A Secret History of Time to Come

by Robie MacAuley

The time is perhaps centuries from now. No one keeps track of years anymore. The place is the USA, tho it no longer has a name. Kincaid, a man dressed in animal skins, is pushing his way through an endless dense forest. He carries a worn piece of paper covered with a net of colored lines, lines that seem to relate in some way to the land and crumbling ruins glimpsed through the undergrowth. The paper is headed "ESSO Road Map: North Central States". Driven by a will he barely understands, he's searching for place marked on the paper far to the west and a face he's seen in a dream. Striking across the wasteland, he discovers what's left of society; the tiny clusters of people huddling together in villages, some deformed by generations of isolation, oppressed by poverty, some beginning to taste a new prosperity, puzzling over objects salvaged from the treacherous ruin's of the forefather's dwellings —machines, books, guns — striving again for a richer life. But across the almost empty land, across widely scattered settlements and lonely rivers, there hangs a persistent echo of war, pain and brutality. Suddenly, quiet places are scenes of terror —bands of horsemen ride north out of the unknown, wielding rifles and whips, raiding, kidnapping and killing, herding people like animals back to their capitol in the south. Kinkaid's caught up in their violence, as he sets out to rescue a girl from the very heart of the slaving culture.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Post Apocalyptic, Apocalyptic

303 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 1979

About the author

Robie Mayhew MacAuley

Reviews

[Jeffrey Engel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was a bit influenced by various reviews before and while I was reading this story. The half-hearted and below average descriptions almost made me put the book down, but something kept me going. As I came to the end of the story, I started wonder if people actually read the story from beginning to end. I know a lot of people read really fast. I'm not sure if it's an advanced form of reading or outright skimming, but if you do that, you will lose lot of the "message" behind this story. There is a level of meta in the story which seems confusing at first and which almost perfectly snaps together at the end. I say almost perfectly because there are still some "magical realism" elements that suggest some kind of psychic connection that spans time, yet this barely influences the story. The story is one that is age-old: Man's inhumanity to man. And, there's also the story of the traveler who gets caught up in revolution. Combine these two parts, mix in a dystopian future 200 years after a major race war devolves further into nuclear annihilation, and you have the environment in which this book exists.

In some ways, this story could be a sequel to Cormack McCarthy's "The Road", with its darkness and depression. What makes it different is an always glimmering ray of hope, of something good coming down the line, some kind of resolution.

I read a review of this book that describes the author's writing as "not very good". I have to completely disagree. I found MacAuley's skill with prose and exposition incredibly adept. There isn't a lot of dialogue in this story. It is mostly about things we are seeing, hearing and smelling. And MacAuley is an expert. Incredibly succinct yet flourishing with detail, if he was a worse writer this book would have been half as long and turned into a short story with very 1 dimensional characters, or it would have been two times as long without his ability to describe elaborate things with sharp simplicity.

[Sol Invictus · Rating 1 out of 5]

"Science fiction" only in the loosest sense, essentially a white supremacist horror story.

Found this at a used book store. Based on the name and description, I got the impression that this was a novel about nuclear war and its aftermath, like Alas, Babylon or a number of others. It is not. It's about a social collapse predicated on a race war, and basically directly blames black people for destroying society. (So more comparable to the Turner Diaries which helped inspire Timothy McVeigh.) If it were possible to give negative stars, I probably would. I'm just reviewing it to make this clear to would-be readers, because people generally don't seem to be talking about this aspect of the book.

[Jesse Christopherson · Rating 3 out of 5]

A race war in the early 1980s turns into a global apocalypse and leaves the United States a sparsely populated wasteland.

Several characters have their own, converging, narrative strands. There are moments of beautiful language and ideas that transcend the commonplace plot.

There was an overemphasis on background compared to action, and the story of one of the most interesting characters (and his timeline) dwindles to nothing about halfway through. There is also a supernatural plot device that isn't well justified and doesn't bear fruit.

There was a little bit of indirect commentary on slavery. Is it human nature to oppress the weak? What are the social consequences of treating people as property? Is there a slavery cycle in human history and is it continuing? The story could have supported more exploration of those questions, and more detail about what happened to all the Black people.

[Joyce · Rating 4 out of 5]

Robie MacAuley, by all counts, is a well educated experienced editor and writer. I was initially drawn in by telling of the aftermath of the Detroit race riots in 1967 and later. I was curious to see where MacAulay would take this in a post apocalyptic world. In reading, I imagined the settlements described looked like those in the movie The Postman, a movie I almost never fire of watching. (And, now, to catch a glimpse of Tom Petty). Everything intertwined and rendered a good view of what could have happened in that future (written in 1979), and was good food for thought now that 40 years have passed.

[Cassie · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book feels like a product of it's time. The race war doesn't really feel like the story the author wants to tell, but was the lingering thing in my mind the entire book. I had to roll my eyes when it is the only main female character in the book, Glyn, that gets captured. I do not understand why the reader has to be put in the mind of Hurt only when he is about to assult her. Overall the future world is an interesting concept but I wanted more sci-fi and less white supremacy in the execution.

[Terry · Rating 3 out of 5]

I kept starting to put this book down and move on to something else. The writing isn't especially good but the story itself kept hooking me back (and I didn't have anything else on tap to replace it). A couple of the characters are pretty well drawn (Kincaid, Glyn), but beyond that it's all plot.

[Erik Graff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Post-apocalyptic novels are one of my favorite sub-genres, perhaps because I grew up with every expectation of biochemical or nuclear war, environmental or economic collapse. This is one of the better novels of the kind I've read.

[Damian · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an odd one, a curious book that appeared in 1979 and has not made much of an impact since. The title is 'A Secret History of Time to Come', written by Robie MacAuley. He was an American editor, novelist and critic whose literary career spanned more than 50 years, writing mostly short fiction. He produced only two novels including this one. All of his work save this novel was mainstream.

I was reminded of it during a recent chat about interesting speculative fiction written by authors firmly placed in the mainstream that yet cannot be described as anything other than SF. Like the Handmaids Tale, this story very much draws its inspiration from the present time (indeed it is more relevant than ever!) but could not work as anything other than speculative fiction or, in my view, science fiction.

The novel belongs in the realm of long-post-apocalyptic fiction in that it depicts North America several hundred years after the collapse of its current civilisation. It's obviously a very common idea in SF, done in many ways in many books of varying quality, but his book depicts this shattered future world with great depth and strength of vision; both the physical world itself and the new social order of the rule of the strong, more accurately called disorder. While it is intensely evocative of nature and the physical environment, reminding me of 'The Chrysalids' by John Wyndham or 'The Long Tomorrow' by Leigh Brackett, it is much darker in tone than those works; the consequences of a return to a more chaotic way of life are clearly presented as nothing short of a disaster for the bulk of surviving humanity.

The book also has a slightly magical-realism feel to it. The story is mostly concerned with protagonists living in this grim future world, but there is also the story of how this world came to be, told from the point of view of an American in the early 1980s. He seems to have a connection with the future we are seeing or, in one interpretation, we should possibly doubt whether it is real and not just his nightmare. But he has good reason to fear, given his situation; this section of the book contains a very dire warning of how humanity can repeat its mistakes and, in this case, vilest crimes. MacAuley served in the later stages of the Second World War and was witness to the discovery of Concentration camps and also the pursuit of war criminals. This experience comes across subtly but clearly in this wonderful and underrated novel. The book has a few reviews here on Goodreads, some of which attribute a racist or even white supremacist motivation for the book; to me this goes directly against what the book is saying. If you write about a fictional crime against humanity, having seen it yourself, does that mean you are approving of it? Surely you are accusing your fellow citizens of being able to do it and forcing them to reflect.

[David Proffitt · Rating 3 out of 5]

When a book has been out of print for a decade or two you have to as yourself why. Plot? Style? Or just badly written? In the case of Robie Macauley's book, I don't think it was any of these. I came across this book by accident and it had had several good reviews, so I thought: why not?

