Status
Available
Call number
Publication
London : Methuen, 1985, c1951.
Description
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)
User reviews
LibraryThing member reading_fox
A difficult book to review, though it is a fairly easy read. Simak is a master of science fiction blending future technologies and their impact on society effortlessly into a novel.
Asher Sutton, is an investigator for the Beuro of Operations, overseeing humankind's vast galactic empire, which is
Simak deals effortlessly with the paradox time travel could create, through carefully written prose. The viewpoint is Asher's and he is always aware of his future, even as he lives in his own past.
The characters are fairly thin, but the worlds are clever, an interesting insight. There are some dated carryovers from when it was written. These days few would believe that in the year 3000 everyone would still be smoking.
Complex, clever, well written, a novel about what it means to be human, and how future technologies may change what we think, but can't change what we are.
Asher Sutton, is an investigator for the Beuro of Operations, overseeing humankind's vast galactic empire, which is
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partly formed through manind's pure agressive tendacies, and partly through the army of androids deployed. Asher is sent to Cynagi II to see if it is dangerous to humans, and returns after 20 years with the simple report that "it isn't" and declines to say anything else. This obviously leaves open many questions such as how he survived in his ruined spaceship, and why there is so mcuh android and human interest in his return. Some of these people seem to know too much, and have some very flimsy reasons for suggesting he should be shot on sight.Simak deals effortlessly with the paradox time travel could create, through carefully written prose. The viewpoint is Asher's and he is always aware of his future, even as he lives in his own past.
The characters are fairly thin, but the worlds are clever, an interesting insight. There are some dated carryovers from when it was written. These days few would believe that in the year 3000 everyone would still be smoking.
Complex, clever, well written, a novel about what it means to be human, and how future technologies may change what we think, but can't change what we are.
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LibraryThing member baswood
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
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 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.
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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 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.
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LibraryThing member andyray
Simak, the consummate fantasy writer, has people bouncing all over time in this work and he never bothers himself with explainikng how it is done. It just is; deal with it. Also the making over of the word "destiny" from a modifying word to a substantive noun takes a leap ofr something to gather it
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all in. Giving these items, I love the book. I love the way Ashley Sutton keeps on churning away at being himself amidst the politicaql wars of his fellow humans. Of course, how human Ashley is, after dying at least twice, lies open for discussion. This is a first edition of the work. There are no previous editions, hardbound or otherwise. I read it and was careful not to break any of the page bindings.For a Simak completist, it is probably worth a couple hundred dollars. Show Less
LibraryThing member burnit99
A story set in the far future, when Mankind has sparsely spread throughout the galaxy, served by androids, laboratory-produced beings human in every way, except they can't reproduce biologically. Asher Sutton has returned after 20 years from an expedition to explore an unreachable planet, a changed
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man with a secret about Destiny and man's place in the great matrix of life which will forever shift the role of mankind. The battle over the book that Sutton has written/will write (time travel is involved here) enmeshes those who wish to see Man forever dominant in the Universe, androids, and the beings who partner with Man and all other living things to aid the course of Destiny. A fascinating concept, and I wonder if George Lucas read this before developing his ideas of the Force. Simak is a workmanlike author who presents complex and intriguing ideas, and has won at least a couple of Hugo awards. Show Less
LibraryThing member Cheryl_in_CC_NV
The plot was a little confusing, but like all Simak it was thought-provoking and fascinating. Recommended.
LibraryThing member LisCarey
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
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.
Yet he's alive, uninjured, healthy--and changed. Perhaps not entirely
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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.
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LibraryThing member ikeman100
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.
LibraryThing member MaowangVater
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.
Many of the themes Simak revisits in his later work appear in this tale first 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.
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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 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.
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Subjects
Language
Original publication date
1951
Physical description
255 p.; 18 cm
ISBN
0413599809 / 9780413599803