CHRONOLYSIS

by Michel Jeury ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 18, 1980

Very much from the land of Camus and Sartre: existential science fiction which--though often exasperating, tedious, or unintentionally funny--does achieve some genuinely consciousness-skewing, nightmarish effects. ""Psychronaut"" Robert Holzbach of the Garichankar Hospital (2060 A.D.) is sent, via drug-induced ""chronolysis,"" to 1966 Paris, where he is to integrate his identity with that of industrial chemist Daniel Diersant--who, fired from his job and injured in a mysterious accident, is himself in a chronolytic state (""The past repeats itself endlessly. . . time completely ceases to exist""). So we watch as Diersant goes around and around, repeating moments again and again (with odd variations), confronted with identifies and women and events of past and future--especially the 1980s, when private industrial empires would take over Earth. And in fact, once Holzbach integrates with Diersant (which, of course, compounds his identity/time crises), it becomes clear that Diersant's mind is a pawn in a struggle between the HKH Empire and the Garichankar Hospital, each of them a skillful chronolytic manipulator. If all this sounds confusing, it is indeed--and matters are not helped by some simplistic politics (HKH alternately stands for Hitler, Howard Hughes, Kennedy, Kissinger, etc.) or rampant jargon. Still, Jeury's demanding free-associative narrative does sometimes evoke the weird whirling buzz of an endless dream-state; and occasional moments even resonate with Beckettian futility. Taxing, then, with murky stretches--but serious sf readers may find it worth the effort.

Pub Date: Nov. 18, 1980

ISBN: 1935558536

Page Count: -

Publisher: Macmillan

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1980

Categories: FICTION