Customer Reviews

Up the Line

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Up the line deals with its protagonist Jud who lives in a future society where time travel (only into the past ) is permitted via a newly discovered Bencheley effect :)

He joins up in the "time courier" service who are essentially time tour guides and starts taking groups of tourists for visits to Medieval Byzantium.

In the process we discover numerous paradoxes of time travel including meting several instances of yourself at the visited spot every time you go back to it.

Eventually he falls for his distant ancestor Pulcheria and celebrates an erotic encounter only to lose it all to some tourist in his group that causes a massive time foul up.

Overall an excellent read with several sexual encounters to add spice. Intelligent accounts of some time travel paradoxes are visited although the resolution of these paradoxes is fairly weak.

Overall an excellent read for a rainy day or a long flight.

'Up the Line' is a VERY good time travel story. It tells the story (in first person) of Jud, a wayward soul who decides to take employment as a Time Courier. Time Couriers are basically time-traveling tour guides, and are responsible for ferrying and watching over groups of tourists to famous historical events. Jud's particular fascination is ancient Byzantium, so he takes on the tour groups going back to see Emperor Justinian, the Haghia Sophia, and other sights. This to me is one area where this book shone. Silverberg made ancient Byzantium come alive for me, and sparked a whole line of discovery and amazement after I had finished the book. I have re-read this great story seven or eight times and never grow tired of it. If you like time travel stories, with a dash of humor and a teaspoon of history, GET THIS BOOK!

This is an extremely well written and clever time-travel novel, which has many funny passages. The protagonist is Judson Elliott III, a bored former law clerk, who never completed his doctoral requirements, having attend Harvard, Yale, and Princeton in the mid-twenty-first century. Since his special area of study is Byzantine culture, he gets a job as a time courier, taking time tourists "up the line" to Byzantium. He learns how to become a great guide, while breaking the Time Service's rule not to have sexual encounters with past women. Jud even has a brief affair with one of his ancestors, with whom he falls in love. Then, Jud begins to make mistakes and paradoxes result, which put him in danger of being punished by the Time Patrol enforcement unit. Finally, Jud duplicates himself and Jud A and Jud B alternate between different time periods!

The novel, published in 1969, has lots of sexual and drug encounters--a reflection of the counter culture of the 1960s; but Silverberg makes it all work in the future culture. This is a quick read, and the book held my interest from beginning to ingenious end. The details about crusaders, emperors, and the various periods of the Byzantine Empire appealed to me as a history buff, and the twists-and-turns of the time-travel plot, added to my enjoyment.

"Up the Line" illustrates how literary science fiction is always decades ahead of filmic science fiction. In 1985, Robert Zemeckis and Eric Gale had movie audiences tittering at the sight of time-traveling Marty McFly fending off his teenaged mother's advances. Years earlier, in his time-travel epic "Up the Line," Silverberg gave readers a "time courier" -- i.e., tour guide -- who spends his spare time tracing his family tree back through the centuries so he can systematically copulate with all of his female ancestors, and another who starts a passionate love affair with his great-great-great-whatever grandmother. "Up the Line" is one of Silverberg's most enjoyable novels: ringing the changes on the paradoxes of time travel brings out the author's playful side, and he puts his love of Byzantine history to good use in a bravura depiction of the "Nika" riots that nearly destroyed Constantinople.

If you like time travel stories, if you like travelling at all, and if you like history - you'll probably like this too. It's an intriguing story based around tour guides leading bunches of tourists back to historical events, while avoiding the paradoxes of meeting themselves on previous tours or interfering with history and changing its course. It's engrossing, informative and funny.

First of all, I'll be the first to admit that I'm probably a little biased, since I have a smoldering interest in Byzantine history and culture myself. However, I don't think that detracts from the pluses of this book: generally light in tone, and tautly written, it's one of the fastest reads I've ever done. The plot is singularly convoluted, but that's par for the course in just about any time travel work; as in many of the other short works in Silverberg's corpus, the story is heavily infused with the exotic and the problem of identity. You can feel Silverberg's enthusiasm for history through his protagonist, and I'm not surprised that he revisited the idea of exploring Constantinople in other works, such as "Sailing to Byzantium", to say nothing of the many others I haven't read.

The book isn't perfect, as others have noted. Its relentless "free love and drugs!" atmosphere belie its 1960s origins, and it's no exaggeration to say that pretty much everyone gets into everyone else's pants. That said, the abundant sex is not terribly explicit, so the sexually reserved need not be worried. Though only a couple of characters outside of the protagonist have any real depth, I don't think it's unusual for a short novel of this type to be more situation than character-driven.

In any event, I thought this book was a blast and a half, and its ending didn't leave me yearning less for more.

I like time travel stories and this is one of the better ones published in recent years. If I recall, I first read this one in 1981 and recently dug it out for another shot. As several reviewers have pointed out, this is probably not the best book sto start your pre-teen on, as it does get a bit heavy as to the sexual situations, but for the mature reader, it is quite acceptable as the situations our "hero" finds himself do add to the story. Silverberg gives us plenty to think about and the story is well written and moves well. Highly recommend this one. I think you will enjoy it.

This is another book I haven't read in at least twenty years -- but I remembered enjoying it. It's 2059 and Jud Elliott, graduate in Byzantine history and dissatisfied law clerk, joins the Time Service. The Service has two divisions: the Time Couriers, who escort groups of paying tourists into the past, thereby generating the financial support for the research the Service carries out, and the Time Patrol, which enforces the integrity of the time stream by retroactively preventing "timecrime." (All of this under-structure is predictable to any experienced fan of time travel stories.) Jud does pretty well on the Byzantine run, showing his tourists all the vivid highlights of Constantinople's history, until he begins researching his own ancestry and falls for the lucious Pulcheria Ducas, his great-great-multi-great-grandmother in the late 12th century. Then he panics and duplicates himself, and the paradoxes begin to pile up. Silverberg, a very knowledgeable student of history, fills the narrative with considerable by-the-way Byzantine history and takes the opportunity to poke fun at the mores of the mid-21st century . . . which are clearly modeled on those of the 1960s. The characters of Black Sam and sly old Metaxas are pretty well done, too. This certainly isn't Silver-Bob's best, but it's a lot of fun.

I would not recommend this book unless you are 12-14 yrs. old. There are to many repeats of family trees,people from 21st. cent. back through time that only ware cloths that reveal their figure if clothed at all. And of course everyone from 12 up through the centures has sex -sex and much more sex. Sleep with your grand parents no problem it gets BORING after the first few pages. I gave it a 2 star because of the time travel other wise a 1 is to good for the book. Oh I forgot to mention the only thing time treavelers want to see is battles -death and hacking up people. Again BORING. So if you are 12-14 get it you will love it otherwise save your $ Just finished the book and the ending ,though converluted ,wasn't to bad . Still get it from the library if you must read it and save your $.

Science fiction author Robert Silverberg has made time travel the central subject matter in several of his novels. Including the book under discussion "Up the Line" (1969) I know of three others - they may be more - "Time Hoppers" (1967), "Hawksbill Station" (1970) and "Project Pendulum" (1987). To his credit the very talented Mr. Silverberg has been able to infuse this overused theme with enough unique perspectives and narrative curiosities to craft interesting, and, perhaps even perceptive views of the past and the future.

Mr. Silverberg in addition to his extensive science-fiction body of works has written numerous non-fiction books on the subjects of Ancient History, the Crusades, and Eurasian Archaeology. This background is put to good use since our protagonist is a student of Byzantine culture and history and a substantial amount of historical data - emperors, battles, historical locations and culture are imparted during the story narrative.

"Up the Line" chronicles the travels and misadventures of Jud Elliott a Time Courier -an individual who takes tourist on historical tours of key events, in Jud's tours Byzantine history. Silverberg does something very interesting in this time travel story - he makes a valiant attempt to address the inherent contradictions of time travel. How well he succeeds is a judgment reserved for each reader. First he set out the rules: you can travel back in time but not forward; commercial time travel tours to view historical periods and events are available from licensed and trained Time Courier and if any "problems" take place "up the line" there is a Time Patrol ready to intervene and "correct" any temporal displacements. For example what if you go back in time and tamper with an historical event or erase one of your ancestors - intentionally or unintentionally.

In "Up the Line" our dedicated Courier Jud succumbs to his randy impulses and falls afoul of the "Paradoxs of Temporal Accumulation" and that of "Transit Displacement" both of which are thankfully fully described in the text.