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The Douglas Convolution
"We are the future. In your heart you are one or us. I want you for your Convolution. The Master of Time. I want you because we share race, language, nation, philosophy."
Ian Douglas of 1980, discoverer of the knot in Time, became Captain Gart of 2170 by accident. Once in that role, he dared not change, for the world was fighting a desperate battle for survival.
The shattered remnants of the American East were hanging on grimly in the face of maniacal attacks of bestial men. Across the seas a matriarchal order had grasped the fallen reins of science and provided the last hope for a civilized future. Gart/Douglas, with his forgotten skills, could be their best tool. But as a tool he held martial capabilities and scientific abilities they could not suspect.
Ian Douglas of 1980, discoverer of the knot in Time, became Captain Gart of 2170 by accident. Once in that role, he dared not change, for the world was fighting a desperate battle for survival.
The shattered remnants of the American East were hanging on grimly in the face of maniacal attacks of bestial men. Across the seas a matriarchal order had grasped the fallen reins of science and provided the last hope for a civilized future. Gart/Douglas, with his forgotten skills, could be their best tool. But as a tool he held martial capabilities and scientific abilities they could not suspect.
190 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published October 2, 1979
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
July 31, 2026
Quite a late 70s romp by Llewellyn with good cover art by Don Maitz. Written largely in expository format (authored primarily by Diana):
According to the Convolution, time travel becomes possible purely due to certain natural events (I will leave it at that). To test this, Douglas located the next 'spot' and indeed found it, but it projected him to the year 2170. Now, the world of 2170 is nothing like he expected. First, due to the use of certain chemicals (Llewellyn worked as a medical researcher) most women on the planet became sterile by 2030, leading to the 'chaos'. While the author never explored these events (he does so in other of his novels), the end result was in 2170, only about 70 million humans are left on the planet and live in 10 'zones' with the rest simply wilderness. Each zone is governed by someone and people are free to move around zones. That stated, most of them are hooked on a drug like Prozac and idle through life as farmers. Vestiges of high tech still abound, but people are simply living off the relics of the 'abundant age'.
When Douglas pops into the future off Hudson Bay, he almost freezes to death, saved by an encounter from a helicopter crew (bit of a story there). Both the pilot and a member of the Patrol. Douglas took the dead patrol member's clothes and assumed his identity (he was badly banged up on his face). So, Douglas, now AKA Captain Gart, scrambles to learn what is what...
Fun read, and while technical it times, not very serious, nor intended to be. I believe this was Llewellyn's first novel and he did not take up writing fiction until his late 60s. 3.5 nostalgic stars!!
"He has told me to write this report on how we got where we are, so that you will be convinced by the "logic of events." I don't know what he means by that phrase and neither, I suspect, does he, but I take it that I am to include all I judge relevant."The basic story centers on Ian Douglas, a former marine who served in Vietnam and then went on to become a theoretical mathematician who formalized (what later became known as) the titular Douglas Convolution.
According to the Convolution, time travel becomes possible purely due to certain natural events (I will leave it at that). To test this, Douglas located the next 'spot' and indeed found it, but it projected him to the year 2170. Now, the world of 2170 is nothing like he expected. First, due to the use of certain chemicals (Llewellyn worked as a medical researcher) most women on the planet became sterile by 2030, leading to the 'chaos'. While the author never explored these events (he does so in other of his novels), the end result was in 2170, only about 70 million humans are left on the planet and live in 10 'zones' with the rest simply wilderness. Each zone is governed by someone and people are free to move around zones. That stated, most of them are hooked on a drug like Prozac and idle through life as farmers. Vestiges of high tech still abound, but people are simply living off the relics of the 'abundant age'.
When Douglas pops into the future off Hudson Bay, he almost freezes to death, saved by an encounter from a helicopter crew (bit of a story there). Both the pilot and a member of the Patrol. Douglas took the dead patrol member's clothes and assumed his identity (he was badly banged up on his face). So, Douglas, now AKA Captain Gart, scrambles to learn what is what...
Fun read, and while technical it times, not very serious, nor intended to be. I believe this was Llewellyn's first novel and he did not take up writing fiction until his late 60s. 3.5 nostalgic stars!!
December 17, 2017
It's kind of a weird coincidence to have followed 1979's The Night of Kadar with this book—another 1979 sci-fi romp with a mystery element, though in this case the protagonist is displaced in time and not space.
I was reminded of this bit from one of the less funny Hitchhiker's, maybe So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish.
The titular convolution is one that allows the mathematically brilliant Douglas to predict where the next time-flux is going to occur, but a la Office Space ("I always do that! I always mess up some mundane detail!") Douglas forgets to carry the one and gets sucked bodily into the time vortex, two hundred years into the future, where he surprises and then murders (ok, self-defends-to-death) a thuggish cop and his girl pilot and—through a series of wacky misunderstandings—ends up switching places with said cop.
He finds the world grossly depopulated (by a drug which ended up sterilizing the future daughters of the women who took it) and divided into a variety of sectors with different philosophies. There's even a Marxist sector which "works" because everyone is allowed to leave any sector to go to another sector at any time, so abuses are prevented. Our hero notes this to be possible because there are 30 million people sharing the wealth of about 7 billion (I think—I can't remember what number he placed on the pre-apocalyptic population). This strikes me as nonsense—society seems to be put in peril when a minor link in the chain goes out, much less a population decrease of over two orders of magnitude—but the hero notes that it's unsustainable and that they're running out of pre-created wealth with no way to replace it so I let it slide.
