Customer Reviews

Cryptozoic!

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Rating System:
1 star = abysmal; some books deserve to be forgotten
2 star = poor; a total waste of time
3 star = good; worth the effort
4 star = very good; what writing should be
5 star = fantastic; must own it and share it with others

STORY: People are able to time travel via a method calld mind-travel. This fad has led to the economic breakdown of the future and martial law initiated. For one man, he is tasked to track down a outlaw of the state in order to save the word from further chaos.

MY FEEDBACK:
Pro: Book is a very fast read (read all 190pgs in a day). That also means the author doesn't waste time getting to the point
Pro: Very different take on the time travel idea. Believable and well delivered
Pro: In very few pages we really get into the character of the main protagonist. Regardless if you like the protagonist or not, Aldiss does some good character development here.
Con: Towards the end he goes on for about 40+ pages trying to explain some theories. It was just a little long for me especially when you consider that is 20% of the entire book
Pro: Leaves you thinking in the end

OVERALL: I liked it and it kept my interest. I thought it would have been great if it didn't get so overly complex towards the end and give me a headache. Great classic sci-fi otherwise.

My eighth Aldiss book to-date and I haven't been disappointed in any of his novels yet (while the collection in The Saliva Tree was great, the other two of Last Orders and The Book of Brian Aldiss left something to be desired for). Cryptozoic is pretty trippy, more so than Earthworks. But why else would you read Aldiss? He's got BIG ideas!

Cryptozoic is hard to type out. Also, it's kind of hard to figure out. Near the end of the twenty-first century, time travel via the mind became a reality. The body would stay in 2093 but the mind would whiz back to the Jurassic era, Devonian era or even the Holocene epoch if you've got the talent. Prohibitively expensive, mind time travel is reserved for vacationers wanting to visit the mind-colony in the Jurassic era or ride their mind-motorcycles through the ages. More importantly, a research institute sends scientists or artists out to view and record the landscape of history, however, interaction with the environment is impossible.

Bush is the man we view this pan-chronological world through... from land-walking fish, to tyrannical lizards of yesteryear and to his modern day dystopia where America has crumbled and is now under leadership after leadership of tyrannical generals. Bush is a victim of Freud's oedipus complex: he's fixated on his mother and not on the best of terms with his father. When Bush learns of his mother's passing away, he joins his father in drinking binges even though he know at his father's frail age, the hooch will eventually kill him (half of the oedipus complex). Incest is a running theme though never actually consummated. This is definitely a chronological and psychological mindblow.

All goes very well for most of the book. The second half sees Bush go through military training to become a time-assassin and things get even more weird thereafter. You've really got to hunker down and concentrate on the mind time-traveling... Bush jumps to the immediate past of his own present and stops an action which is in action during his old present (umm, anyone get that?). Further into the last half, there are some more ongoings which really challenge your grip on the English language when it comes to the NOW, the PAST, the FUTURE and FATE. It's a big idea and it's pretty hard to grasp - but if you do, it's very rewarding!

5-stars for the mindblow but subtracting 1-star here for the internal logic of Bush which goes missing in the pages. Alliances change on his side and the "other" side, he was against him and now he's for him, and why exactly was he in training? Just a bit of the book is sketchy like this, but pick it up and read it for the big ideas!

...that you remember forever, in a vague dreamlike way. I was in my teens when I first read it, then again in my twenties, and finally in my thrirties the original UK version. But it wasn't the book that changed so much, it was the world. Get your ticket punched with Cryptozoic and then start counting, reverse forward.

I refer to the Sphere edition of this novel, published under the title of 'An Age', which I have just re-read. Firstly, about the publication - it desparately needed a good proofreading, there are just SO many typographical errors! I re-read this novel because it made a big impression when I read it first - at least ten years ago. I still like the novel, but perhaps not as much as I originally did. There is a bit too much of philosophising and pseudo science for my liking. But it does have a very original idea that is explored well. Unfortunately 'when all is revealed' and the explanations and speculations start at the end I suddenly saw a lot of what Philip Dick did in 'Counter-Clock World' come back to haunt me. To be honest, I don't know which of these novels came first. They are both well worth reading although, for me, the Dick is stronger and more inventive. In the Aldiss, I was also put off by all the male characters being known by their family names and the main female character being called Ann - it seemed a bit coy and cute to me, too unbalanced from a sexist point of view. Something I thought a good editor may have advised against.