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Time Thieves / Against Arcturus
TIME THIEVES
"Mr. Mullion," one of the triplets said, looming up twenty feet away as Pete followed the smooth railing. He stopped, his heart racing, but he felt a break in the rail as he did so. He edged forward a foot or two and felt around with his boot until he discovered a step. In a moment, blood pounding in his temples, he was halfway down toward the lower level, taking two risers at a time, no matter what the danger of a fall. He heard the mechanical man start after him as he set foot on the cement floor.
AGAINST ARCTURUS
It's the story of an Earth activist who's tagged for a subversion mission on a small planet off in the galaxy a ways. Seems that when Earth got overpopulated, humans set out for other planets to colonize, and now those planets are rival factions. The Arcturans are humans, too, but an offshoot who's presently at war with Earth. The small planet in question is resource-rich and quite desirable to both sides. Arcturus in presently in control, and Earth wants to be.
"Mr. Mullion," one of the triplets said, looming up twenty feet away as Pete followed the smooth railing. He stopped, his heart racing, but he felt a break in the rail as he did so. He edged forward a foot or two and felt around with his boot until he discovered a step. In a moment, blood pounding in his temples, he was halfway down toward the lower level, taking two risers at a time, no matter what the danger of a fall. He heard the mechanical man start after him as he set foot on the cement floor.
AGAINST ARCTURUS
It's the story of an Earth activist who's tagged for a subversion mission on a small planet off in the galaxy a ways. Seems that when Earth got overpopulated, humans set out for other planets to colonize, and now those planets are rival factions. The Arcturans are humans, too, but an offshoot who's presently at war with Earth. The small planet in question is resource-rich and quite desirable to both sides. Arcturus in presently in control, and Earth wants to be.
253 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1972
3 people are currently reading
389 people want to read
About the author
Dean Koontz
906 books39.6k followersAcknowledged as "America's most popular suspense novelist" (Rolling Stone) and as one of today's most celebrated and successful writers, Dean Ray Koontz has earned the devotion of millions of readers around the world and the praise of critics everywhere for tales of character, mystery, and adventure that strike to the core of what it means to be human.
Dean, the author of many #1 New York Times bestsellers, lives in Southern California with his wife, Gerda, their golden retriever, Elsa, and the enduring spirit of their goldens, Trixie and Anna.
Facebook: Facebook.com/DeanKoontzOfficial
Twitter: @DeanKoontz
Website: DeanKoontz.com
Dean, the author of many #1 New York Times bestsellers, lives in Southern California with his wife, Gerda, their golden retriever, Elsa, and the enduring spirit of their goldens, Trixie and Anna.
Facebook: Facebook.com/DeanKoontzOfficial
Twitter: @DeanKoontz
Website: DeanKoontz.com
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Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
July 16, 2022
This is one of the Ace Double volumes, which featured two novels by different authors published back-to-back and in opposite orientation to one another, with a different cover for each novel. Against Arcturus by Susan K. Putney is a good, amusing space opera, with mankind trying to settle a world that's already inhabited by a highly evolved indigenous species. It's an intelligent and well-written book; I believe it was her only story other than some work on Spider-Man. Time Thieves is a somewhat shorter Koontz book, from his very prolific 1972. It has a very striking cover by David Plourde, who did some good genre covers in the 1970s, which doesn't seem to have much to do with the story. The story is about a man named Mullion who is suffering from missing chunks of time. He and his wife try to solve the mystery and come up against lots of cool sf tropes like robots, aliens, telepathy, etc. It's a fun story, but not among his best. It's another good-enough story that Koontz later dismissed. I enjoyed both of the novels in this one.
July 21, 2016
Dean R. Koontz, Time Thieves (Ace, 1972)
[originally posted 20Dec2001]
Everyone who's delved into Dean Koontz' early work is fully aware the man wrote some absolute howlers, things that will probably never again see the light of day. But interspersed with them were some flashes of greatness, a few choice novellae and short stories that hinted at the greatness to come. Of the pre-horror work, the finest book by far is A Darkness in My Soul; Time Thieves gives it a pretty good run for second.
The cover has nothing at all to do with the plot; ignore it completely. We open with a guy who pulls into his garage, gets out of the car, goes into the kitchen to get something to eat, and finds out (courtesy his shocked wife) he's been gone for twelve days. Problem is he can't remember any of that time. Sound like a familiar plot? Should, if you watch the X-Files (and, since it's mentioned on the cover, saying it's an alien-abduction lost-time story isn't exactly giving away spoilers), but remember this book is coming up on thirty years old, back when only about twenty people in the country had ever heard the term "Project Bluebook." So looking back from a 2001 perspective, it's a pretty old tale, but keep in mind the temporal context.
Koontz also keeps the sci-fi claptrap to a minimum, which is always nice. No annoying seventies-space-opera-sounding names for common household appliances or anything like that. In fact, Time Thieves points to the place Koontz ended up, after taking a quick detour into Dick Francis-land in 1974; Time Thieves could pass for a horror novel with a heavy sci-fi bent to it (Strangers, anyone?). A must for Koontz completists, and recommended for casual fans as well. ***
* * *
Susan K. Putney, Against Arcturus (Ace, 1972)
[originally posted 7Jan2002]
Not being much of a hard sci-fi fan, I'd probably never have picked this up were it not the flip-side of the Ace double containing Dean Koontz' long out-of-print Time Thieves. It's the story of an Earth activist who's tagged for a subversion mission on a small planet off in the galaxy a ways. Seems that when Earth got overpopulated, humans set out for other planets to colonize, and now those planets are rival factions. The Arcturans are humans, too, but an offshoot who's presently at war with Earth. The small planet in question is resource-rich and quite desirable to both sides. Arcturus in presently in control, and Earth wants to be. Pretty standard sci-fi stuff.
The "pretty standard" designation continues with the terminology used—why is it that sci-fi novelists from Wells all the way up to William Gibson feel the need to create a "sci-fi atmosphere" by using unintelligible terminology for everyday things, and creating artifacts like videophones?—but thankfully there's at least halfway decent character development happening here, and the reader will (eventually) get involved enough with the characters to care what's going on. Far more interesting than the main plot is a subplot involving the planet's native race, who seem to have strong beliefs that simply aren't true (strong enough to keep repeating the same info under hypnosis and truth drugs); while the end of the book is somewhat predictable (especially given the timeframe in which it was written), the climax of that particular subplot is what leads the book into predictability, and that climax is at least worth the
price of admission-- or was when paperbacks cost less than a buck (as this one did).
Not something worth hunting down for the years it'll take you to find a copy at the proper price point, and not worth buying as much more than an investment (after all, the Dean Koontz side of the double is worth a small mint in your find it in the right condition), but if you happen to stumble upon a copy, flip it over after you're done with Dean. **
[originally posted 20Dec2001]
Everyone who's delved into Dean Koontz' early work is fully aware the man wrote some absolute howlers, things that will probably never again see the light of day. But interspersed with them were some flashes of greatness, a few choice novellae and short stories that hinted at the greatness to come. Of the pre-horror work, the finest book by far is A Darkness in My Soul; Time Thieves gives it a pretty good run for second.
The cover has nothing at all to do with the plot; ignore it completely. We open with a guy who pulls into his garage, gets out of the car, goes into the kitchen to get something to eat, and finds out (courtesy his shocked wife) he's been gone for twelve days. Problem is he can't remember any of that time. Sound like a familiar plot? Should, if you watch the X-Files (and, since it's mentioned on the cover, saying it's an alien-abduction lost-time story isn't exactly giving away spoilers), but remember this book is coming up on thirty years old, back when only about twenty people in the country had ever heard the term "Project Bluebook." So looking back from a 2001 perspective, it's a pretty old tale, but keep in mind the temporal context.
Koontz also keeps the sci-fi claptrap to a minimum, which is always nice. No annoying seventies-space-opera-sounding names for common household appliances or anything like that. In fact, Time Thieves points to the place Koontz ended up, after taking a quick detour into Dick Francis-land in 1974; Time Thieves could pass for a horror novel with a heavy sci-fi bent to it (Strangers, anyone?). A must for Koontz completists, and recommended for casual fans as well. ***
* * *
Susan K. Putney, Against Arcturus (Ace, 1972)
[originally posted 7Jan2002]
Not being much of a hard sci-fi fan, I'd probably never have picked this up were it not the flip-side of the Ace double containing Dean Koontz' long out-of-print Time Thieves. It's the story of an Earth activist who's tagged for a subversion mission on a small planet off in the galaxy a ways. Seems that when Earth got overpopulated, humans set out for other planets to colonize, and now those planets are rival factions. The Arcturans are humans, too, but an offshoot who's presently at war with Earth. The small planet in question is resource-rich and quite desirable to both sides. Arcturus in presently in control, and Earth wants to be. Pretty standard sci-fi stuff.
The "pretty standard" designation continues with the terminology used—why is it that sci-fi novelists from Wells all the way up to William Gibson feel the need to create a "sci-fi atmosphere" by using unintelligible terminology for everyday things, and creating artifacts like videophones?—but thankfully there's at least halfway decent character development happening here, and the reader will (eventually) get involved enough with the characters to care what's going on. Far more interesting than the main plot is a subplot involving the planet's native race, who seem to have strong beliefs that simply aren't true (strong enough to keep repeating the same info under hypnosis and truth drugs); while the end of the book is somewhat predictable (especially given the timeframe in which it was written), the climax of that particular subplot is what leads the book into predictability, and that climax is at least worth the
price of admission-- or was when paperbacks cost less than a buck (as this one did).
Not something worth hunting down for the years it'll take you to find a copy at the proper price point, and not worth buying as much more than an investment (after all, the Dean Koontz side of the double is worth a small mint in your find it in the right condition), but if you happen to stumble upon a copy, flip it over after you're done with Dean. **
April 20, 2022
I really enjoyed both sides of this Ace Double.
The longer Against Arcturus was an oddball story of a sort of future Cold War with both sides trying to gain the allegiance of a particularly weird alien species. Just how weird that species gets is what makes the book shine.
The early Dean Koontz SF novella Time Thieves likewise redeems itself from falling into what I'm sure was in 1972 an already clichéd alien abduction story in the end, showing itself to be primarily concerned with character over gadgetry.
I paid $35 for my copy, so this might be a bit tough to get your hands on, but for this avid collector of Ace SF Doubles, it was a must-have that happily turned out to be a must-read!
The longer Against Arcturus was an oddball story of a sort of future Cold War with both sides trying to gain the allegiance of a particularly weird alien species. Just how weird that species gets is what makes the book shine.
The early Dean Koontz SF novella Time Thieves likewise redeems itself from falling into what I'm sure was in 1972 an already clichéd alien abduction story in the end, showing itself to be primarily concerned with character over gadgetry.
I paid $35 for my copy, so this might be a bit tough to get your hands on, but for this avid collector of Ace SF Doubles, it was a must-have that happily turned out to be a must-read!
June 2, 2017
A short novel from Koontz's early years. While not great, it is a fun read.
August 14, 2012
Time Thieves isn't a book about time travel, it does have aliens and androids and spaceships, but in the end, it's a love story.
As the story opens the main character finds himself at a loss to explain how he got where he is and what happened with the lost time. He begins to notice odd things around him and odd things about himself. In his investigations, he uncovers quite a convoluted set of circumstances that all build from one chance meeting, a mistake and the ensuing efforts to correct that mistake.
It doesn't have a strong narrative or plot, but as an early work of Dean Koontz I figured it was worth seeing how he developed as a writer. It isn't as good as his later works so only 4 stars. It is certainly interesting and nothing is left hanging at the end. All questions are answered and everything is brought to a tidy conclusion.
As the story opens the main character finds himself at a loss to explain how he got where he is and what happened with the lost time. He begins to notice odd things around him and odd things about himself. In his investigations, he uncovers quite a convoluted set of circumstances that all build from one chance meeting, a mistake and the ensuing efforts to correct that mistake.
It doesn't have a strong narrative or plot, but as an early work of Dean Koontz I figured it was worth seeing how he developed as a writer. It isn't as good as his later works so only 4 stars. It is certainly interesting and nothing is left hanging at the end. All questions are answered and everything is brought to a tidy conclusion.
December 6, 2012
Ace Double Novel 441-00990-095
Time Thieves, Dean R Koontz, grade B-
Against Arcturus, Susan Putney. grade A-
Time Thieves, Dean R Koontz, grade B-
Against Arcturus, Susan Putney. grade A-
December 14, 2011
Time Thieves... Meh, maybe I just didn't get it.
April 28, 2014
Terrible
March 18, 2015
Clearly written in Dean's early years...
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews