The Wall of Years

by Andrew M. Stephenson

Book Overview

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0440194318
• ISBN13: 9780440194316
• Release Date: November 1980
• Publisher: Dell Publishing
• Length: 431 Pages
• Weight: 0.10 lbs.

Customer Reviews

A first-rate one-shot

Stephenson is one of those sf authors who seems to have produced one (or maybe two) superior novels and was never heard of again. (This is his second; his first was _Nightwatch_, which I've never been able to locate.) In any case, I'm a sucker for time travel and alternate history plots, and this beautifully constructed and highly complex yarn has both. Jerlan Nilssen is second-in-charge of the bubble-protected City, a refuge for the extremely few who escaped the collapse of our world by time storm. The elect fled the early 21st century for the 26th, which is a desolate and ruined place, and have survived by raiding parallel lines for their resources. But the commissariat that was responsible for the original disaster was insufficiently liquidated and its ex-director has escaped to England in the 9th century, a few years before Alfred of Wessex beats the Danes at the Battle of Edington. Okay, this is a difficult book to explain. I can only say that (1) the characters are fully realized, in great depth; and (2) the milieu of Anglo-Saxon England is depicted with great accuracy (this is a period I happen to know a lot about) and in amazing detail, both politically and socially. A difficult book to find, but worth the effort.