4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
"Why I'm an archaeologist.", February 15, 2010
This review is from: Mists of Dawn (Hardcover)
I read "Mists of Dawn" when I was in 4th grade, in 1952-53. My teacher caught me reading it instead of whatever dirt-dull "reader" we were supossed to be working through at the time. He had me read "Mists..." to the class. They loved it. It shaped a lot of my subsequent reading and interests. After a career in Special Forces I retired, went to grad school and became an archaeologist. While working at a now-famous deep prehistoric site in South Carolina I attended an annual "carnivore's ball" at the home of a distinguished archaeologist who lived nearby. In his house I noticed that he was a serious collector of sci-fi literature. I perused the shelves for "Mists of Dawn" but didn't find it, though I suspected that it was there somewhere. Back outside in the South Carolina night I grabbed another of my hosts's excellent home brewed beers and went looking for him in the crowd. I found him in a group of other professionals. In the first break in the conversation I comented on his great sci-fi collection, then asked him if he'd ever read a book called "Mists of Dawn". Long silence, with an undefineable sense of surprise. Then, " 'Mists of Dawn' is why I'm an archaeologist." Well, me too. I'll bet there are a lot of stories like that out there. Chad Oliver was himself an archaeologist, retiring, I believe, as Chair of the University of Texas Department of Anthropology. He wrote a lot of other, "adult" anthropological science fiction, but "MOD", what would today be called "young adults fiction," is his masterpiece. And don't let the "young adult's" label put you off. My local library carries "Laughing Boy" (Pulitzer for fiction, 1929 by anthropologist Oliver LaFarge) in the "youth materials" section, along with "The Yearling" (Pulitzer 1939) and "Kim".
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Very good juvenile scifi, June 20, 2007
Chad Oliver is an excellent writer, and this is one of his best juvenile scifi stories. A boy becomes a man because of a time machine and CroMagnon man. I read this book in junior high (late 50s) and loved it. It is NOT worth $110, however. I hope that the publisher will come out with a reasonably priced edition someday
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Mists of Dawn Revisited, October 4, 2004
It seems that most of the reviewers of this old SF novel first read it as a child in the mid-50s (like me) and have preserved a love for it until the present time (like me). As I lay in bed last night carefully fondling my very expensive First Editon copy, my wife asked me how many times I had read this particular book. I guessed at roughly 100-200 times! I know most of the lines by heart, I think, and often imagined myself in Mark's shoes, pondering how I would have handled things or how the book would have been if the time machine had gone to various different times. I would not have picked Rome for a one-shot time travel adventure as I guess the time of Jesus or the War Between the States interests me more. I imagined staring into the eyes of Jesus as he carried his cross through the city...I imagined meeting my g-grandfather as he rode with the Confederate cavalry at Gettysburg or perhaps getting a glimpse of Robert E. Lee. It's really too bad that most of today's children don't get to use their imaginations as much as we baby-boomers did...I think it made us better persons later in life. This book is available through various internet bookstores in various conditions at inflated prices. A readable copy can be found for around $30.
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