was not a good year for Hank Williams who had been fired from the Grand Ole Opry and who was looking for a guitar player to join his band on the road with “Doc Mullican’s Traveling Hayride & Medicine Show.” So for several weeks, Webb Pritchard finds himself uncontrollably jumping between 1951, and a job as one of Hank’s sidemen, and 1994 and his life as a struggling banjo picker trying to break into the bluegrass festival circuit.

What makes the novel such great fun is the way that Watt mixes real country artists, such as Earl Scruggs, in with her fictional characters to paint a picture of what it was like to be on the road in the early 1950s. From the way that she describes Nashville’s old Ryman Auditorium and what it was like backstage at a typical Saturday night Opry, it is obvious that Laura Watt has a deep love and respect for country music and the singers and players who were there at the beginning. Clearly, she misses the day when it was about the music and the songs and not about how sexy the girl singers are or how the boy singers fill out their jeans. She’s not the only one who misses those days and, if you’re one of those people yourself, this book will put a smile on your face and make you wish that you owned your own “Little Darlin’.”

I almost forgot to mention that I found this book on the shelves of a used book store and that the mint harback copy of the book cost me all of one buck. I love it when that happens.

I can’t resist slipping in a shameless plug right here (sorry about that, I’m weak) for the internet radio station that I co-founded with a couple of good friends almost four years ago, RAM Radio. If you’re a fan of real country music, I invite you to join us because that’s what we play around the clock – real country songs recorded between the early 1900s and yesterday. You can tune us in directly through the iTunes software or Ram Radio will take you to our Live365 site.

Rated at: 3.5

There have been three constants in my life for almost as long as I can remember: books, baseball and country music. That’s why when I stumbled onto Laura Watt’s Carry Me Back, I knew that I was holding a book that was meant for me. The only thing that could have made the book more perfect is if her main character, Webb Pritchard, had been an ex-baseball player rather than a recently released from prison construction worker. But, because I’m a sucker when it comes to well-crafted time travel stories, the icing on the cake was that the entire novel revolves around the fact that Webb Pritchard is able to travel back in time from 1994 to 1951.

Laura Watt knows country music. She understands that what passes for country music on FM stations today is little more than watered down ‘70s rock music produced by singers, bands, and record labels who wouldn’t know a real country song if it bit them on the…uh, the ankle. Most country music fans, if given the chance to climb into a time machine and pick a destination, would opt to attend a Hank Williams concert sometime in the year 1951. With Carry Me Back, Watt offers us the next-best thing.

When the book begins, 40-year-old Webb Pritchard has just been released from prison, having served four years for shooting in the knee a low-life petty thief he caught in the act of stealing his construction tools. Pritchard fancies himself to be a better-than-average banjo picker and the first thing he does upon his release is to buy a beautiful old banjo for himself. That’s when the fun begins, because the banjo he names Little Darlin’ has a way of transporting him back to 1951, and into the company of Hank Williams, when he least expects it to happen. 1951 was not a good year for Hank Williams who had been fired from the Grand Ole Opry and who was looking for a guitar player to join his band on the road with “Doc Mullican’s Traveling Hayride & Medicine Show.” So for several weeks, Webb Pritchard finds himself uncontrollably jumping between 1951, and a job as one of Hank’s sidemen, and 1994 and his life as a struggling banjo picker trying to break into the bluegrass festival circuit.

What makes the novel such great fun is the way that Watt mixes real country artists, such as Earl Scruggs, in with her fictional characters to paint a picture of what it was like to be on the road in the early 1950s. From the way that she describes Nashville’s old Ryman Auditorium and what it was like backstage at a typical Saturday night Opry, it is obvious that Laura Watt has a deep love and respect for country music and the singers and players who were there at the beginning. Clearly, she misses the day when it was about the music and the songs and not about how sexy the girl singers are or how the boy singers fill out their jeans. She’s not the only one who misses those days and, if you’re one of those people yourself, this book will put a smile on your face and make you wish that you owned your own “Little Darlin’.”

I almost forgot to mention that I found this book on the shelves of a used book store and that the mint harback copy of the book cost me all of one buck. I love it when that happens.

I can’t resist slipping in a shameless plug right here (sorry about that, I’m weak) for the internet radio station that I co-founded with a couple of good friends almost four years ago, RAM Radio. If you’re a fan of real country music, I invite you to join us because that’s what we play around the clock – real country songs recorded between the early 1900s and yesterday. You can tune us in directly through the iTunes software or Ram Radio will take you to our Live365 site.

