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TIME, LIKE AN EVER-ROLLING STREAM

Name: TIME, LIKE AN EVER-ROLLING STREAM
Author: Judith Moffett
ISBN: 0-312-08323-8

by Judith Moffett ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 24, 1992

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Moffett's sequel to the Ragged World (1991): a near-future saga of furry alien overlords demanding ecological retrenchment; judging by the evidence here, she's dug in for a long series, since none of the outstanding issues are settled or even given much of a workout. Instead, the story focuses on the alien Hefn's Bureau of Temporal Physics, set up to teach a handful of human mathematical whizzes how to use time-gates (by peering into the past, the Hefn hope to discover where humans fell off the ecological tracks) and, in particular, on two teenagers, Liam O'Hara and Pam Pruitt, both misfits, both repressing sexual awareness, and both very fond of Humphrey, the Hefn in charge of the project. During a vacation, Liam and Pam visit the Hollow, a famous homestead by the Kentucky river that Pam has known and loved since childhood. The Hollow's present guardian, Jesse, is bitten by a snake and hospitalized, leaving Pam and Liam in charge; Liam invites Humphrey to join them. But, nearby, a rabble-rousing, anti-Hefn preacher is stirring up the locals, already bitterly resentful of the Hefn's bans on high technology and human reproduction. Eventually, the preacher and his henchmen attack, intending to skin Humphrey alive, but a tornado (by coincidence?) kills them and helps convert the preacher into a Hefn advocate. Ecologically correct, with lots of well-handled teenage angst and convincing down-home detail; but—though the foreground is fine—the background remains nebulous, and readers curious about the Big Picture will find little but frustration here.

Pub Date: Sept. 24, 1992

ISBN: 0-312-08323-8

Page Count: 352

Publisher: St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1992

Categories:

SCIENCE FICTION | GENERAL SCIENCE FICTION | GENERAL SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY

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Awards & Accolades

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New York Times Bestseller

DEVOLUTION

by Max Brooks ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 16, 2020

A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.

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Our Verdict

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New York Times Bestseller

Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).

A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.

A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.