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The Great Time Machine Hoax
Chester W. Chester IV, sole surviving heir of eccentric millionaire-inventor Chester W. Chester I, has entered into his inheritance: a semi-moribund circus; a white elephant of a run-down neo-Victorian mansion furnished with such hot items as TV sets shaped like crouching vultures; the old gentleman's final invention, a mammoth computer whose sole value seems to be as scrap metal; and one more thing - a million credits in back taxes. Either he comes up with the million credits, or it's up the river for Chester for a long, long time.
That's why Chester is desperate enough to use the Generalized Nonlinear Extrapolator (GENIE for short) to perpetuate one of the biggest entertainment scams of all time - THE GREAT TIME MACHINE HOAX (But he should have read the instructon manual.)
That's why Chester is desperate enough to use the Generalized Nonlinear Extrapolator (GENIE for short) to perpetuate one of the biggest entertainment scams of all time - THE GREAT TIME MACHINE HOAX (But he should have read the instructon manual.)
210 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 1964
1 person is currently reading
186 people want to read
About the author
Keith Laumer
498 books225 followersJohn Keith Laumer was an American science fiction author. Prior to becoming a full-time writer, he was an officer in the U.S. Air Force and a U.S. diplomat. His brother March Laumer was also a writer, known for his adult reinterpretations of the Land of Oz (also mentioned in Keith's The Other Side of Time).
Keith Laumer (aka J.K Laumer, J. Keith Laumer) is best known for his Bolo stories and his satirical Retief series. The former chronicles the evolution of juggernaut-sized tanks that eventually become self-aware through the constant improvement resulting from centuries of intermittent warfare against various alien races. The latter deals with the adventures of a cynical spacefaring diplomat who constantly has to overcome the red-tape-infused failures of people with names like Ambassador Grossblunder. The Retief stories were greatly influenced by Laumer's earlier career in the United States Foreign Service. In an interview with Paul Walker of Luna Monthly, Laumer states "I had no shortage of iniquitous memories of the Foreign Service."
Four of his shorter works received Hugo or Nebula Award nominations (one of them, "In the Queue", received nominations for both) and his novel A Plague of Demons was nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1966.
During the peak years of 1959–1971, Laumer was a prolific science fiction writer, with his novels tending to follow one of two patterns: fast-paced, straight adventures in time and space, with an emphasis on lone-wolf, latent superman protagonists, self-sacrifice and transcendence or, broad comedies, sometimes of the over-the-top variety.
In 1971, Laumer suffered a stroke while working on the novel The Ultimax Man. As a result, he was unable to write for a few years. As he explained in an interview with Charles Platt published in The Dream Makers (1987), he refused to accept the doctors' diagnosis. He came up with an alternative explanation and developed an alternative (and very painful) treatment program. Although he was unable to write in the early 1970s, he had a number of books which were in the pipeline at the time of the stroke published during that time.
In the mid-1970s, Laumer partially recovered from the stroke and resumed writing. However, the quality of his work suffered and his career declined (Piers Anthony, How Precious Was That While, 2002). In later years Laumer also reused scenarios and characters from his earlier works to create "new" books, which some critics felt was to their detriment:
Alas, Retief to the Rescue doesn't seem so much like a new Retief novel, but a kind of Cuisnart mélange of past books.
-- Somtow Sucharitkul (Washington Post, Mar 27, 1983. p. BW11)
His Bolo creations were popular enough that other authors have written standalone science-fiction novels about them.
Laumer was also a model airplane enthusiast, and published two dozen designs between 1956 and 1962 in the U.S. magazines Air Trails, Model Airplane News and Flying Models, as well as the British magazine Aero Modeler. He published one book on the subject, How to Design and Build Flying Models in 1960. His later designs were mostly gas-powered free flight planes, and had a whimsical charm with names to match, like the "Twin Lizzie" and the "Lulla-Bi". His designs are still being revisited, reinvented and built today.
Keith Laumer (aka J.K Laumer, J. Keith Laumer) is best known for his Bolo stories and his satirical Retief series. The former chronicles the evolution of juggernaut-sized tanks that eventually become self-aware through the constant improvement resulting from centuries of intermittent warfare against various alien races. The latter deals with the adventures of a cynical spacefaring diplomat who constantly has to overcome the red-tape-infused failures of people with names like Ambassador Grossblunder. The Retief stories were greatly influenced by Laumer's earlier career in the United States Foreign Service. In an interview with Paul Walker of Luna Monthly, Laumer states "I had no shortage of iniquitous memories of the Foreign Service."
Four of his shorter works received Hugo or Nebula Award nominations (one of them, "In the Queue", received nominations for both) and his novel A Plague of Demons was nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1966.
During the peak years of 1959–1971, Laumer was a prolific science fiction writer, with his novels tending to follow one of two patterns: fast-paced, straight adventures in time and space, with an emphasis on lone-wolf, latent superman protagonists, self-sacrifice and transcendence or, broad comedies, sometimes of the over-the-top variety.