Rated at: 3.5

>There have been three constants in my life for almost as long as I can remember: books, baseball and country music. That’s why when I stumbled onto Laura Watt’s Carry Me Back, I knew that I was holding a book that was meant for me. The only thing that could have made the book more perfect is if her main character, Webb Pritchard, had been an ex-baseball player rather than a recently released from prison construction worker. But, because I’m a sucker when it comes to well-crafted time travel stories, the icing on the cake was that the entire novel revolves around the fact that Webb Pritchard is able to travel back in time from 1994 to 1951.

Laura Watt knows country music. She understands that what passes for country music on FM stations today is little more than watered down ‘70s rock music produced by singers, bands, and record labels who wouldn’t know a real country song if it bit them on the…uh, the ankle. Most country music fans, if given the chance to climb into a time machine and pick a destination, would opt to attend a Hank Williams concert sometime in the year 1951. With Carry Me Back, Watt offers us the next-best thing.

When the book begins, 40-year-old Webb Pritchard has just been released from prison, having served four years for shooting in the knee a low-life petty thief he caught in the act of stealing his construction tools. Pritchard fancies himself to be a better-than-average banjo picker and the first thing he does upon his release is to buy a beautiful old banjo for himself. That’s when the fun begins, because the banjo he names Little Darlin’ has a way of transporting him back to 1951, and into the company of Hank Williams, when he least expects it to happen. 1951 was not a good year for Hank Williams who had been fired from the Grand Ole Opry and who was looking for a guitar player to join his band on the road with “Doc Mullican’s Traveling Hayride & Medicine Show.” So for several weeks, Webb Pritchard finds himself uncontrollably jumping between 1951, and a job as one of Hank’s sidemen, and 1994 and his life as a struggling banjo picker trying to break into the bluegrass festival circuit.

What makes the novel such great fun is the way that Watt mixes real country artists, such as Earl Scruggs, in with her fictional characters to paint a picture of what it was like to be on the road in the early 1950s. From the way that she describes Nashville’s old Ryman Auditorium and what it was like backstage at a typical Saturday night Opry, it is obvious that Laura Watt has a deep love and respect for country music and the singers and players who were there at the beginning. Clearly, she misses the day when it was about the music and the songs and not about how sexy the girl singers are or how the boy singers fill out their jeans. She’s not the only one who misses those days and, if you’re one of those people yourself, this book will put a smile on your face and make you wish that you owned your own “Little Darlin’.”

I almost forgot to mention that I found this book on the shelves of a used book store and that the mint harback copy of the book cost me all of one buck. I love it when that happens.

I can’t resist slipping in a shameless plug right here (sorry about that, I’m weak) for the internet radio station that I co-founded with a couple of good friends almost four years ago, RAM Radio. If you’re a fan of real country music, I invite you to join us because that’s what we play around the clock – real country songs recorded between the early 1900s and yesterday. You can tune us in directly through the iTunes software or Ram Radio will take you to our Live365 site.

Rated at: 3.5

I don’t have the patience with books that I had when I was younger and had a lifetime of reading stretching so far ahead of me that I didn’t feel that I was wasting my time by finishing a book that I really wasn’t enjoying. These days I’m willing to test drive a book for something around 50 pages. If it doesn’t grab me in 50 pages, I’m willing to bet that it never will. And sometimes it’s a book that I had really high hopes for that turns out to be one of the ones that I toss aside unfinished.

Marge Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time falls into that category. I’ve read Marge Piercy before; I love time travel novels. So what could go wrong? The only reason that I stayed with the book for just over 80 pages is that I respect Percy’s writing skills but, even with that respect in the equation, I finally decided that this book was a waste of time for me. The combination of depressing characters on both ends of the time spectrum and the boring future described by Piercy was just too much too wade through any longer. Woman on the Edge of Time is a 1976 novel and the writing style felt dated to me. That feeling was probably enhanced by the fact that I was reading a 1988 paperback copy of the book (the exact book cover shown here, in fact) and, for a while, that’s what I kept telling myself.

If you follow my link over to Amazon.com, you will find some glowing reviews for this book, so maybe it’s just me. But life is short and it’s getting shorter every day. So this morning I started a replacement book, Crow Lake by Mary Lawson, and I can’t wait to talk about what a great first novel that one is.

