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Time to Teleport / Delusion World
The World was quiet and that was bad, for it was the quiet not of peace but of stagnation. Strife was ended but so was progress, growth, human striving - except in the hidden laboratories and redoubts of the underground members of Humanity. They dared to try and struggle and learn ad move forward. and struggle and learned and move forward. Unless Eli Johnstone, Spokesman for the Autonomous Group that runs the world, can come to grips with their unflinching dedication to the future, they could just be the spark to blow a planet apart.
215 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published June 1, 1982
36 people want to read
About the author
Gordon R. Dickson
588 books375 followersGordon Rupert Dickson was an American science fiction author. He was born in Canada, then moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota as a teenager. He is probably most famous for his Childe Cycle and the Dragon Knight series. He won three Hugo awards and one Nebula award.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
November 9, 2012
I hate to admit it, but this is the first Gordy Dickson novel I have read. I have heard a lot about the Dorsai stories, but have never gotten around to reading any yet. This is not a novel about the Dorsai, however. It is a short novel, typical of what was being published in scifi back in the fifties and early sixties, about Eli Johnstone.
Eli is a born leader until he decides to retire early and undergoes some interesting procedures to live longer. After his retirement the political system called Groups is falling apart before his very eyes under the powerful hand of Anthony Sellers who has run the Transportation Group for twenty years. His plan is to take control of all the Groups and run it all as an omnipotent czar. He has a personal vendetta against the Members who have been doing some unusual things to humans in order to evolve the race, including hard radiation experiments. In the end we discover that Eli has a gift and he uses it to try to convince Sellars of his misguided plan.
The book reflects the time it was written in, nuclear fears and a one world government movement were big in the sixties, but Dickson goes beyond that with the vision that man needs a push to become more than he is. His writing is flowery in spots and heavy on the narration but this is a solid story and one that I enjoyed.
Delusion World is the second book in the Ace double that contained Time to Teleport. I suspect they doubled these two because they both have a telepathy/psionic theme to them. That is where the similarity ends however.
In this story our protagonist, Feliz Gebrod, is a technique trader who is called upon to go to the planet Dunroamin (a cute play on words) to find out why they have not been absorbed by the aggressive Malvar, who are expected to take over all the human worlds in 200 years – not nice creatures.
Feliz is reluctantly agrees to go and our adventure begins. When he lands – somewhat less than a textbook landing courtesy of the Malvar who attack him on the way – he finds a girl sobbing nearby. She is very reminiscent of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in my opinion. She tells him how she is alone on the planet and hungry. Feliz is not sure why she feels alone since his sensors showed the planet is well populated, but is unable to find out more. As he begins to head toward the large city near is landing area he runs into the eccentric mayor El Hoska.
Things get interesting when, after the mayor leads him to town in an interesting fashion, Feliz is left there alone for a moment and is captured by two very strange peace officers and hauled off to jail. He then meets Taki Manoai the controller of the city. Feliz is beginning to believe he is hallucinating as he goes between the dressed in black people of the controller, and the colorfully dressed people who call El Hoska mayor. Eventually Feliz figures out what is going on and comes up with a rather unique way of resolving the issue and finds out why the Malvar have left Dunroamin alone.
I liked the payoff but the novel was very slow reading up to it. Of the two stories, I liked Time to Teleport better. I will have to retrieve our copy of Dorsai from the library at the farm now and compare it with these two stories.
Eli is a born leader until he decides to retire early and undergoes some interesting procedures to live longer. After his retirement the political system called Groups is falling apart before his very eyes under the powerful hand of Anthony Sellers who has run the Transportation Group for twenty years. His plan is to take control of all the Groups and run it all as an omnipotent czar. He has a personal vendetta against the Members who have been doing some unusual things to humans in order to evolve the race, including hard radiation experiments. In the end we discover that Eli has a gift and he uses it to try to convince Sellars of his misguided plan.
The book reflects the time it was written in, nuclear fears and a one world government movement were big in the sixties, but Dickson goes beyond that with the vision that man needs a push to become more than he is. His writing is flowery in spots and heavy on the narration but this is a solid story and one that I enjoyed.
Delusion World is the second book in the Ace double that contained Time to Teleport. I suspect they doubled these two because they both have a telepathy/psionic theme to them. That is where the similarity ends however.
In this story our protagonist, Feliz Gebrod, is a technique trader who is called upon to go to the planet Dunroamin (a cute play on words) to find out why they have not been absorbed by the aggressive Malvar, who are expected to take over all the human worlds in 200 years – not nice creatures.
Feliz is reluctantly agrees to go and our adventure begins. When he lands – somewhat less than a textbook landing courtesy of the Malvar who attack him on the way – he finds a girl sobbing nearby. She is very reminiscent of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in my opinion. She tells him how she is alone on the planet and hungry. Feliz is not sure why she feels alone since his sensors showed the planet is well populated, but is unable to find out more. As he begins to head toward the large city near is landing area he runs into the eccentric mayor El Hoska.
Things get interesting when, after the mayor leads him to town in an interesting fashion, Feliz is left there alone for a moment and is captured by two very strange peace officers and hauled off to jail. He then meets Taki Manoai the controller of the city. Feliz is beginning to believe he is hallucinating as he goes between the dressed in black people of the controller, and the colorfully dressed people who call El Hoska mayor. Eventually Feliz figures out what is going on and comes up with a rather unique way of resolving the issue and finds out why the Malvar have left Dunroamin alone.
I liked the payoff but the novel was very slow reading up to it. Of the two stories, I liked Time to Teleport better. I will have to retrieve our copy of Dorsai from the library at the farm now and compare it with these two stories.
Displaying 1 of 1 review