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Pilgrim #1
Pyramids
Tom Scheffler discovers that Pilgrim, a man feared by Tom's uncle, is returning on a ship that travels through space and time, and becomes involved in a confrontation with the monstrous gods of ancient Egypt
311 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1987
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163 people want to read
About the author
Fred Saberhagen
335 books492 followersFred Saberhagen was an American science fiction and fantasy author most famous for his ''Beserker'' and Dracula stories.
Saberhagen also wrote a series of a series of post-apocalyptic mytho-magical novels beginning with his popular ''Empire of the East'' and continuing through a long series of ''Swords'' and ''Lost Swords'' novels. Saberhagen died of cancer, in Albuquerque, New Mexico
Saberhagen was born in and grew up in the area of Chicago, Illinois. Saberhagen served in the [[U.S. Air Force]] during the Korean War while he was in his early twenties. Back in civilian life, Saberhagen worked as an It was while he was working for Motorola (after his military service) that Saberhagen started writing fiction seriously at the age of about 30. "Fortress Ship", his first "Berserker" short shory, was published in 1963. Then, in 1964, Saberhagen saw the publication of his first novel, ''The Golden People''.
From 1967 to 1973, he worked as an editor for the Chemistry articles in the ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' as well as writing its article on science fiction. He then quit and took up writing full-time. In 1975, he moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico.
He married fellow writer Joan Spicci in 1968. They had two sons and a daughter.
Saberhagen also wrote a series of a series of post-apocalyptic mytho-magical novels beginning with his popular ''Empire of the East'' and continuing through a long series of ''Swords'' and ''Lost Swords'' novels. Saberhagen died of cancer, in Albuquerque, New Mexico
Saberhagen was born in and grew up in the area of Chicago, Illinois. Saberhagen served in the [[U.S. Air Force]] during the Korean War while he was in his early twenties. Back in civilian life, Saberhagen worked as an It was while he was working for Motorola (after his military service) that Saberhagen started writing fiction seriously at the age of about 30. "Fortress Ship", his first "Berserker" short shory, was published in 1963. Then, in 1964, Saberhagen saw the publication of his first novel, ''The Golden People''.
From 1967 to 1973, he worked as an editor for the Chemistry articles in the ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' as well as writing its article on science fiction. He then quit and took up writing full-time. In 1975, he moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico.
He married fellow writer Joan Spicci in 1968. They had two sons and a daughter.
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Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews
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June 13, 2011i have no words for how awesomely bad this book is so far. especially considering i am currently sitting in an office named for Charles Wilbour, Egyptologist.
July 10, 2024
3/5
The story started out very intriguing, as the story went on the intrigue was lost but the sense of adventure helped to keep me invested until the end.
The story started out very intriguing, as the story went on the intrigue was lost but the sense of adventure helped to keep me invested until the end.
December 12, 2011
Fred Saberhagen's "Pyramids" is what I like to call literary candy: fun but absolutely no nutritional value whatsoever. It's one of those books you can read in a sitting and then immediately forget about when you're done. The story is pretty silly action/adventure sci-fi (Think Indiana Jones meets Doctor Who meets "Stargate"). I'd give a synopsis but it's just too darn silly to even bother. If there's nothing else to read, this will do.
April 20, 2022
The first 100 or so pages of this book were a real slog to get through with far too much detail that didn't even matter in the end. But after that it really picked up and the last 200 pages were a fun read, with a completely bonkers and quite trippy ending. The characters could have had a little more depth to them, especially the female characters, but they weren't bad for a minor sci-fi novel from the '80s. I would have started the novel around the 100 page mark and integrated the important things from the first 100 pages into the rest of the story for better pacing. I would have fleshed out the characters some more, giving some of the women more critical roles in the story. In the end though, it was an okay read. I would have given it 3 stars with better pacing and 4 stars with characters that had a bit more depth to them.
July 6, 2020
I acquired this on a whim from a library book sale, based solely on the fact that it was scifi, and them promptly did not read it for years. However, I'm trying to get rid of my book backlog, so I finally picked this up recently.
