Time and Again

This is exactly the kind of science fiction novel that a humanist would write. It is not heavy on the science or on technology, but it is just as mind-expanding as other pieces of hard scifi. Simak himself sums up what I think of as his unique contribution to science fiction: "before Man goes to the stars he [sic] should learn how to live on Earth." Hardly a truer statement has been written in science fiction or argued as compelling as Simak does here and elsewhere.

Also, forget for a moment that Simak is writing about androids and their relationship to humans and their rights to the pursuit of "destiny." Substitute any oppressed group or minority into that formulation and you end up with a very progressive ethical philosophy that has so show more much lasting cultural relevance and which ought to be a check on any scientific or technological pursuit. This was written in 1951 -- imagine how that argument would have seemed then, if not cloaked in a fanciful discussion of androids.

The start was a bit rough and confusing, but I get that it was necessary because of the time travel angle. Regardless, this book is an absolute gem and is now up there in my list of top 3 Simak novels. show less

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.

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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 show more 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. show less

I love Simak. Whenever I'm in the mood for some old-time SF that can still be read with joy today, lacking the most pernicious queasy qualities of the time-period in which popular fiction thrived back then, I always turn to Simak. He never lets me down. It's just plain fun.

This book is no different. It's a time-travel paradox story on the fringes, but at its heart, it's all about Destiny. A guy tries to see what he can see with some strange aliens, comes back missing 20 years and a mysterious group is out to kill him. Sounds like pretty standard thriller-SF, right?

Well, in this case, it's really about leveling up, writing a book that will have a grand effect on the rest of future humanity, making a difference to all the downtrodden show more androids and aliens who suffer from the "largesse" of the super-dominant mankind.

A light and a once-removed tale of race issues, sure, but this book from 1950 focuses on the heart of it, doesn't stint on pushing for equality, and even pokes huge holes in "Manifest Destiny". Back then, I'm sure the term was used to the nausea of everyone, but not now. Even so, it's interesting to see such a forceful condemnation. :)

It may be old hat now, but the rest of the story is delightful and fast-paced. :) Duels, corporations with a million-year strategy, a time war, and paradox-poking. Very good classic SF. :) show less

Asher Sutton returns to Earth from a solo expedition to 61 Cygni twenty years later on a starship that was so seriously damaged that it would have been impossible for him to have made the journey and still be alive. As soon as he reports in and arrives home, he’s drugged, and brain scanned. Besides his own government agency there are at least three or four groups working against him. He becomes coerced, shot at, kidnapped, and chased because of a powerfully influential book that he hasn’t written yet. He’s the center of attention in an interstellar guerilla war that’s executed in both space and time: the present time, the past, and the future.

Many of the themes Simak revisits in his later work appear in this tale first show more published in 1950: time travel, the afterlife, the nature of humanity, longevity, human extra-terrestrial alien contact, and how will we respond to new artificial sentient beings like robots and chemically grown android servants, and how will they in turn, responds to us? It’s a wild ride filled with beings with their own ideas about these concerns, several of which humanity is about to come to grips with in the 21st century for the first time. show less

Science fiction from 1951 and an early work from this prolific author. What you get with Simak is a thinking person's science fiction, a little similar in some ways to Arthur C Clarke, although in this novel he does not exhibit the same level of skills as a writer. The first quarter of this novel is confusing, difficult for the reader to grasp what is going on and one has to be patient to allow Simak to get into story telling mode.

Ash Sutton returns to earth from a long distance space mission only to find that his employers had given him up for dead and there seems to be a plot to kill him. It is only when he discovers an unopened letter of his that he has some idea what is happening. He will write a book which has become a sort of show more bible in the future and has instigated a war between the revisionist and the faithful followers of the book that Sutton has written. People from the future have been sent back in time in an attempt to subtly alter the contents of the book, which Sutton has not yet written. After Sutton's experience on the forbidden world of Cygni 1, he will write about the destiny of mankind, unfortunately this diverges considerably from the prognostications of those in power: Simak tells us:

For Man had flown too fast, had driven far beyond his physical capacity. Not by strength did he hold his starry outposts, but by something else … by depth of human character, by his colossal conceit, by his ferocious conviction that Man was the greatest living thing the galaxy had spawned. All this in spite of many evidences that he was not … evidence that he took and evaluated and cast aside, scornful of any greatness that was not ruthless and aggressive.

Sutton sees a future where the androids, robots and alien races have an equal status to human beings. This is a direct challenge to human kinds wish to dominate and control their galaxy and even to move onto dominating the universe. Sutton has brought something back with him from Cygni 1 that will potentially make him a force that cannot be ignored and his alliance with the androids makes him a public enemy.

After a confused start to the novel the pace changes to a homespun interlude on a Wisconsin farm, where Sutton's ancestors experience some strange dealings with time travellers and where Sutton himself recovers and hides from currents that are swirling around the publication of his book some time in the future. It is a novel of ideas that becomes more lucid as the book progresses. Unfortunately it's changes of pace only serve to point to a disjointed feel. Characterisation is perfunctory, but the novel avoids the sexism and racism that could be prevalent at the time: I kept having to tell myself this novel was written in 1951. Not wholly successful, even the title is confusing, but an interesting read 3.5 stars. show less

2.5/5

A mundane thriller/time travel novel from Simak. Asher Sutton is sent to make contact with an alien race, disappears for 20 years, and comes back with powers that even he does not fully understand. In his absence, the world has developed time travel and a race of androids, who despite not being able to procreate, are fighting for their human rights. There's an insidious war happening in the future over this, one that Sutton finds himself in the crosshairs of, because of the book that plans to write about the discoveries he made on the planet.

Your enjoyment of this book will hinge predominately on what you think of Simak's exploration of destiny and sentience. Sutton's time on the mysterious planet taught him that every living show more thing has a destiny, which functions more or less like a soul. This revelation, though we don't really get a good explanation on how this functions, will serve as the rallying call for all of the androids who as of now function as servants or slaves to the human race across the galaxy. To me, this exploration was pretty surface level and dull. Simak doesn't really bring anything new to the table. Maybe he did in 1950, but certainly not now.

The narrative itself is complicated and rather poorly drawn. I found myself confused at multiple points upon the introduction of a new plot point, not because it was inherently complex, but because Simak's explanation of it was ill defined. His prose is also unfortunately dull and uninspired, only giving flashes of the pastoral tone that Simak has shown himself to be capable of, though he does sneak a Wisconsin into the mix for good measure.

I wasn't thrilled to be reading it despite the pacing and narrative trying to emulate a thriller in many way. City is really starting to feel far and away his best work. show less

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 show more 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. show less