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| I have no idea why there is an avalanche of naked people on this cover. |
by Keith Laumer
p. 1964
Chester W. Chester IV is an average
guy who finds himself the sole heir of his great grandfather’s vast estate, and with
it, a massive computer purported to be a time machine. Chester and his friend
Case Mulvihill (ringleader and performer in a failing circus owned by Chester’s
family) are skeptical but try it out anyway in an attempt to save the circus
(and pay for the overwhelming costs of Chester’s inheritance) by creating a new
sideshow that gives the impression of time travel to paying customers.
To their surprise, Chester and Case
discover that the machine truly is everything it is rumored to be and
accidentally send themselves launching through time in an avalanche of misadventures,
along with an android-like representation of the machine, who takes the form of a
pretty girl named Genie. The trio keep getting entangled in increasingly absurd
situations and are eventually separated. Much of the book focuses on Chester
after he lands in a strange reality and is taken captive and used in a sort of
social experiment. It’s here where the novel starts to get sidetracked as it
becomes less of the farcical, snappy, comedy of errors it was before and
delves into philosophy and science of time travel. Chester, previously an
unremarkable wuss, was unwittingly (and a little disappointingly) transformed
into a science fiction hero. I wasn’t expecting this, and I won’t say it wasn’t
interesting, but it certainly wasn’t as entertaining as the first quarter of
the novel.
Despite the fact that Laumer seemed
to not be able to decide what kind of novel this should be, I very much enjoyed
the author’s sense of humor and the witty repartee between Case and Chester.
Upon finishing this book—my first encounter with Laumer’s writing—I discovered
I had more of his novels, and if I enjoy those, I’m sure I’ll be seeking out
more of his rather expansive body of work in the future. His view on sixties
sci-fi is refreshingly lighthearted and a lot more fun than the post-apocalyptic
stuff I’ve been reading.
A little background explanation for the inconsistencies in characterization. While the timid dead-ender becoming a sudden superhero is a Laumer trait (and not exactly unheard of in the genre at large), the reason it shows up here is because a large part of the middle of the novel (I’m not how much) was originally written and published as a completely separate standalone story and was later re-purposed and worked in as a significant chunk of this book.
ReplyDeleteThat's a good point. I'd read that this was initially published serially and later turned into a novel, but I had not considered that it might explain the inconsistencies.
DeleteI don't have anything against the 'unassuming guy becomes a real hero' genre, per se, but I was rather enjoying the character as is; it made the book a bit funnier and more enjoyable.
I still look forward to checking out more Laumer, but it's good to know what I might expect.