The book starts out following Tom Scheffler, a college student who's been asked by his great-uncle Monty to house sit for him while he travels. Scheffler isn't close to his great-uncle. In fact, most of his knowledge of Monty consists of rumors of trouble that Monty had been in the past for selling fake Egyptian antiquities. However, Scheffler's a poor college student, so he's more than happy to stay in a big house rent-free. And who could resist exploring a bit? When he finds a strange elevator in the house, he can't help but get in. After a bumpy ride, he finds himself in ancient Egypt, shortly after the construction of the Great Pyramid of Khufu. And it just gets stranger from there...
I really wasn't sure what to expect from this. It started pretty well, actually. Saberhagen's writing style was pretty smooth, and although I won't say I liked any of the characters, I was intrigued enough by events that it was easy enough to keep reading. I felt like the pacing at the beginning was pretty good, with a slow but steady rate of revelations. I mean, who wouldn't be interested in surprise time travel to Egypt? I had so many questions about what was going on.
However, my enjoyment of this book definitely went downhill as the book progressed. The first issue that really began to bother me was the male gaze. I understand that the main character is a man, and I tried to give the book the benefit of the doubt, but as things progressed, it just got more oppressive. Every single time a woman was mentioned, sex was soon to follow, and it just got tiresome.
The second sign of the downfall of this book was the lack of depth. I know this was intended to be an adventure novel, but I felt like there were a lot of things that were just glossed over. Characters were very one-note. Events were left without much by the way of explanation. The moral issue of stealing Egyptian artifacts was also completely ignored, which I kind of expected, but was hoping wouldn't be the case.
The final big issue was the pacing. For most of the book, events progressed at a slower pace, but reasonably so. However, for the last quarter of the book, things completely changed. New perspectives were added, scenes became short and choppy, and in general things felt completely rushed. The writing quality, which had been a big part of what had kept me going, was pretty much gone, but I was too far in, and decided to just finish it. Thus, the two stars.
There's a sequel to this, but I won't be reading it. I'm just glad to get this one off my shelves.
The book starts out following Tom Scheffler, a college student who's been asked by his great-uncle Monty to house sit for him while he travels. Scheffler isn't close to his great-uncle. In fact, most of his knowledge of Monty consists of rumors of trouble that Monty had been in the past for selling fake Egyptian antiquities. However, Scheffler's a poor college student, so he's more than happy to stay in a big house rent-free. And who could resist exploring a bit? When he finds a strange elevator in the house, he can't help but get in. After a bumpy ride, he finds himself in ancient Egypt, shortly after the construction of the Great Pyramid of Khufu. And it just gets stranger from there...
I really wasn't sure what to expect from this. It started pretty well, actually. Saberhagen's writing style was pretty smooth, and although I won't say I liked any of the characters, I was intrigued enough by events that it was easy enough to keep reading. I felt like the pacing at the beginning was pretty good, with a slow but steady rate of revelations. I mean, who wouldn't be interested in surprise time travel to Egypt? I had so many questions about what was going on.
However, my enjoyment of this book definitely went downhill as the book progressed. The first issue that really began to bother me was the male gaze. I understand that the main character is a man, and I tried to give the book the benefit of the doubt, but as things progressed, it just got more oppressive. Every single time a woman was mentioned, sex was soon to follow, and it just got tiresome.
The second sign of the downfall of this book was the lack of depth. I know this was intended to be an adventure novel, but I felt like there were a lot of things that were just glossed over. Characters were very one-note. Events were left without much by the way of explanation. The moral issue of stealing Egyptian artifacts was also completely ignored, which I kind of expected, but was hoping wouldn't be the case.
The final big issue was the pacing. For most of the book, events progressed at a slower pace, but reasonably so. However, for the last quarter of the book, things completely changed. New perspectives were added, scenes became short and choppy, and in general things felt completely rushed. The writing quality, which had been a big part of what had kept me going, was pretty much gone, but I was too far in, and decided to just finish it. Thus, the two stars.
There's a sequel to this, but I won't be reading it. I'm just glad to get this one off my shelves.
April 21, 2022
Opens with an intriguing time-travel premise, but it kind of wanders off the rails by the end with bunches of handwavium. Whole chapters late in the book are practically summaries, as if Saberhagen were bored with the book and just wanted to get through it (or, alternatively, the editor told him to tighten it up).
April 14, 2025
Time-travel books seem to be on my de facto agenda these days. Having recently read Poul Anderson’s The Boat of a Million Years and Keith Laumer’s TimeTracks anthology, it was odd to pick up Fred Saberhagen’s Pilgrim, a duology consisting of two novels (Pyramids and After the Fact) now combined in one volume. Although I read them in a one volume edition, I can only find them separately on Goodreads. Where Anderson had redefined the mythical conveyance for the Pharaoh’s ka into a historical (via fiction) tour de force, Saberhagen features the aforementioned “boat” in a very different, but fascinating and unexpected, way. The enigmatic figure who looms over Pyramids is called “Pilgrim” or “Peregrinus,” but the protagonist is Tom Scheffler, a student at Thomas More University in Chicago (suspiciously similar to Ignatius Loyola University on the lakefront). Scheffler quickly gets involved in things he doesn't understand, often messing things up unnecessarily because of his refusal to listen to what he has been told.
Pyramids is a time-travel novel, but not exactly as you'd expect. One of the interesting considerations here is tomb-robbing. In this case, it was an archaeologist who traveled back in time to get artifacts and enriched himself by arbitraging them in more modern times. Saberhagen throws in several interesting twists in this story, but the only one I can offer without spoiling the narrative is that of a fascinating paradox. Assume you could travel back in time and get to the treasures of the tombs before the grave robbers. You bring them back and begin to market them. Someone runs Carbon-14 dating and discovers that the organic material hasn’t aged as much as it would have if it was millennia ago. Of course, the time traveler skipped millennia of the aging process. It was a paradox I hadn’t considered despite the time I’ve engaged in time-travel speculation. That was fun, as well as the fact that Saberhagen resolves matters in entirely different ways than I imagined.
Pyramids is a time-travel novel, but not exactly as you'd expect. One of the interesting considerations here is tomb-robbing. In this case, it was an archaeologist who traveled back in time to get artifacts and enriched himself by arbitraging them in more modern times. Saberhagen throws in several interesting twists in this story, but the only one I can offer without spoiling the narrative is that of a fascinating paradox. Assume you could travel back in time and get to the treasures of the tombs before the grave robbers. You bring them back and begin to market them. Someone runs Carbon-14 dating and discovers that the organic material hasn’t aged as much as it would have if it was millennia ago. Of course, the time traveler skipped millennia of the aging process. It was a paradox I hadn’t considered despite the time I’ve engaged in time-travel speculation. That was fun, as well as the fact that Saberhagen resolves matters in entirely different ways than I imagined.
March 25, 2025
Actually read this in Pilgrim but I'll be damned if I read the second story in there. I only struggled to the end of this one because I'm a completist psychopath.
Hate to use a Goodreads cliche, but if there was a -10 star I would give it to this one. The plot is dull and unimaginative. The prose is dull and lifeless. The characters are dull and flat. Did I mention how dull it is?
I hated this book. Hate, hate hated it. What a complete waste of time for everybody: the author, the publisher, the fake people in the book, me.
The distinctive squiggle on the front page tells me I got this probably 20 years ago at one of my favorite bookshops (deceased, of course, as all the finer things are), Boston Book Annex, in that hot, angled room they had, underground(?), with a window facing the street, where all the books with that squiggly symbol were 3/$1. In my memory somewhere a cat is lazing and the tattooed cashier is reading a book in the sun, and I am probably buying this book because I am excited about the cover and finding science fiction is rare in there, and maybe I think just for the amount of pages alone it's a good deal, or maybe I already have 2 other books and need to buy another one and this one will do.
Now I see why this book was 33 cents.
Hate to use a Goodreads cliche, but if there was a -10 star I would give it to this one. The plot is dull and unimaginative. The prose is dull and lifeless. The characters are dull and flat. Did I mention how dull it is?
