Timestorm

by Gordon R. Dickson

Book Overview

A MOST UNIQUE APOCALYPSE from Grand Master Gordon R. Dickson RIDERS ON THE TIME STORM The time storm had devastated the Earth, and all but a small fraction of humankind has vanished. In the rubble of... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312805179
• ISBN13: 9780312805173
• Release Date: January 1977
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press
• Length: 342 Pages
• Weight: 1.20 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Really Memorable, A MUST READ

I read this a long time ago and was on this site just looking. I probably still have my original copy somewhere in my collection. Read the other reviews for a synopsis. This is a great read for all Science Fiction lovers. You won't regret taking the time.

So I ask again, why is this out of print?

This is a rant I haven't done in a while. More and more I find that the best SF books out there are kept out of print for whatever reason, leaving us fans to discover these lost treasures by scouring bookstores, hardly even aware of their existences. I found this one by sheer chance and it turns out to have been a happy find. Dickson is mostly known for his Childe cycle (sidenote on that, it says in the author bio that after he finishes the "futuristic" part of said Cycle, he was going to do a bunch of historical type novels as a prelude . . . any idea whatever happened to those?) among other things but this has been unjustly forgotten. Told in first person narration by a man named Marc, it deals with world set slightly in the future where the Earth is ravaged by shifting lines of time. His only companions are a very friendly jaguar and a very silent girl. That's how it starts. Where it goes you'll never be able to guess. Half the fun is watching Dickson constantly twist the reader's expectations inside out, taking the story in abrupt curves just when you think you know where it's going. It's almost like a whole series of books in one, part survival tale, part metaphysical journey, part SF world building and part philosophical musing. His characterization of Marc is key as well, here we have one of his more complex characters, Marc is basically a decent guy that you want to root for, but at the same time he's tightly focused almost to the detriment of everyone around him. And yet he feels more real than most characters I've seen lately. Fortunately Dickson helps by surrounding him with a multifaceted cast of characters and constnatly switching the situation. Sometimes it may get a littel bit too metaphysical for my tastes, but at least it's far from ordinary. People coming in thinking it's just an average time travel novel are going to be (hopefully) pleasantly surprised. It's an underrated classic that deserves to be back in print.

A Memorable book

This is a book I've read more than once. It is full of suprising characters. A mute girl, a crazy lepoard, a displaced stock broker, and a world gone mad.Set in some indeterminate time (SF) it is the story of a group of people who come together when their world is swept away by 'timestorms'. These are waves of time which drift across the world changing the land and the people who live in it as at a seemingly random way.It's also the story of how, by working together these people managed to survive in this newly harsh world and even triumph.It's a story which sticks in your mind long after you have read it. If you come across a copy second hand,pick it up. It's a good read.

One of the best time travel books ever...

maybe THE best, though I can't claim to have read them all. This book was my introduction to Gordon Dickson, who has been one of my favorite SF authors ever since. This is a deeply plotted story that develops with the characters. The scope begins at a simple, personal level and builds to galactic proportions. The narrator/main character is a gruff, usually stoic individual (like other Dickson main characters), but his emotions nevertheless come out reluctantly in the telling. I reread it every couple of years and it always seems new. Well worth the time.

A timeless adventure, one that weathers the storm..

A book that refuses to be dated. The relationships between Marc Despard, Marie, The Girl and the Cat are valid in any time zone..I connected with all the players and, for the first time in years, I found a book that I lost sleep over.

Excellent Sci-Fi

Gordon Dickson's "Time Storm", first published in 1977, is an excellent post-apocalyptic novel concerning the catastrophic after effects caused by on-going time storms (or time lines that appear as, and are called in the book, `mistwalls') that continually sweep across sections of the Earth, as well as throughout the universe. As a time storm passes, a large swath of land becomes forever changed in time. A side effect is that for most of the population these time sweeps are deadly.Luckily (or you would have no story), a small percentage of the population (including a few animals) seem immuned to the deadly effects of the time storms. The three main characters; the protagonist (Marc Despard), a young teenage girl (known as `Girl'), and a leopard (called Sunday), are all richly defined. Those who have read "Wolf and Iron", another good post-apocalyptic sci-fi novel by Dickson (published thirteen years after "Time Storm"), may see a pattern here (a leopard instead of a wolf, the protagonist searching for his ex-wife instead of his brother, and a young teenage girl whose personality is remarkably similar to the teenager in "Wolf and Iron"). However, that's where the similarities end.This story begins with the three unlikely partners traveling across country where they cross area after area that has been changed in time. The people (and/or creatures) that have been `deposited' into the effected areas (if there are anyone at all), are either from some point in the future or from the past, but like any post-apocalyptic story, few are friendly. Even the survivors of his own time can be, and usually are, extremely dangerous. Unfortunately, a couple of the time-changed situations the group run into aren't treated very deeply by Dickson, thus leaving this reader a little confused and wondering why he mentioned them at all.However, the heart of the story is the Despard's single-minded goal of understanding the time storms, and maybe even doing something about them. He is sort of a freak of nature, being almost a human calculator whose mind will not stop until a problem is solved. And because of this, he is also a man that has extreme difficulty with his emotions toward others, especially those he loves. And whether he likes it or not, his small, motly band soon grows to a community, and the cast of characters are handled quite well. These are not stilted, cardboard characters by any means. Dickson did a wonderful job creating believable characters.Dickson also does a masterful job involving the reader in Despard's attempts to expand his mind and search out the patterns of the time storms so he may understand them. This becomes almost mystical in nature and leads him to reach out to the stars and beyond. I found this particularly fascinating and was quickly drawn into this strange world of the mind, space, and time. There is also the standard (but interesting) sub-plot concerning the "Empress" who wants