This is Charles Dickinson’s first venture into the time travel genre, and he has succeeded in creating a charming adventure with somewhat of a jarring surprise ending. One day Josh Winkler, living happily with his 15-year old daughter and doctor wife, accidentally manages to project himself back in time about 15 minutes. That’s enough to shake him up but his wife really doesn’t believe his story. Things take a more disturbing turn for everyone when a young girl from 1908 turns up at the same spot that Winkler first lost his grip on time.

From this point forward the adventure is on and it eventually culminates in Winkler’s own daughter finding herself in an orphanage in 1918 just before the flu epidemic hits the United States long and hard. Using old newspapers and library microfilm, Winkler is able to track both his daughter and the young lady who suddenly appeared in his life from 1908. After he finds his daughter’s death notice in a November 1918 newspaper, the race is on to get her back into the present before the date of her death.

The novel is a page-turner and as I got down to the last few pages I started to wonder how in the world Dickinson was going to tie everything together in the few pages left to him. That led to my one problem with the book. The ending is so abrupt, leaving me with so many questions, that I actually found myself wondering if some pages had been lost from the end of the book. The way that the story ended leaves A Shortcut in Time crying for a sequel. Whether or not Dickinson intends to give us one someday is not something I’ve heard one way or the other.

Time travel fans should not miss this one…just be prepared for the sudden stop that the rollercoaster makes at the end.

Rated at: 4.0

I’ve always been intrigued by books that center on time travelers and all of the complexities involved in that kind of fiction. I’m a history buff, primarily of the American Civil War period and the couple of decades before and after that tragic war, and I’ve often daydreamed about what it would be like to be able to go back in time to actually witness some of the events that I’ve read so much about. I look at those old pictures sometimes and really wish that it were possible to visit that period in American history. Anyway…that gets me to thinking sometimes about my favorite “time travel” books and how difficult it can be to find good ones amongst all of the junk that gets written in that sub-genre.

So, for those interested in that kind of reading, here are a few of my favorites (in no particular order), and I’d welcome any suggestions that you have.

1. The Time Traveler’s Wife – (Audrey Niffenegger) Admittedly this is one of the tougher ones to follow and it takes some real concentration at times to keep all the timelines straight, but it is well worth the effort.
2. The Time Machine – (H.G. Wells) This is the one that started it all for me. I read this book as a boy and have wished that I could find that elusive time machine ever since.
3. Time and Again – (Jack Finney) Finney wrote the perfect dreamer’s time travel book because the pictures scattered throughout the book make it so easy to imagine yourself in the 1880s. This is considered to be one of the time travel classics.
4. Time on My Hands – (Peter Delacorte) This is one I’m planning to re-read sometime in 2007 because I really enjoyed it the first time. It’s something unusual, a political time travel novel, which involves a traveler’s attempts to find a young Ronald Reagan and to do whatever it takes to keep him from ever entering politics. Like Finney’s Time and Again, this one includes lots of photos that are half the fun.
5. Time Out of Mind – (John R. Maxim) When it snows, Jonathan Corbin finds the scene shifting to America’s Victorian period and, consequently, he feared snowstorms in New York City. This one has photos at the beginning of each new chapter but they don’t add much to the book at all.
6. Till the End of Time – (Allen Appel) Time traveler Alex Balfour is faced with a dilemma: he might be able to prevent the bombing of Hiroshima. The question is should he do it or not?
7. A Shortcut in Time – (Charles Dickinson) Dickinson is one of my favorite writers and I was a bit surprised to see him venture into this type of novel. But he did himself proud. This story gets more and more complicated as it goes, with people doing time travel in both directions with unexpected consequences.
8. The Door into Summer – (Robert A. Heinlein) This is one of those science fiction classics that I read as a kid…what more could you ask; it has suspended animation, time travel, revenge…
9. If I Never Get Back – (Darryl Brock) This one has two of my favorite things in it: baseball and time travel, a story about a man who finds himself back in 1869 where he manages to become a player on the Cincinnati Red Stockings and, among other things, he invents the bunt, ballpark hot dogs and the scoreboard.
10. Replay – (Ken Grimwood) A man and woman die in 1988 and wake up in 1963 in their 18-year old bodies with all of their memories intact. They get a chance to relive their lives and to do it right this time…but will they?