Also, the masses (what there are of them) are drugged up on happy pills.
Meanwhile, Jan (nee Douglas) finds himself with a new pilot patrolling the frontier (apparently everything west of the Blue Ridge mountains) which is plagued by attacks of animalistic barbarians run by a mysterious would-be tyrant. Jan spent ten years as a marine prior to his little math glitch, so he easily lapses into atavistic macho man, which surprises his pilot a bit.
His pilot is part of a genetically selected breed of little girls with the peculiar trait of being able to juggle the quadratic equations needed to keep this particular military ship in the air—something which frustrates Jan to no end. She's actually the narrator of the story, and brings forth the other unusual connection with Night of Kadar: She seems be indoctrinated into a kind of neo-Zoroastrianism.
Though her name (Diana) hearkens from Greek mythology, the name Mitra comes up a lot and she's indoctrinated through quasi-nefarious means into a dichotomy of Light/Dark that manifests sometimes as a religious zeal (a petit mal seizure it is suggested, though it sounds more like a focal seizure to me).
Llewellyn does a fine job of creating a real mystery about whether there is any mysticism to this. Diana seems to have the power of communication over animals but she may just be hallucinating/lucky. This is used effectively as she and Jan begin to shift POVs over the course of the book.
It's a fun read, though I'd have trouble really describing "the plot". The villains are racial purists, which is pretty much paint-by-numbers code for evil, but the nefariousness of their plans seem murky at best. Much like "Night of Kadar", there are a series of interesting adventures that all serve to reveal a mystery, and the reveal is acceptable. It didn't knock my socks off but it was well supported and the journey was enjoyable.
I was reminded of this bit from one of the less funny Hitchhiker's, maybe So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish.
"Eddies in the space/time continuum."
"Is he?"
The titular convolution is one that allows the mathematically brilliant Douglas to predict where the next time-flux is going to occur, but a la Office Space ("I always do that! I always mess up some mundane detail!") Douglas forgets to carry the one and gets sucked bodily into the time vortex, two hundred years into the future, where he surprises and then murders (ok, self-defends-to-death) a thuggish cop and his girl pilot and—through a series of wacky misunderstandings—ends up switching places with said cop.
He finds the world grossly depopulated (by a drug which ended up sterilizing the future daughters of the women who took it) and divided into a variety of sectors with different philosophies. There's even a Marxist sector which "works" because everyone is allowed to leave any sector to go to another sector at any time, so abuses are prevented. Our hero notes this to be possible because there are 30 million people sharing the wealth of about 7 billion (I think—I can't remember what number he placed on the pre-apocalyptic population). This strikes me as nonsense—society seems to be put in peril when a minor link in the chain goes out, much less a population decrease of over two orders of magnitude—but the hero notes that it's unsustainable and that they're running out of pre-created wealth with no way to replace it so I let it slide.
Also, the masses (what there are of them) are drugged up on happy pills.
Meanwhile, Jan (nee Douglas) finds himself with a new pilot patrolling the frontier (apparently everything west of the Blue Ridge mountains) which is plagued by attacks of animalistic barbarians run by a mysterious would-be tyrant. Jan spent ten years as a marine prior to his little math glitch, so he easily lapses into atavistic macho man, which surprises his pilot a bit.
His pilot is part of a genetically selected breed of little girls with the peculiar trait of being able to juggle the quadratic equations needed to keep this particular military ship in the air—something which frustrates Jan to no end. She's actually the narrator of the story, and brings forth the other unusual connection with Night of Kadar: She seems be indoctrinated into a kind of neo-Zoroastrianism.
Though her name (Diana) hearkens from Greek mythology, the name Mitra comes up a lot and she's indoctrinated through quasi-nefarious means into a dichotomy of Light/Dark that manifests sometimes as a religious zeal (a petit mal seizure it is suggested, though it sounds more like a focal seizure to me).
Llewellyn does a fine job of creating a real mystery about whether there is any mysticism to this. Diana seems to have the power of communication over animals but she may just be hallucinating/lucky. This is used effectively as she and Jan begin to shift POVs over the course of the book.
It's a fun read, though I'd have trouble really describing "the plot". The villains are racial purists, which is pretty much paint-by-numbers code for evil, but the nefariousness of their plans seem murky at best. Much like "Night of Kadar", there are a series of interesting adventures that all serve to reveal a mystery, and the reveal is acceptable. It didn't knock my socks off but it was well supported and the journey was enjoyable.
October 20, 2020
It is books like this that make it fun to cruise through vintage sci-fi for hidden gems. No it's not going to blow your mind, but it's a slim, fun read and believable enough to engage. It's actually part of a loose trilogy, written in reverse chronology a la Star Wars, with this book being the third in chronology but the first in the series. They can be read independently but for those that enjoyed the conceits of this book will enjoy the other two reads as well. It's got the typical white male limitations of of 1980, but the writing is pretty good. This publisher, DAW, had a good run in the 70-80s.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews