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The Other Time
A step in an odd direction -- a moment of dizziness - and archaeologist Dan Fielding was thrust through an invisible barrier found hundred years into the past. He was still in the Mexican desert -- but it was the desert of the 16th century, and Mexico was in the grip of the conquistador Hernando Cortez. Inevitably, Cortez captured Fielding -- and learned of the rich territory north of the Rio Grande. The land that would one day become the U.S. would be his next conquest. Unless Fielding could rally the Indians and erase Cortez's bloody footsteps from the New World forever!
308 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1984
2 people are currently reading
41 people want to read
About the author
Mack Reynolds
509 books43 followersDallas McCord "Mack" Reynolds was an American science fiction writer. His pen names included Clark Collins, Mark Mallory, Guy McCord, Dallas Ross and Maxine Reynolds. Many of his stories were published in "Galaxy Magazine" and "Worlds of If Magazine". He was quite popular in the 1960s, but most of his work subsequently went out of print.
He was an active supporter of the Socialist Labor Party; his father, Verne Reynolds, was twice the SLP's Presidential candidate, in 1928 and 1932. Many of MR's stories use SLP jargon such as 'Industrial Feudalism' and most deal with economic issues in some way
Many of Reynolds' stories took place in Utopian societies, and many of which fulfilled L. L. Zamenhof's dream of Esperanto used worldwide as a universal second language. His novels predicted much that has come to pass, including pocket computers and a world-wide computer network with information available at one's fingertips.
Many of his novels were written within the context of a highly mobile society in which few people maintained a fixed residence, leading to "mobile voting" laws which allowed someone living out of the equivalent of a motor home to vote when and where they chose.
He was an active supporter of the Socialist Labor Party; his father, Verne Reynolds, was twice the SLP's Presidential candidate, in 1928 and 1932. Many of MR's stories use SLP jargon such as 'Industrial Feudalism' and most deal with economic issues in some way
Many of Reynolds' stories took place in Utopian societies, and many of which fulfilled L. L. Zamenhof's dream of Esperanto used worldwide as a universal second language. His novels predicted much that has come to pass, including pocket computers and a world-wide computer network with information available at one's fingertips.
Many of his novels were written within the context of a highly mobile society in which few people maintained a fixed residence, leading to "mobile voting" laws which allowed someone living out of the equivalent of a motor home to vote when and where they chose.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
February 5, 2021
Don Fielding is an anthropologist doing fieldwork in Mexico when he walks through a rip in the fabric of space-time and finds himself in the same region but in 1519 AD. It takes a little while before Don can accept his transtemporal journey but after meeting Cortes and his small army of gold-hungry Spaniards he is finally convinced. The Spanish however, are leery of Don’s tale of his origins, strange clothing and unrecognised weapons - including a .22 pistol, and Cortes has designs on either enslaving Don and using him as a guide to the mythical North American country, or killing him to avoid him escaping and warning them. Don decides to change the course of history and subsequently helps the Aztecs invent the wheel, crossbow, phalanx and other ideas which they never had, in order to push Cortes back across the water. In the tradition of Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur’s Court, and Harrison’s Deathworld 2, Mack Reynolds has fun designing an alternate Mexico and keeps us turning pages to see if he makes it back home.
August 4, 2023
review of
Mack Reynolds with Dean Ing's The Other Time
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - August 4, 2023
This is something like the 23rd Reynolds novel I've read & reviewed. I keep stressing how much I like Reynolds, both as an entertaining writer & as someone who manages to fit in political history of obscure substance. Several of his bks that I've read have been finished post-Reynolds-mortem by other writers. Ing is possibly the most prolific of these. "A MESSAGE TO THE READER" from Jim Baen explains this:
"Before his death in 1983 after a long illness, Mack Reynolds had taken several novels to first-draft stage and then, perhaps driven by a sense of mortal urgency, gone on to the next. When it became clear that Mack would be unable to bring them to completion, I, with Mack's and later his estate's approval, commissioned Dean Ing to take the entire group to a fully polished state. Dean's purpose has not been to collaborate posthumously, but to finish them as exactly as Mack Reynolds writing at the utter top of his form would have done.
"We believe that Dean has succeeded to an almost uncanny degree. For any writer, and particularly one of Ing's stature, to so subordinate his own authorial personality is a remarkable achievement." - p -i
& I agree. This was a great Reynolds novel. Thank you, Dean Ing, for making sure it reached this printable form.
"Assistant Professor Donald Fielding had taken his doctorate in ethnology and was a specialist in Mexican cultures." - p 2
While in an unpopulated area of Mexico he goes back in time w/o knowing it & for no explained reason. When he encounters other people their 'primitiveness' is strange but why wd he think he'd gone back in time? Eventually, he's taken captive by Spanish gold hunters. He still hasn't figured out that he's gone back in time.
