Time Explorers, Inc.

by E.W. Hildick

Two schoolboys experimenting with predicting the future through dream interpretation find their results becoming too realistic.

222 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1976

About the author

E.W. (Edmund Wallace) Hildick was a British children's book author. He was born in Bradford, England in 1925. After two years service in the Royal Air Force he became a secondary school teacher, then a writer, later moving to the United States to become editor of a literary magazine. He died in London in 2001.

Reviews

[Ann]

Narrator Buzz is sitting on a bus when a crash causes apples to roll around the highway, which makes him realize that a weird dream his classmate Danny had described to him just came true. He immediately starts taking an increased interest in Danny and his dreams, trying to interpret them all. He has a modicum of success, but it also gets them in trouble. An attempt to interpret a dream of a turkey grabbing a goblet as someone stealing all of the silver trophies during Thanksgiving break backfires when people assume they were the ones who stole the trophies.

Throughout I found Buzz rather callous towards Danny, he felt more like a tool than a true friend, though Buzz is upset when the boys fight and don't speak for several days. It was interesting, because I think in a modern book the character would do so self-reflecting and realize he hadn't been a very good friend, but that doesn't really happen (well, maybe subtly, as Buzz protests-too-much about why Danny should appreciate him more). In the end Danny begs Buzz not to go into a burned out factory because of a nightmare he'd had, and Buzz does it anyway, and Danny pushes Buzz out of an elevator but is (presumably) killed himself.