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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Great science fiction that borders on the profound, February 14, 2004
I've always been fascinated by the idea of time travel, so this book's title fairly jumped off the shelf of a used book store I frequented back in college. Don't let the title, The Great Time Machine Hoax, fool you. This isn't some piece of second-rate science fiction that winds up reneging on its promises of adventures through time; the essence of the "hoax" can only be found in the writing itself. I wouldn't call this novel incredibly visionary, either, but it does provide much food for thought in terms of the philosophy of science. Of course, you can just read the novel for the story itself and get your money's worth. Laumer mixes plenty of wit and comedy into the adventures of our main characters. As the book opens, Chester W. Chester IV has been legally declared the sole heir of his quirky great-grandfather's estate; unfortunately, the back taxes that have accrued over the full century of legal wrangling over the will seem to do Chester more harm than good. In order to raise money, he is forced to close down his Wowser Wonder Shows circus. Case Mulvihill, the man running the circus, is determined to find a way to save the business, and he focuses his attention on the giant computer in Chester's great-grandfather's house. Chester's ancestor had poured the bulk of his money and the last quarter century of his life into building the Generalized Non-Linear Extrapolator; basically, the idea was to connect an ungodly amount of memory to the processor and input all the knowledge known to man into the machine. Of course, actually making use of all this information is the proverbial rub. Chester and Chase visit the house and start asking the computer questions. Eventually, Case tests the machine by asking for realistic looks into the distant past. This is where the trouble starts. The two men, and the female named Genie the computer creates to be their guide, wind up trapped and separated in time, in eras ranging from that of cavemen to a future society based on philosophy and science. For Chester, rescuing his friends and getting back home safe and sound stands as a true challenge indeed. I think the writing in this novel is a tad bit uneven at times, but this is a quick and entertaining read blessed with both comedy and insight. By far the most fascinating section to me was Chester's reeducation in a future academy. A lifetime's worth of learning is packed into a single year, and Laumer takes the opportunity to introduce some truly thought-provoking ideas about mental and physical education, the mastery of mind over pain and boredom, and the making of a man in his most enlightened and nature-attuned form. Some of the philosophy proffered here borders on the esoteric (the starting point and unofficial school "motto" is "Is-not is not not-is") yet much of it seems to merit consideration in the reader's own approach to life. Keith Laumer's 1963 The Great Time Machine Hoax is just very good science fiction. It offers a rousingly good story that anyone can enjoy, yet it goes beyond the surface to mine for a few nuggets of intellectual ore in the ground of the human mind. This is the kind of novel that can give birth to a love of science fiction in the mind of someone new to the genre.
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