"They passed an open area containing a market. It seemed literally to overflow with produce. Largely, it was similar to a score of other Mexican town markets Don had witnessed in his time, though, strangely, some of the products he would have expected were not evident. Bread, for instance, or chickens; nor, for that matter, did he spot either beef or pork in the section devoted to meats. And where were the inevitable ice-cream vendors? Whoever heard of a Mexican market without ice-cream vendors? And, now that he thought about it, there were no refreshment stands selling beer." - p 15
But, then, the fated moment came.
"Instead, even as he turned to follow young Sandoval, he said to Fray Olmedo, "Padre, could you tell me the exact date?"
"The priest said, "Why, it is the tenth of August, in the year of Out Lord, 1519."
""I was afraid you'd say something like that," Don Fielding said emptily." - p 21
"As a boy he had read the usual time travel classics such as Wells's The Time Machine and Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, and he vaguely remembered a movie he had seen revived on television entitled Berkeley Square" - p 29
YAY! I'm familiar w/ all 3. &, yes, this is probably most akin to the Twain novel.
Fielding escapes the greedy clutches of the invaders & seeks help from the natives. In the process he finds himself in the awkward position of delicately negotiating his way thru religions.
"Trying to keep his own viewpoint as an agnostic neutral, Don Fielding expressed as best he could in Nahuatl the Christian belief. It wasn't as difficult as he expected to get the fundamentals over to the Indian. In Tenochtitlan, too, they had gods who were born of virgins and native gods also had more than one aspect. The Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, three, still only one, did not bewilder Cuauhtemoc.
""But what are your beliefs, Don Fielding?" the Indian asked, after assimilating what he had heard.
"How did you explain the agnostic viewpoint to a superstitious native?
"Don said, seeking out his words carefully, "Man is the only thinking animal."" - p 89
""Do not let Xochitl hear such things from your lips when we arrive in Tenochtitlan." The Indian chuckled deprecation.
""Xochitl? Who is he?"
""The High Priest of Huitzilopochtli, the Hummingbird God, who is the chief god of the Tenochas. Speak thus and you will wind up on the altar, your heart torn from your chest. It is said to be a worthy way to die, however, I personally have never so regarded it though tell no priest I said so." The other laughed his deprecation again." - p 90
Coincidentally, my friend Brian Gentry had recently told me that hummingbirds are very violent & that that was why there was a Hummingbird God b/c he was a god of warriors.
"Motechzoma said, "Xochitl, the Quequetzalcoa."
"So this was the High Priest of Huitzilopochtli, the Hummingbird God, the god of war of the Tenochas.
"His eyes burned and he screamed, "Sacrifice him to the gods!"" - pp 113-114
The Other Time is multi-layered in what makes it interesting for me, its look at the culture of the time & place is fascinating. Take, e.g., the sanitation.
"He pointed out another canoe, laden down with what he knew not, and asked Cuauhtemoc about it.
"The young Indian laughed and explained that the public latrines were unloaded into these canoes and the contents taken over to the mainland to be used as fertilizer. It made sense. If they'd dumped their sewage into the canals, they'd not only have a horrible stench in short order but possibly an epidemic as well." - p 107
Fielding tries to explain the ulterior motives of the conquistidores to Cuauhtemoc.
""So that they can force you to work the mines, build houses and temples for them, till the soil so that they themselves can live lives of plenty without need to labor."
"The Indian was horrified, "But that is criminal!"
"Don groaned inwardly. How did you, even an anthropologist, describe class-divided society to a primitive communist? Above all, how do you explain that it led to progress? That to have scientists, scholars, and artists, you had to have a leisure class that had the time to create. Yes, the present-day Spain produced freebooters such as Cortes and Alvarado, but it also produced Cervantes and in due time Goya, Velazques, El Greco, and Murilio. Would Leonardo da Vinci ever have done his work if he'd had to put in ten or twelve hours a day tilling a field? Would Michaelangelo?" - p 161
I've had to work most of my adult life to pay my bills & otherwise survive but I've still managed to be enormously prolific as a creative person . If I were growing my own food & not food for others I don't think I'd have to toil a field for ten or twelve hours a day. Still, the point is taken.
Fielding leads the Tenochas against Cortes & his soldiers, using his historical knowledge & his 20th century weaponry & warfare savvy to give tham an advantage they wdn't've otherwise had. All the while he worries about the "Grandfather Paradox" of time travel but decides to do it anyway. The 'inevitable' misperception of who he is follows.
