When I was a child, I used to love the Sid & Marty Krofft TV show Land of the Lost (anyone else remember Doctor Shrinker, The Lost Saucer, Sigmund and the Sea Monsters, Wonder Bug?). Mr. Gerrold was responsible for the creation of the Sleestak race on that show (unclear whether he was also responsible for the character Enik, whose race ultimately turns into the Sleestaks).
I also liked the Star Trek:TOS episode The Trouble with Tribbles. Mr. Gerrold was responsible for that as well. In the foreword to the book, Robert J. Sawyer confirmed my suspicion that the Tribbles were actually a homage to the Martian flat cats in Robert. A Heinlein's The Rolling Stones juvenile novel. Mr. Sawyer - thank you for this validation.
In the past, I have sought out books by authors responsible for various movie scripts and TV episodes. So, the fact that I've never read anything by Mr. Gerrold is very strange indeed. Perhaps this is due to these things being from my childhood, which seems very far in the background now.
A friend recommended this book several years ago, and stated it was his favorite time travel story. At the time, I didn't feel like shelling out $12 US for a book that was less than 150 pages in length. Recently, I was able to get this book for under $3 for my kindle, so it got moved to the front of my reading list.
The story starts off in a very interesting way, and reminded me of Philip K. Dick's Paycheck short story - there's no introduction to any characters, and we just jump right in. You could say that the story begins in a confusing way.
It begins with this line: IN THE BOX was a belt. And a manuscript.
Then there is a divider in the text - three dots - and the story begins with the central character, Daniel talking in the first person about his Uncle Jim. I had to assume that this text was the start of the manuscript, and I didn't think much of it. But then, there are several areas where the divider of three dots appears in the text. I still didn't think much of it, assuming that these were like chapter breaks, and I just kept reading.
The story had several unexpected turns, and deals with time travel differently than many other stories I've read, particularly in the realm of paradoxes. I found the escapades of this time traveler very interesting and entertaining.
And then...somewhere around the middle of the story, things started to get strange.
If you have read the book: I'm not talking about the sexual themes that develop. Back in 1973, when this book was first published, these themes must have been pretty controversial. In my book, this adds Mr. Gerrold to the "pushing the envelope pioneering ranks" (Bravo!) alongside Philip Jose Farmer (for some of his stories in Strange Relations, such as The Lovers, and his Secrets of the Nine series with Doc Caliban and Lord Grandrith - pastiche's of Doc Savage and Tarzan, Lord of the Apes, respectively), Ursula K. Le Guin (for The Left Hand of Darkness, which includes a race of hermaphrodites), and Robert A. Heinlein (for Stranger in a Strange Land, with its free love and communal living aspects).
I've never had any problem with this kind of subject matter in novels.
No, I'm referring to the point in the book where it started to became somewhat difficult for me to keep straight what was going on. And I started having questions about who wrote this manuscript, and I even started to wonder if there was actually more than one author. It was getting a little surreal, and it was becoming difficult for me to determine what these chapter separators indicated.
Anyway, I continued reading, and the story became even more complex, and covered some really interesting territory. Ultimately, I felt I could see where this story was going to end up, and as it turns out, I guessed right, so there wasn't much surprise for me when the end was reached.
I did enjoy this book quite a bit, but by the time I finished, I felt that there were some unanswered questions with regard to the manuscript itself, and I had difficulty understanding how it ended up being written. The treatment of paradoxes in the story might help explain some of this, but I couldn't wrap my head around it. It may be that I was just very tired when reading this portion of the book, but I found it very confusing.
But, I suppose this can be expected with a time travel story. I've read many time travel stories over the last several decades, including Downtiming the Night Side, by Jack L. Chalker. This was also a very involved, and potentially confusing story. In the Authors Note, Chalker called out the complexity of the story as the main reason he would never write a time travel story again.
Something I really liked about this edition of the book is that it was updated in the 2000's. The description of some of the events that Daniel witnesses occurred decades after this book was first published, and it adds a nice touch to the story.
Ultimately, this was a good read, and no reader will be able to see the direction in which things are heading for a while. If you like time travel stories, this is a good one to try to wrap your head around. and this one contains a very unique and original treatment of time travel that I expect will be very different from anything you have seen or read before.
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