HomeGroupsTalkMoreZeitgeist
Search Site
This site uses cookies to deliver our services, improve performance, for analytics, and (if not signed in) for advertising. By using LibraryThing you acknowledge that you have read and understand our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Your use of the site and services is subject to these policies and terms.

Results from Google Books

Click on a thumbnail to go to Google Books.

Loading...

Time and Again (1951)

by Clifford D. Simak

Other authors: See the other authors section.

MembersReviewsPopularityAverage ratingMentions
8691424,562 (3.52)21
After twenty years, a vanished space voyager returns to Earth bearing a dangerous truth that will alter the universe in this powerful, thought-provoking science fiction classic from one of the Golden Age greats. Twenty years ago, Asher Sutton vanished somewhere in the star system 61 Cygni, an inaccessible corner of the universe that humankind has thus far been unable to explore. Now Asher has returned to Earth, having impossibly survived catastrophic damage to his spacecraft. But the star-traveler is not the same man he was when he began his journey two decades earlier. He is, in fact, no longer completely human. And he isn't alone. But he has a message to convey that could have reality-altering consequences for the human galaxy-conquerors who consider themselves almost gods, and for the nearly human androids they create, enslave, and oppress. It is Asher's destiny to change everything. His mission has made him a hero to some, a pariah to others - and a target for determined time-traveling assassins from the future whose mission it is to silence him at all costs before everything they cherish is obliterated. A true science fiction visionary, SFWA Grand Master Clifford D. Simak infused thrilling stories of time travel, space exploration, artificial intelligence, and alien contact with powerful, thought-provoking ideas. An enthralling masterwork of speculative fiction that astonishes while exploring humanity in all its disparate aspects, Time and Again can be counted among the prolific, multiple Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author's most brilliantly imagined and successfully realized creations.… (more)
None
Loading...

Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book.

No current Talk conversations about this book.

» See also 21 mentions

English (13)  Danish (1)  All languages (14)
Showing 1-5 of 13 (next | show all)
I will always read any Simak book I find. That said I wanted it to be better then it is. Pretty good for an early novel but not great. ( )
  ikeman100 | Sep 26, 2023 |
Reread this only last year, but here I am, reading Time and Again... again. I lent it to a friend and just happened to have another copy to hand, so I decided to refresh my memory.

Similar thoughts to last time I think, only I enjoyed it more. It does fumble a bit towards the end, but the ending itself is killer.

Prior review (June 2020) below.

------------------------------------

High 3.

"Sutton sensed resurrection and he fought against it, for death was so comfortable. Like a soft, warm bed. And resurrection was a strident, insistent, maddening alarm clock that shrilled across the predawn chill of a dreadful, frowzy room. Dreadful with its life and its bare reality and its sharp, sickening reminder that one must get up and walk into reality again."


The first third/maybe half of this is pretty much as close as Simak gets to writing a thriller. The ideas are big, but the pacing is relatively snappy (you know, for Simak), and the whole set up feels very PKD. Then in the latter half, Simak goes full Simak and enters into classic rural, contemplative, pastoral Sci fi - and by that I mean the main character quite literally gets stuck in 1970's Wisconsin for 10 years, spending his days fishing, farming, rambling, writing, and discussing the arrogance of man with our antagonist.

On one level, Time and Again is super messy, and possibly one of Simak's least satisfying novels; on the other hand, it can be very satisfying... It's packed with ideas, it has some of his finest prose and it wraps things up much more neatly than many of his other outings. It's probably a bit too big for its boots, touching on concepts it doesn't really know how to explore; but the attempt to explore these themes is still pretty interesting, even if the whole destiny angle is little more than a vague Mcguffin.

Still, Time and Again is pretty readable, pretty fun at points and (as with many Simak stories) just plain pretty. It's charming in its quaint ambition, and difficult not to admire.

A delightful tale, if inconsistent. Probably not a stretch to call it one of his best (take that how you will).

And that ending... Considerably more brutal than I remember it being. ( )
  TheScribblingMan | Jul 29, 2023 |
Not bad for 1951. The narration style felt like a Twilight Zone voiceover — lofty, grand pronouncements with a touch of mystery. Surprisingly not too sexist for the time. ( )
  invisiblecityzen | Mar 13, 2022 |
Not bad for 1951. The narration style felt like a Twilight Zone voiceover — lofty, grand pronouncements with a touch of mystery. Surprisingly not too sexist for the time. ( )
  invisiblecityzen | Mar 13, 2022 |
Twenty years ago, Asher Sutton disappeared in the star system 61 Cygni, a system that the otherwise galaxy-conquering humans have failed to penetrate. Now he's back, in a ship with catastrophic damage he shouldn't have survived.