"He has led us in defense against the devils from across the seas. He foresees the future, correctly as all know. He can bring fire from his fingertips. It is the year One Reed. Would you fly, then, in the face of our returned Lord, Quetzalcoatl?"" - p 221
Once committed, Fielding goes all the way, abolishes human sacrifice, & establishes a new republic.
"He said, "By tomorrow morning, I want every pochteca in Tenochtitlan on the roads. You will go as traders, as always, but you will also be ambassadors of the Aztec Republic. Everywhere you go, you will explain that there are to be no more raids on their cities and no more tribute, ever, if they join the new Mexico, the Aztec Republic. Each city that wishes to join must immediately elect its two senators and its representatives from each of its clans and send them to Tenochtitlan for out first . . . our first congress.["]" - pp 277-278
What a spectacular movie this story wd make! What a great series of sequels cd be made to continue it!!
Mack Reynolds with Dean Ing's The Other Time
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - August 4, 2023
This is something like the 23rd Reynolds novel I've read & reviewed. I keep stressing how much I like Reynolds, both as an entertaining writer & as someone who manages to fit in political history of obscure substance. Several of his bks that I've read have been finished post-Reynolds-mortem by other writers. Ing is possibly the most prolific of these. "A MESSAGE TO THE READER" from Jim Baen explains this:
"Before his death in 1983 after a long illness, Mack Reynolds had taken several novels to first-draft stage and then, perhaps driven by a sense of mortal urgency, gone on to the next. When it became clear that Mack would be unable to bring them to completion, I, with Mack's and later his estate's approval, commissioned Dean Ing to take the entire group to a fully polished state. Dean's purpose has not been to collaborate posthumously, but to finish them as exactly as Mack Reynolds writing at the utter top of his form would have done.
"We believe that Dean has succeeded to an almost uncanny degree. For any writer, and particularly one of Ing's stature, to so subordinate his own authorial personality is a remarkable achievement." - p -i
& I agree. This was a great Reynolds novel. Thank you, Dean Ing, for making sure it reached this printable form.
"Assistant Professor Donald Fielding had taken his doctorate in ethnology and was a specialist in Mexican cultures." - p 2
While in an unpopulated area of Mexico he goes back in time w/o knowing it & for no explained reason. When he encounters other people their 'primitiveness' is strange but why wd he think he'd gone back in time? Eventually, he's taken captive by Spanish gold hunters. He still hasn't figured out that he's gone back in time.
"They passed an open area containing a market. It seemed literally to overflow with produce. Largely, it was similar to a score of other Mexican town markets Don had witnessed in his time, though, strangely, some of the products he would have expected were not evident. Bread, for instance, or chickens; nor, for that matter, did he spot either beef or pork in the section devoted to meats. And where were the inevitable ice-cream vendors? Whoever heard of a Mexican market without ice-cream vendors? And, now that he thought about it, there were no refreshment stands selling beer." - p 15
But, then, the fated moment came.
"Instead, even as he turned to follow young Sandoval, he said to Fray Olmedo, "Padre, could you tell me the exact date?"
"The priest said, "Why, it is the tenth of August, in the year of Out Lord, 1519."
""I was afraid you'd say something like that," Don Fielding said emptily." - p 21
"As a boy he had read the usual time travel classics such as Wells's The Time Machine and Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, and he vaguely remembered a movie he had seen revived on television entitled Berkeley Square" - p 29
YAY! I'm familiar w/ all 3. &, yes, this is probably most akin to the Twain novel.
Fielding escapes the greedy clutches of the invaders & seeks help from the natives. In the process he finds himself in the awkward position of delicately negotiating his way thru religions.
"Trying to keep his own viewpoint as an agnostic neutral, Don Fielding expressed as best he could in Nahuatl the Christian belief. It wasn't as difficult as he expected to get the fundamentals over to the Indian. In Tenochtitlan, too, they had gods who were born of virgins and native gods also had more than one aspect. The Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, three, still only one, did not bewilder Cuauhtemoc.
""But what are your beliefs, Don Fielding?" the Indian asked, after assimilating what he had heard.
"How did you explain the agnostic viewpoint to a superstitious native?
"Don said, seeking out his words carefully, "Man is the only thinking animal."" - p 89
""Do not let Xochitl hear such things from your lips when we arrive in Tenochtitlan." The Indian chuckled deprecation.
""Xochitl? Who is he?"
""The High Priest of Huitzilopochtli, the Hummingbird God, who is the chief god of the Tenochas. Speak thus and you will wind up on the altar, your heart torn from your chest. It is said to be a worthy way to die, however, I personally have never so regarded it though tell no priest I said so." The other laughed his deprecation again." - p 90
Coincidentally, my friend Brian Gentry had recently told me that hummingbirds are very violent & that that was why there was a Hummingbird God b/c he was a god of warriors.
