Customer Reviews

Mastodonia

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I've lost track of the number of times that I've reread this little book over the years- I know that I've taken it on camping and field trips several times. Simak weaves a feeling, an atmosphere, that is not only believable, but one that you want to recapture again and again. You buy the characters, you buy the ideas, you buy the reality of the surroundings. And that is all the more remarkable in a time-travel story.

Asa Steele was a paleontogy instructor from a small western college- and just about fed-up with it. He returned home to rural Wisconsin on sabatical to think things over- and to investigate what he thought might be the site of a crashed UFO that he remembered as a boy. Like so much else, it was still there unchanged. The fragments that he escavated came back from the university lab as belonging to an unknown alloy with extraordinary properties. Yet there was nothing else that really proved an extraterrestrial origin. That is, until his dog started to bring back dinosaur bones and other artifacts from the gateway that the ship had punched through the space-time fabric....

While kids will love this story, it isn't really a child's book. The adult character development is quite good. So are the plot complications (of course the government would try to seize a gateway into the past- to hand over to its corporate masters.) But the theme of unlimited, pristine, uninhabited worlds ready for the taking are what really sets this particular book apart. I know that I would pack up and take off to them in a heartbeat.

Don't know who Seth Ball is but his review entirely missed the point of this book. My goodness, it is comedy/sci-fi! It is not meant to be serious or taken so. I believe I've read just about all the books Simak wrote and I loved this one. One of the few books that I have read several times. Just plain silly and meaningless drivel but very original, especially when it first came out. There are really so few sci-fi/fantasy writers who can do humor well that it is refreshing to find a gem like this in the vein of Terry Pratchet or Douglas Adams.

I love this book!