Yet he's alive, uninjured, healthy--and changed. Perhaps not entirely human, anymore. And, though it's not obvious, he's not alone.

Asher Sutton also has a message--for humans, for androids who are no different from humans except for numbers on their foreheads, the inability to reproduce biologically, and being property, and for the rest of the living beings in the human-dominated galaxy.

It's a message that will change the galaxy.

It's a message that some want to suppress, some want to hijack, and some want to help him spread.

Asher arrives home to find time travel has been invented, and a war is already raging in time over who will control his message.

Androids, a human, a few robots, will help him. Other humans want to kill him, to stop his message altogether. Still other humans want to control his message, not suppress it, but modify it to suit their purpose of continuing and spreading human domination.

Asher will discover a message from the past, go traveling in time, and will start to discover that he has returned from 61 Cygni with new abilities he did not suspect--and which need time and practice to use effectively. The question is, can he master them in time to survive and spread his message?

This is an enjoyable, exciting, thoughtful story, from one of the best sf writers of the mid-20th century, one of my favorites. Highly recommended.

I bought this book. ( )
  LisCarey | May 22, 2021 |
Showing 1-5 of 13 (next | show all)
no reviews | add a review

» Add other authors (5 possible)

Author nameRoleType of authorWork?Status
Clifford D. Simakprimary authorall editionscalculated
Arno, TomTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Brooks, WalterCover Artistsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Gaughan, JackCover artistsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Kukalis, RomasCover artistsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Roberts, TonyCover artistsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Schoenherr, JohnCover artistsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
You must log in to edit Common Knowledge data.
For more help see the Common Knowledge help page.
Canonical title
Original title
Alternative titles
Original publication date
People/Characters
Important places
Important events
Related movies
Epigraph
Dedication
First words
L'uomo uscì dall'ombra quando ancora l'ultima luce del tramonto scintillava a occidente.
The man came out of the twilight when the greenish yellow of the sun's last light still ingered in the west.
Quotations
Last words
Information from the Italian Common Knowledge. Edit to localize it to your language.
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)
Disambiguation notice
Publisher's editors
Blurbers
Original language
Canonical DDC/MDS
Canonical LCC

References to this work on external resources.

Wikipedia in English

None

After twenty years, a vanished space voyager returns to Earth bearing a dangerous truth that will alter the universe in this powerful, thought-provoking science fiction classic from one of the Golden Age greats. Twenty years ago, Asher Sutton vanished somewhere in the star system 61 Cygni, an inaccessible corner of the universe that humankind has thus far been unable to explore. Now Asher has returned to Earth, having impossibly survived catastrophic damage to his spacecraft. But the star-traveler is not the same man he was when he began his journey two decades earlier. He is, in fact, no longer completely human. And he isn't alone. But he has a message to convey that could have reality-altering consequences for the human galaxy-conquerors who consider themselves almost gods, and for the nearly human androids they create, enslave, and oppress. It is Asher's destiny to change everything. His mission has made him a hero to some, a pariah to others - and a target for determined time-traveling assassins from the future whose mission it is to silence him at all costs before everything they cherish is obliterated. A true science fiction visionary, SFWA Grand Master Clifford D. Simak infused thrilling stories of time travel, space exploration, artificial intelligence, and alien contact with powerful, thought-provoking ideas. An enthralling masterwork of speculative fiction that astonishes while exploring humanity in all its disparate aspects, Time and Again can be counted among the prolific, multiple Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author's most brilliantly imagined and successfully realized creations.

No library descriptions found.

Book description
Science fiction, time travelling hero return to an ambiguous welcome from androids, his supervisors and people from the future, interested in the book he will be going to write.
Haiku summary

Current Discussions

None

Popular covers

Quick Links

Rating

Average: (3.52)
0.5
1 3
1.5
2 9
2.5 1
3 40
3.5 10
4 30
4.5 2
5 18

Is this you?

Become a LibraryThing Author.

 

About | Contact | Privacy/Terms | Help/FAQs | Blog | Store | APIs | TinyCat | Legacy Libraries | Early Reviewers | Common Knowledge | 202,659,425 books! | Top bar: Always visible