"Motechzoma said, "Xochitl, the Quequetzalcoa."
"So this was the High Priest of Huitzilopochtli, the Hummingbird God, the god of war of the Tenochas.
"His eyes burned and he screamed, "Sacrifice him to the gods!"" - pp 113-114
The Other Time is multi-layered in what makes it interesting for me, its look at the culture of the time & place is fascinating. Take, e.g., the sanitation.
"He pointed out another canoe, laden down with what he knew not, and asked Cuauhtemoc about it.
"The young Indian laughed and explained that the public latrines were unloaded into these canoes and the contents taken over to the mainland to be used as fertilizer. It made sense. If they'd dumped their sewage into the canals, they'd not only have a horrible stench in short order but possibly an epidemic as well." - p 107
Fielding tries to explain the ulterior motives of the conquistidores to Cuauhtemoc.
""So that they can force you to work the mines, build houses and temples for them, till the soil so that they themselves can live lives of plenty without need to labor."
"The Indian was horrified, "But that is criminal!"
"Don groaned inwardly. How did you, even an anthropologist, describe class-divided society to a primitive communist? Above all, how do you explain that it led to progress? That to have scientists, scholars, and artists, you had to have a leisure class that had the time to create. Yes, the present-day Spain produced freebooters such as Cortes and Alvarado, but it also produced Cervantes and in due time Goya, Velazques, El Greco, and Murilio. Would Leonardo da Vinci ever have done his work if he'd had to put in ten or twelve hours a day tilling a field? Would Michaelangelo?" - p 161
I've had to work most of my adult life to pay my bills & otherwise survive but I've still managed to be enormously prolific as a creative person . If I were growing my own food & not food for others I don't think I'd have to toil a field for ten or twelve hours a day. Still, the point is taken.
Fielding leads the Tenochas against Cortes & his soldiers, using his historical knowledge & his 20th century weaponry & warfare savvy to give tham an advantage they wdn't've otherwise had. All the while he worries about the "Grandfather Paradox" of time travel but decides to do it anyway. The 'inevitable' misperception of who he is follows.
"He has led us in defense against the devils from across the seas. He foresees the future, correctly as all know. He can bring fire from his fingertips. It is the year One Reed. Would you fly, then, in the face of our returned Lord, Quetzalcoatl?"" - p 221
Once committed, Fielding goes all the way, abolishes human sacrifice, & establishes a new republic.
"He said, "By tomorrow morning, I want every pochteca in Tenochtitlan on the roads. You will go as traders, as always, but you will also be ambassadors of the Aztec Republic. Everywhere you go, you will explain that there are to be no more raids on their cities and no more tribute, ever, if they join the new Mexico, the Aztec Republic. Each city that wishes to join must immediately elect its two senators and its representatives from each of its clans and send them to Tenochtitlan for out first . . . our first congress.["]" - pp 277-278
What a spectacular movie this story wd make! What a great series of sequels cd be made to continue it!!
February 27, 2019
A fun quick read that would be a cool series of it had more pacing and character development
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February 24, 2012The Other Time by Mack Reynolds with Dean Ing. SF/Time travel. Paperback Baen books 308 pages. An archeologist’s fantasy as Dan Fielding, a specialist in Mexican cultures somehow finds himself time travelled (it is never explained) back to the Spanish invasion of Cortez where he uses what he can remember or reconstruct of science, plus his knowledge of history (which he admits because cloudier the more he makes changes) to help the Mexicans organize and defeat Cortez. This is a plot driven novel with only Fielding coming across as a believable character. He makes realistic mistakes and is portrayed as a scholar stuck in a warrior culture.
March 15, 2024
Quite an interesting sketch of how the Aztecs could have defeated the Spaniards, given some reorganization and new ideas. As fiction, it’s not incompetent, but it’s rather plodding; the writers were plainly more interested in the Aztec civilization and the alternative history than in the story. The hero had too many chances of being killed by one side or the other; his survival to the end of the book seems implausibly lucky.
September 3, 2011
Decent man-out-of-time story: a modern archaeologist finds himself in Mexico during Hernando Cortes’ invasion. Some of the usual preachiness/soapboxing is present, but the story is one of Reynolds’ better ones, and it’s less intrusive here.
May 25, 2011
It's a time travel, alt history,and historical fiction. Not my favorite Mack Reynolds book but not bad. I'd really give it 3 1/2 stars but it won't let me.
September 23, 2013
Convincing portrayal of Aztec culture and how a time traveler would save it and improve it.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews