The Chronocide Mission [Hardcover]

Lloyd Biggle Jr. (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 17, 2005

"Veteran Biggle (The Angry Espers) shows what kept the SF pulp magazines of the 1940s alive and kicking in this alluring tale of time travel. One spring day in 2001, 21-year-old student Vladislav Kuznetsov is whisked from college in Ohio into a postapocalyptic future some three centuries hence. The world has broken down into small, agricultural, caste-ridden and matriarchal states in constant conflict. Renamed Egarn, our hero spends a lifetime working on the one example of advanced technology to exist in this future, a lens created by an obscure 20th-century inventor that is a deadly weapon but also, by chance, a kind of time machine. Egarn decides to prevent centuries of war by sending two men back in time to kill the inventor and destroy his lens. In a parody of a crime spree that recalls Bonnie and Clyde, the pair, trained to drive only on an inert wooden model, struggle with a clutch-controlled car as they rob banks for folding cash they don't understand and steal ridiculous vaudevillian clothing from a department store window. The author is capable of pathos as well as humor. When the visitors from the future accidentally kill a woman, Biggle, a musicologist by training, inserts a touching song lyric of his own composition. Before long, as though they were commuting on subways between the centuries, warriors are hurtling back and forth in time. Fans of Golden Age SF are in for a fun ride." -- Publishers Weekly

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Veteran Biggle (The Angry Espers) shows what kept the SF pulp magazines of the 1940s alive and kicking in this alluring tale of time travel. One spring day in 2001, 21-year-old student Vladislav Kuznetsov is whisked from college in Ohio into a postapocalyptic future some three centuries hence. The world has broken down into small, agricultural, caste-ridden and matriarchal states in constant conflict. Renamed Egarn, our hero spends a lifetime working on the one example of advanced technology to exist in this future, a lens created by an obscure 20th-century inventor that is a deadly weapon but also, by chance, a kind of time machine. Egarn decides to prevent centuries of war by sending two men back in time to kill the inventor and destroy his lens. In a parody of a crime spree that recalls Bonnie and Clyde, the pair, trained to drive only on an inert wooden model, struggle with a clutch-controlled car as they rob banks for folding cash they don't understand and steal ridiculous vaudevillian clothing from a department store window. The author is capable of pathos as well as humor. When the visitors from the future accidentally kill a woman, Biggle, a musicologist by training, inserts a touching song lyric of his own composition. Before long, as though they were commuting on subways between the centuries, warriors are hurtling back and forth in time. Fans of Golden Age SF are in for a fun ride.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

About the Author

Lloyd Biggle, Jr. is one of the old-time masters of science fiction, with a long string of best-selling novels in the 1960s and 1970s. In more recent years, he moved to mysteries and suspense, creating several popular series, including a set of new adventures of Sherlock Holmes. He always managed to write a science fiction story or two every year, usually for Analog magazine. The Chronocide Mission is his first new science fiction novel in more than a decade. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 340 pages
• Publisher: Wildside Press (June 17, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1587156458
• ISBN-13: 978-1587156458
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,754,910 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fun, but ignore the plotholes, December 12, 2002

By 

Robert Speer (Cambridge, MA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Chronocide Mission (Hardcover)

This book has the standard time-travel plothole, where the "time" of the plot goes on independently of the time that people are traveling through, resulting in situations like someone in the future having to wait for someone in the past to accomplish something, even though it by definition has already happened. The author never even attempts to explain this.

But as long as you take for granted the way the time-travel works, the book is fresh and entertaining. It's a really fun read.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Absolutely excellent!, October 9, 2002

By 

Heather (Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Chronocide Mission (Paperback)

This book is really well written and entertaining. I found myself really caring for the characters and their struggles, and the reasons for their battles and time travels made sense to me and seemed well thought out. I absolutely loved the ending - talk about coming full circle! I hadn't read anything by Lloyd Biggle Jr. before this, but I will certainly look for more.