Time, Like an Ever-Rolling Stream: A Sequel to the Ragged World [Hardcover]

Judith Moffett (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1992

Hefn aliens arrive on Earth in a multi-faceted exploration of human and alien relationships. By the author of The Ragged World.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Early in the 21st century, the Hefn--an alien race who are the slaves of the unseen Gafr--have taken over Earth in order to save it. Prohibiting pollution, they have also forbidden humans to procreate until the population stabilizes. (Moffett set all this up in The Ragged World .) Here, a Hefn named Humphrey has formed the Bureau of Temporal Physics, where nine teenage math prodigies work on Hefn time-travel apparatus; two of them, Liam O'Hara and Pam Pruitt, are the focus of this double-layered story. Pam, at age 26, has written about her life at 14 and has sent a copy of the manuscript to Liam, whose comments appear at the end of each chapter. The chronicle tells of Pam and Liam's vacation from the BTP as teenagers to Hurt Hollow, a back-to-nature farm in Indiana whose residents live off the land without any modern conveniences. Human hostility toward the "benign dictators" comes to a head in a dramatic confrontation involving Humphrey, Liam and Pam and a fundamentalist preacher who believes the Hefn are the Antichrist. Intriguing for its then-and-now structure, this is also an engrossing character study of two teenagers.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

A woman's voyage into her past via a series of diary entries, letters to a distant friend, and a novel-in-manuscript (which includes end-of-chapter comments from the distant friend) provides a focus for Moffett's latest exploration of the near future. This sequel to The Ragged World: A Novel of the Hefn on Earth ( LJ 2/15/91) continues the tale of a benevolent invasion of Earth by the Hefn, a race of gnome-like aliens. Moffett's combination of harsh realism with visionary zeal addresses contemporary issues and personal struggles with compassion and insight. This novel belongs in most libraries.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 328 pages
• Publisher: St Martins Pr; 1st edition (September 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312083238
• ISBN-13: 978-0312083236
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,585,179 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Judith Moffett was born in Louisville in 1942. She is an English professor, a poet, a Swedish translator, and the author of eleven books in five genres, including four science-fiction novels and a Pulphouse Press story collection. Moffett earned a doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania, where she taught creative writing for fifteen years. Her first published story, "Surviving," won the first Theodore Sturgeon Award for best science-fiction story of 1986, and she won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 1988. Three of her stories have appeared on the final ballot for the Nebula; one of these, "Tiny Tango," was also on the Hugo ballot. Her novels The Ragged World and Time, Like an Ever-Rolling Stream (Volumes I and II of her Holy Ground Trilogy; the third volume is The Bird Shaman) were New York Times Notable Books for their years of publication, and Time, Like an Ever-Rolling Stream was short-listed for the Tiptree Award in 1995.

Moffett has received a number of awards outside the science-fiction field, including two Fulbright Grants to Sweden, a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship Grant in poetry, and a National Endowment for the Humanities Translation Grant. Moffett divides the year between Swarthmore, Pennsylvania and her hundred-acre ex-farm near Lawrenceburg, Kentucky. Widowed in 1998, she lives with her standard poodles, Fleece and Corbie.

Note: the author photo appears courtesy of Mark Kidd Studios.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars Humans confronting the unknown, October 15, 2002

By 

"rita1940" (Platteville, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Time, Like an Ever-Rolling Stream: A Sequel to the Ragged World (Hardcover)

The second time I read this book I was somewhat more disappointed than I expected. The story is very interesting as a story, but I found it a bit harder to understand than I expected. There was a lot left unsaid. I think that the reader is expected to draw certain conclusions, and I think, personally, the information given is ambiguous. Apparently this will be resolved in the third volume, if it is ever published. The story will make a lot more sense if the first book, The Ragged World, is first read.

Liam O'Hara, first an Apprentice, and then an employee for the Bureau of Temporal Physics (BTP), is a principal character in this book, but the main character is Pam Pruitt, another Apprentice at the BTP. The book is a story within a story, the internal story having been written by Pam (who has left the BTP because of personal problems) in 2026. The story is about her and Liam's experiences after their first Apprentice year, the 2012-2013 school year (when they were 14 and 15). She sends the book to him for comment. His comments are included after each chapter.

The BTP has been established to train Apprentices to locate the place in history where humanity crossed the magic line when nature and culture were in balance. However, the goal of the BTP seems to have changed somewhat by the end of the book to include the finding of hot spots or holy ground (where ley lines cross "bee lines" or electromagnetic power.) This is not very much developed in the book, but is often brought up peripherally.

Pam and Liam, in this book, go to visit Pam's favorite place, Hurt Hollow in Kentucky on the Ohio River. Liam finds out about born-again Christians and about the difference among the various Christian groups in their attitudes toward the Hefn (aliens explained, more or less, in the first book). The anti-Hefn attitude in the southern midwest is demonstrated in a number of incidents, culminating in the capture of Humphrey, a Hefn, by an anti-Hefn preacher with the help of several Klan men.

The Hefn had been trying to get humans to cooperate with their plan to save the earth through various methods that apparently worked for Hefn. This whole incident showed them that these methods, especially mind wipe, did not work well with humans-it generated a lot of resentment and anger. Because Humphrey bonded with Pam, he listened to her and tried something that worked. As a result, the Hefn started training Missionaries on cooperative farms to preach the new Gaian religion (hopefully to be further explained in Volume III).

There is also another story going on, the confrontation by both Liam and Pam of each of their own demons. We can only assume the problems are eventually resolved, based on hints given in the book.