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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1.0 out of 5 stars
underwhelming effort at an 'existential' time travel novel,
This review is from: Day before Tomorrow (Paperback)
This 1972 DAW book is a translation of (French) author Klein's 1963 novel `Le Temps n'a pas d'Odeur' (`Time Has No Scent'), with P. J. Sokolowski performing the translating duties; the cover illustration is by Josh Kirby.
In the far future, an authoritarian Federation rules the galaxy. One of the mechanisms by which the Federation ensures its survival is by manipulating the course of events on any planet that might conceivably evolve a civilization that would challenge the Federation. To accomplish this, Coordinator Jorgenssen leads a team of seven agents, who are sent hundreds of years into the past of select planets with the goal of covertly sabotaging the development of civilization on that planet. Armed with ray guns and spacesuits that confer super-powers, the `time team' rarely has much trouble in carrying out their mission. On their latest assignment, however, things start to go wrong. The planet Ygone harbors a placid, technologically primitive society of humans, who live in the city of Dalaam in symbiosis with quasi-sentient trees. Yet, upon arrival the time team is subjected to an ambush from an unknown enemy wielding advanced weapons. The time team soon finds itself in dire straits, and Jorgenssen must journey to Dalaam and see if the natives have any answers about the mysterious attacks. He soon learns that things are not what they seem and the time team will have to make a fateful decision: preserve the Federation, or the future of humanity.... `Day' is a disappointment. The first few pages give the reader the impression he or she is about to encounter an intriguing time-paradox tale, but it soon becomes clear that the narrative is just a modest scaffolding upon which author Klein can hang all sort of tedious philosophical comments about Destiny, Free Will, and Existential Angst. Too much of the dialogue is inflated and overly Profound: `At this moment, we're in a rather improbable possibility, one not very real, if you prefer. We don't completely exist. At this very moment, if the expression has a meaning...' Whatever momentum the narrative generates in the first quarter of the novel slips away by its mid-point; I finished the book more out of a sense of duty, rather than because it was particularly interesting.
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