I hated this book. Hate, hate hated it. What a complete waste of time for everybody: the author, the publisher, the fake people in the book, me.
The distinctive squiggle on the front page tells me I got this probably 20 years ago at one of my favorite bookshops (deceased, of course, as all the finer things are), Boston Book Annex, in that hot, angled room they had, underground(?), with a window facing the street, where all the books with that squiggly symbol were 3/$1. In my memory somewhere a cat is lazing and the tattooed cashier is reading a book in the sun, and I am probably buying this book because I am excited about the cover and finding science fiction is rare in there, and maybe I think just for the amount of pages alone it's a good deal, or maybe I already have 2 other books and need to buy another one and this one will do.
Now I see why this book was 33 cents.
May 16, 2025
Classic sci fi with portal fantasy vibes. Very heavy on the descriptions and setting. Starts with a tour of the protagonists apartment that goes for a whole chapter. The plot is so sparse but it's all filled out with spectacle, like a movie. This would make a great movie actually.
The sexism of the author's time is pretty evident; woman are treated as practically a different species. I found myself dragging a bit through the historical segments, as I don't usually read historical fiction.
I liked Pilgrim a lot. I did like the ending even though it's kind of a mess. I felt bad for ... just about all the characters, except Pilgrim.
I don't know. The story isn't great and the characters aren't great and the writing can get dicey but there's just something about sci fi adventures from this era. Nostalgia, I guess.
The sexism of the author's time is pretty evident; woman are treated as practically a different species. I found myself dragging a bit through the historical segments, as I don't usually read historical fiction.
I liked Pilgrim a lot. I did like the ending even though it's kind of a mess. I felt bad for ... just about all the characters, except Pilgrim.
I don't know. The story isn't great and the characters aren't great and the writing can get dicey but there's just something about sci fi adventures from this era. Nostalgia, I guess.
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September 1, 2025I couldn't even get through the first chapter. I picked up the book three times, intending to continue reading. But after a few pages, I was done. If I'm not drawn into a book halfway through the first chapter, I'll stop.
It's really annoying that the main character is always referred to by their last name.
It's really annoying that the main character is always referred to by their last name.
October 19, 2019
7/10 en 2006.
Mezclando presente y pasado faraónico el Sr Saberhagen nos presenta una entretenida novela de aventuras en la que refleja bastante bien los pasajes del Antiguo Egipto.
Veterana pero divertida. No le pidáis mucho, que es viejuna.
Mezclando presente y pasado faraónico el Sr Saberhagen nos presenta una entretenida novela de aventuras en la que refleja bastante bien los pasajes del Antiguo Egipto.
Veterana pero divertida. No le pidáis mucho, que es viejuna.
August 3, 2025
Interesting time travel story, written reasonably well with appealing settings and a unique twist on created worlds. Although not graphic, the sexuality between Tom and Becky is probably inappropriate for younger middle schoolers. Grade 8-adult.
July 29, 2020
This is like one of those movies where the idea is solid but needs the runtime reduced by about 30%.
November 3, 2021
Entertaining, but ultimately went nowhere. The protagonist was passive: everything happened to him and he didn't make many decisions. Don't know if this would've been better if that had changed.
September 29, 2023
I've read this book twice. The first time was over 30 years ago. It held up well.
February 14, 2017
I love time travel novels and this is another. It's a bit over the top, but I finished the read. I probably would have written the tale differently, but I enjoyed about half of the author's creativity.
October 11, 2010
I believe that Saberhagen wrote two Pilgrim books. This one is a neat take on archaeology, Egypt, time travel, parallel universes and the like. Well worth tracking down if you are a time travel/parallel universe fan, or a Saberhagen fan.
January 25, 2009
Interesting sci-fi book...
September 7, 2019
Mildly diverting during a plane trip.
March 27, 2015
What starts out as a simple time-travel story gets weirder and weirder as it goes on. Mind blowing.
February 10, 2016
This was ok. It was not as thrilling as the description led me to believe.
June 6, 2016
What a mess.
Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews