Customer Reviews

Dinosaur Beach

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This book can be read on many levels. At once it is a love story, a book about time travel, war, the future of mankind and above all, consciousness itself.
Perhaps I am reading too much into this little novel, but it struck me on a very deep level. The last 3 chapters of the book have a poignancy for me which I will never forget, which, upon reading it again, still brings a tear to my eye. It speaks to me of the nature of consciousness itself, which is not destructive, but loving.
To me this is a superbly written classic, a beautiful novel that can be read as just good SF, or as a description of the universal nature of consciousness.
I rank this little book at the very top echelon of the greatest SF of all time; indeed as one of the best works of fiction I've ever read.

I read Dinosaur Beach years ago; the delightful imagination and use of the time travel angle coupled with a love story made an interesting and wide ranging yarn. One of my Laumer favorites. I actually met with Keith Laumer in 1986 at his island house in Florida, and among other interesting topics, he stated that the book was even being considered for a movie at one time.

I've been a fan of Keith Laumer since the 1960s. Most of his novels are considered "light" science fiction, but that doesn't begin to describe the strength of the writing. He usually seems not to take his own stories very seriously, but that's just his writing style. I guarantee he labored hard over them. Dinosaur Beach is one of his more serious efforts, and in my opinion his best work. The main character is a time traveler, on a mission to undo a lot of damage done to the timestream by previous time-travelers. The book starts, in typical Laumer fashion, with the main character being warned that he's about to he murdered. He's not impressed with the news, and asks what business the guy has telling someone they were going to die, even if it's true. Things get crazier and crazier, and in the end, make perfect sense. Laumer is a master at creating situations where things get so screwed up that one starts to think no author could make sense out of it, and then he proceeds to make such perfect sense of it that the reader asks himself how he didn't see it coming. And in the meantime, as one tries to unravel the plot, the writing style keeps the reader marvelously entertained, never letting up on the pace and keeping us guessing at every turn. I've read this book several times, and lent it to friends so often that I had to buy it again twice. This is a science fiction classic, and a masterpiece.

This one is pretty much definitive. It will keep your attention. Tersely and well written. Pretty amazing considering how early in Keith Laumer's career this was - a pretty diverse guy in style.

I read this book in high school and was surprised to see I'm the first reviewer here.

I first read Laumer in an anthology called Chrestomathy. Then I picked up Dinosaur Beach. It was a fun diversion for a teenager fascinated with science fiction. The hero is fun to follow, and if you can suspend disbelief long enough to last through Laumer's time travel antics, you will enjoy this one.

The novel "Dinosaur Beach" by Keith Laumer (1925-93) was first published in a much shorter version in Analog magazine in 1969.

As a long time reader of science fiction I must confess that time travel stories are my least favorite. There is no way for the author to paper over the impossibility and improbability of traveling thru time, changing the past and/or 'seeing" the future. Our only hope is to ignore the "how" and enjoy the adventure.

This novel is, to be kind, not very good. In fact it was a chore to finish. Laumer conception of "time-travel" is absurd, and the disjointed convoluted plot, such as it is, just blunders and stumbles to a very lame conclusion.

This reader has the distinct impression the author slap-dashed together disjointed paragraphs, incomplete ideas and dull plot elements until he filled just enough pages to expand the magazine story to required length. What resulted is a "novel" 151 pages in length with many chapters that end half way down the page, large fonts and chapter headings that fill that top third of a page. At least this padding reduced the mind-dulling verbiage.

I cannot recommend this book to anyone except a die-hard Laumer fan. You have been warned.

Put this on the shelf next to The Big Time-- together these books say everything interesting there is to say about time travel based warfare. This is one of Laumer's best, with a nice balance between his silly and his serious sides. Highly recommended-- hope it's back in print soon.

Buffalo, 1936. A newly married man is warned by a mysterious visitor of his imminent murder. He coolly wards off the threat and it transpires that the two antagonists are really rival time travelers, jockeying for control of the time-space continuum, which has been shredded by sloppy history changes. (Isaac Asimov tackled this same theme brilliantly in his ^The End of Eternity^.) Our hero returns to the eponymous base, safely back in the Jurassic era, only to discover that unknown assailants have destroyed it. Now, he is trapped in the past, and all his efforts to escape ricochet him home again. Unfortunately, the credibilty and continuity of the story begin to disintegrate at this point as rapidly as the time-space continuum, and the remainder of the book is a pointless merry-go-round, where he encounters and re-encounters the same two people, the mysterious visitor and his new bride. For a story which allegedly spans millions of years, it is exhausting to have such a limited cast. The book concludes with a baffling series of reveals of secret identities within secret identities that explains nothing. This novel is an expanded short story and may require familiarity with Laumer's other tales, but it neither stands well on its own nor does it impel this first time reader to seek out other works by Mr. Laumer.

A little corrective time travel to edit the past turns out to split to universe, unraveling cause and effect. Who woulda thunk it. Good old fashioned Sci-fi. No elves or trolls.