Traveler of Worlds by Alvaro Zinos-Amaro

Up the Line, specially in its early chapters, is so drenched in the lingo and culture-meaning, specifically, the drugs and sex-of the late sixties that it may almost seem like a hippie parody à la Austin Powers: quite shagadelic. Hawksbill Station, as Silverberg explains in the introduction, is now not only a time travel novel, but an alternate history as well, since it describes the government of what was the then-future of the 1980s and beyond as a totalitarian regime, one that we know did not come to pass.

Those initial responses go something like this: Hawksbill Station was dour, though the evocation of a remote, almost entirely lifeless past was hard to shake off Up the Line was raunchy and unexpectedly poignant, handling some adult themes probably a little over my head and Project Pendulum, while ultimately moving, was challenging most of the way, and at times disconcerting.Ī first-time reader today will probably see things in a different light. As such, I was a bit surprised that my initial impressions as a teenager, lacking in any critical grounding, have mostly stood the test of time (or failed it, if your point of view is that one’s aesthetic sensibilities should evolve as one enters adulthood). Readers who, like me, are returning to these three works rather than discovering them for the first time, may find that the experience itself resembles a form of time travel. The reason is the sheer virtuosic diversity in tone, style, and overall engagement with the conceits and consequences of time travel. The collection at hand, while a little more restrictive in terms of the number of stories than this hypothetical beast, probably accomplishes just as much as a wider selection would.

Silverberg has accumulated such a large body of work throughout his nearly six decades in the field that the subset of his stories using time travel in a central way would be more than sufficient for The Best Time Travel Stories of Robert Silverberg (see the end of this review for recommendations). In the comprehensive introduction to the new reprint omnibus, Times Three, which collects the time travel novels Hawksbill Station (1968), Up the Line (1969), and Project Pendulum (1987), Robert Silverberg describes his interest in time travel as a 'fascination,' and then corrects himself: 'obsession, I think it is fair to call it' (p.

Traveler of Worlds by Alvaro Zinos-Amaro