Time Echo

by Lionel Roberts

A freedom fighter flees a nightmarish future dictatorship only to find himself living in the time of Napoleon - while his counterpart from the past finds himself in the future.

Genres: Science Fiction

157 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1959

About the author

Pseudonym by Lionel Fanthorpe & Patricia Fanthorpe

Reviews

[Peter · Rating 1 out of 5]

It didn't take long for me to realize that this was a bad book. I'm not sure which bit of lame dialog first alerted me to that fact, although I do remember that it was a painful redundancy.

But when the author told us that his "nightmarish" future dictatorship (which was actually somewhat ridiculous) was "a thousand times worse than Orwell's 1984"...well at that point I realized that life really is too short to waste on some books, after all.

This book is a relic of a time when there was some out-and-out crap being published in the science fiction field, primarily (I think) because some editors believed that all science fiction was crap - probably because them themselves never read or couldn't understand some of the classics that were being created in the genre.

This is a perfect example of a writer who cannot write.

Update: A friend did some research when he read this review, and discovered that the author was, in fact, incredibly prolific - he wrote 89 science fiction books in a three-year period, as I recall. He did it by dictating them into a recorder, which he apparently did while in bed with a blanket over his head - I am NOT making this up!

But even so, he couldn't write.

[Sky · Rating 4 out of 5]

Neil Gaiman described it well when he said, "Do not read too much Lionel Fanthorpe at one go. Your brains will turn to guacamole and drip out of your ears."

It's essentially the written equivalent of a 50s/60s cult sci-fi movie that's so bad it's good. Clearly never proofread, the text was assembled by two authors (Lionel and Patricia Fanthorpe), and parts are of it are extremely difficult to read. The punctuation often makes no sense, there are run-on sentences and sentence fragments throughout, and the ending is very abrupt.

That said, it has all the sincerity and inept charm of an Ed Wood movie. The characters are stupid yet endearing. Their motivations are so earnest, if vapid, that you can't help but root for them.

And if you find yourself zoning out, thinking about other things in your day, and haven't managed to retain the last half page you read? It doesn't matter with this book! You can just keep going.

[Carlos West · Rating 2 out of 5]

British author Robert Lionel, aka R.L. Fanthorpe, 1935-, known for his many sci-fi novels, such as Dawn of the Mutants(1959) and March of the Robots(1961) had chosen a very popular theme for Time Echo. This book, actually 1st published in 1959, echoes subject matter covered in the 2016 film Alice through the Looking Glass and the new Fall TV series, Timeless. Readers rarely get bored with time travel, although this book is the ultimate test. Actually, if you cut out 80% of the scientific lecture chapter, the story would be fairly good, for a quick read. The plot in a nutshell- evil Rajak the Magnificent rules Eurasia, rebel Mike Grafton escapes the 24th century and travels to the early 19th century, 1809 to be exact. Fans of Napoleon Bonaparte will enjoy him as a character in an extended dream sequence. Anyways, while Mike goes to the past, Benjamin Bathhurst does the opposite. The categories dealt with are- fighting against dictatorship, rebellion, science, history, time travel, and other dimensions.

[Himay]

Real pulp sci-fi. Fun read, except for the useless, ridiculous quasi scientific exposition, which adds very little, if anything, to the narrative.