I have to say that I found the story, the writing and the vision all very worthy. The theme of a post-apocalyptic world is not a new one, but Robie Macauly's future Earth has a unique quality about it. There are several tales within the narrative, but the focus of the story is on two men, separated by generations and disaster. One records the days that lead to the eventual collapse of the structures that hold our society in place; the other driven by some unknown force seeks to learn what happened o the man who had gone before.

My only real criticism of this book has to be the back story to the events that lead to the downfall of civilization. There is a reason that successful post-apocalyptic stories centre around big global events such as an asteroid strike, a global pandemic or some form of environmental disaster - the effects have to be global for the story to hold together. Macauley's vision is based on civil unrest and the break down of all and would, therefore, be limit to a single region at the most. Trying to suggest that the civil war in the US would result in the breakdown of society across the globe is either naive or profoundly egotistical. However, if you are prepared to accept this admittedly rather large flaw, the book is actually quite a good one.

The story is well told. There is plenty of action, some interesting ideas of how the break down might impact on those who come after. The mysterious link between the two characters is never fully explained but did add an interesting element. 

Not a bad book. Not a classic, hence it's demise. 

[Ronn · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a post-apocalyptic America where old gas station roadmaps are the holy writings of the forefathers, where people who can count past 10 are suspect, where social structure is dominated by clans. This America came to be as the result not of nuclear war [although maybe it was; we are not really told] but in the aftermath of a race war in the early 1980s. It is curious then that after the first 50 pages or so, race is barely mentioned at all. It is an incidental realization that a post-racial America is finally achieved, but at the cost of modern civilization.

[Art · Rating 4 out of 5]

I plan on reading this one again. I read it back in high school. The book was recommended by my home school teacher when I was home bound by an operation.

[Stefan Krt · Rating 3 out of 5]

Started off on very interesting ground then teeters into a somewhat of a bore though the ending has a nice twist finishing with the same grab of attention (for me) as it started.

[James Marshall · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dystopian novel set a few hundred years after the USA was torn apart by race wars. A good, futuristic western.

[Robert Monk · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read this years ago, and for some reason it stuck in my head. Couldn't even really remember the plot, but bits and pieces would come back to me. So I got it again, and re-read it. How does it look from 2017? In some ways it's contemporary, in that it's a future dystopia (albeit without a teenage girl as the lead). But it's also very much a product of the cold war. And it's all right. The prose is more literary in style than pulpy, and there's an attempt to give the characters some spark. But the story is fairly basic, and there are some plot points early on -- characters having visions of each other -- that essentially just stop and are never mentioned again, which make then seem pretty cheesy.

[Simon Mcleish · Rating 3 out of 5]

Originally published on my blog here in January 2001.

A double apocalypse hits the US in the early eighties in this science fiction novel. First, racial tension escalates into civil war between black and white; then, Russian and Chinese bombs destroy the cities when it looks as though the blacks are going to win. There follows a dark age of hundreds of years, during which the existence of men with dark skin is seen as one of the many unbelievable myths about the times of the ancients.

The narrative is, to start with, the diary of the commander of a black commando unit in the war. He has visions of a traveller from the future, and these visions come to dominate the second half of the novel completely. This is quite an interesting way to do things, as it creates doubts in the reader's mind about the reality of the traveller and his world. It makes for a somewhat unsatisfying structure for the novel, however, as the diarist - who is actually, from a science fiction genre point of view, more interesting and unusual - disappears completely soon after the middle. Little is made of parallels between the nature and situations of the two central characters, and no explanation is given of the connection between the two of them (unless, of course, one is just a fantasy of the other). There are ironies in the post apocalypse scenario, as well as the standard ones where people dismiss as myth true stories about the capabilities of twentieth century technology. The man from the future is, for a large part, involved in tracking a gang who have kidnapped a woman to sell as a slave in the south - with no black people left, whites are selling one another.

The later sections of A Secret History of Time to Come are reminiscent in places of the greatest post-apocalyptic novel, A Canticle for Leibowitz. It is mostly a fairly standard adventure story, with some excellent writing (the very first vision of the future is an example of this). The diary sections read rather like a John Brunner dystopia. Basically, the writing is good but the vision is neither original nor broad enough to make this novel a science fiction classic.