Customer Reviews

Mastodonia

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4 star:		(2)
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I got this book at a library sale at the age of 10 and I read it right away. I loved every minute of it and I have reread it several times in the past 9 years. This has time travel, dinosaurs, aliens, telepathic dogs, and ambitious businessmen and governments. It is a little dated, but definitely still relevant.

Not much to add to the other reviews. I've read this book about 4 times over the last 20 years, I still enjoy it. The fun part for me is the snappy 30's style dialogue set in the 70's and the way the main protagonist brings all his childhood friends into the scheme. The backwoods setting is well done though it seems anachronistic these days, I'm old enough to remember actual places like this. The time travel trips are exciting and in one case chilling as we only see the results. Several characters could have used a lot more fleshing out but I do like that the alien mostly remains a mystery character, and the several open ended threads that never get resolved are a nice touch. I also like how there is not a stereotypical 'second lead' that gets killed for some plot device. A nice example of 60's style sci-fi in a non 60's setting.

This is a rather stunning work. Simak opens with anecdotes about a time traveling dog named Bowser and ends with a satisfying novel about time travel. Simak grounds his SF in characters and localities that are familiar and somewhat nostalgic--cabins in the woods, life in the country.

Asa Steele just wants to live on the farm but discovers a way to travel to other time periods. First item? Allowing some big game safari hunters go after dinosaurs, of course; then finding a time niche between glacial periods to settle in a nice cozy cottage ("Mastodonia") to avoid U.S. taxes.

Simak does produce some absolutely wretched dialogue and uses stereotypes rather than characters, but his vision and plotting make up for these shortcomings to yield one of the best time travel stories I have ever read. Find a used paperback and enjoy this one. You won't regret the purchase.

This story combines the traditional science fiction themes of an alien spaceship crashing on Earth and time travel and is primarily about the social and economic consequences of the events. Asa Steele grew up in a rural area, left for some time and has now come back to settle on a small farm. He has a small flock of chickens, a simple-minded friend Hiram, a faithful dog Bowser and is very content with his life.
Suddenly, Rila Elliot, a long-lost love, comes back into his life, rekindling an aspect of his life that he is happy to revisit. Even more suddenly and unexpectedly, Bowser begins traveling through a time tunnel, bringing back fresh dinosaur bones. Hiram is able to talk to Bowser and he then learns that the time tunnel was created by an alien they call Catface. Catface was the only survivor of the crash of a spaceship and he can create tunnels back to any point in the history of the world and once created, the tunnels stay open.
Rila immediately presses for the commercial exploitation of the tunnels and their first client is a company that organizes groups to go back and hunt dinosaurs. The real points of interest in the story are about the social and economic situations, for example their declaration of a past time as the separate country of Mastodonia for business and tax purposes. A senator comes to them with a plan to transport large numbers of the Earth's poor people far back into time as settlers and another group wants to buy the rights to traveling back to the time of Jesus Christ so that no one will be able to investigate what his life was really like. They fear that the truth may damage the foundation of their faith.
The best science fiction explores the social and economic consequences of major discoveries such as the appearance of space aliens and Simak handles the consequences of two of the major science fiction themes in a realistic manner. This book is a work of genius.

This book is absolutely FABULOUS!! If you like Jurassic Park and books concerning ancient creatures, READ THIS BOOK! What I liked was the alien. It was a unique type;almost like E.T. except cooler. A review I found for it: "Cliff Simak's unique genius is that he can relate the small, warm intamicies of human relationships to the great sweep of time and space. This is one of his best!" -Gordon R.Dickson