Storm Time

I made a brief move away from the random book list generator and began to attack the big pile of science fiction and mystery paperbacks I got at the Literacy Austin Bookfest last month. Rather than randomly reading them, I've decided to go alphabetically by author, which puts Poul Anderson's The Corridors of Time (1965) at the top of this list.

Poul Anderson was a very prolific science fiction writer, and I've always been interested in reading one of his books. He appears as a character in this Philip K. Dick story that I love where future Earthlings take science fiction books to be prophecies and science fiction writers to be gods that can predict the future. Some of these future-folk get a time machine and go back in time to a sci-fi convention to kidnap one of the "prophets" so that he can explain some of the technology in one of his novels to them and give them the edge against another planet.

The Corridors of Time also has a lot to do with time travel (as you might have guessed from the title). Strangely enough, very little of the book takes place in the future, even less takes place in the far-far-future, a teeny bit takes place in the "present" (well, 1963), and most of it takes place in 1800 BC in Denmark.

It seems that the future folk have discovered a way to make these time tunnels (or corridors) that stretch from one point in time and place on Earth to another. These future people are divided into two camps, the Wardens (who are in charge in the future and represent a more matriarchal and feudal society) and the Rangers (who have been in charge for much of human history and tend to represent the patriarchy, industrialization, and slavery). The Wardens and the Rangers are waging a time war by going back in time and influencing history in subtle sort of ways that they hope will eventually allow their group to hold ultimate power.

The head of the Wardens, who goes by the awesome name of Storm Darroway, finds our hero Malcolm Lockridge (a 1960s Kentucky boy) in jail for a murder he committed in self-defense. She pays for a good lawyer to set him free and then entangles him as an ally in her war against the Rangers. After traveling to Denmark, they find the entrance to a time corridor that takes them back to 1800 BC where Storm has established herself as a Goddess among a group of sea-faring villagers on the Jutland coast. It is easy to establish oneself as a goddess when one has energy guns, gravity belts, and little things that you put in your ear so you can speak the language and understand the customs of whatever time you happen to be in.

All, however, is not what it seems and Malcolm is forced to constantly question his allegiance to Storm. The ending of the book has a satisfying series of twists and the entire text is and engaging and unique science fiction story.

Man, I can't wait to read more sci-fi. But next time: Another random read!