In 1971, Laumer suffered a stroke while working on the novel The Ultimax Man. As a result, he was unable to write for a few years. As he explained in an interview with Charles Platt published in The Dream Makers (1987), he refused to accept the doctors' diagnosis. He came up with an alternative explanation and developed an alternative (and very painful) treatment program. Although he was unable to write in the early 1970s, he had a number of books which were in the pipeline at the time of the stroke published during that time.
In the mid-1970s, Laumer partially recovered from the stroke and resumed writing. However, the quality of his work suffered and his career declined (Piers Anthony, How Precious Was That While, 2002). In later years Laumer also reused scenarios and characters from his earlier works to create "new" books, which some critics felt was to their detriment:
Alas, Retief to the Rescue doesn't seem so much like a new Retief novel, but a kind of Cuisnart mélange of past books.
-- Somtow Sucharitkul (Washington Post, Mar 27, 1983. p. BW11)
His Bolo creations were popular enough that other authors have written standalone science-fiction novels about them.
Laumer was also a model airplane enthusiast, and published two dozen designs between 1956 and 1962 in the U.S. magazines Air Trails, Model Airplane News and Flying Models, as well as the British magazine Aero Modeler. He published one book on the subject, How to Design and Build Flying Models in 1960. His later designs were mostly gas-powered free flight planes, and had a whimsical charm with names to match, like the "Twin Lizzie" and the "Lulla-Bi". His designs are still being revisited, reinvented and built today.
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September 18, 2015
Originally published in the early '60s, this is a humorous fix-up novel that starts out quite well, wanders around in nebulous philosophizing for a section or three, and then returns to course for a coherent conclusion. (Kind of like many Laumer books, come to think of it.) The blurb on the front from a review in Galaxy Magazine says "Hilarious! Swinging! Brilliant!" which help serves to illustrate the context of time and style. It's good old-fashioned sf, representative of its era. (One thing I noticed about this edition was on page forty-seven the heroine is described as having "Glossy dark hair," whereas there's a blonde woman pictured on the cover. I know, picky-picky...)
April 18, 2025
Keith Laumer has had a special place in my heart ever since my father passed down *Bolo: Annals of the Dinochrome Brigade* to me when I was still in elementary school. I've read all of his Bolo books (they're about sentient tanks and are fun pieces of military SF even if they have varying quality) and a short novel he co-wrote with Gordon R. Dickson called *Planet Run*, but I've never explored the rest of his wide bibliography. I was able to snatch up a nice Pocket Books paperback of today's book for one buck at an antique mall, so I figured it'd be as good of a place to dive into as any; sadly, the book ended up being pretty scatterbrained, and while I think Laumer had some potential on his hands, its fix-up nature ended up doing more harm than good. Let's talk about it - as always, I'll do my best to shield you from spoilers, even as I summarize the book for my future self...
*The Great Time Machine Hoax* begins with a man named Chester visiting his friend Case's circus by helicar to tell him that he's in a bit of a financial pickle, and that he'll need to sell of the circus in order to make his own ends meet. The pickle in question is that the government's finally getting around to sorting out his great-grandfather's estate generations after he passed, making his property and the associated taxes Chester's responsibility. I don't know how tax law makes it that Chester has to sell off things to make inheritance meet, but I guess it is what it is... Case is naturally bummed but still wants to visit the Chester estate in order to see the GNE (the Generalized Nonlinear Extrapolator), the unique computer the old man had installed throughout his house. Case is able to ask it silly questions about Atlantis and whatnot, but when Chester touches the console a secret corridor and room appear; the inventor set it aside for his ancestors, the GNE is willing to tell them a lot more in there - like how it's bene manipulating world markets to keep its estate rich since its invention or how it discovered evidence of long-past alien contact and the like. Then Case starts asking to see things (like his ancestors), and through watching representations of dinosaurs appear on the room's four walls they realize they've got their own little version of Tri-D here, and Case wants to sell off admission under the guise of a real time machine; always a hustler, that one. His interests are further piqued when the GNE creates Genie, a beautiful brunette avatar, but when the GNE opens a "spacio-temporal contiguity," the angry pack of cavemen barreling towards our heroes turn out to be more than a Holodeck simulation...
After all three of them are captured by the cavemen, ...
The first nice thing I'll say is that *The Great Time Machine Hoax* starts off in a really fun and charming way. Chester and Case are a really comedic duo and I found myself laughing out loud at their antics; and when Case started dreaming up the idea of a fake time machine theater, I was ready for that humor to carry through the whole book. Instead, the narrative turns into something caught halfway between *Quantum Leap* and *Macguyver*. There are sill some funny bits, but they largely get lost somewhere in this book's fixup nature. Fixup novels can go down as classics (like Simak's *City* or Asimov's now-criticized *I, Robot*), or they can find themselves in the background of SF history (like this book or another one I just read, *If the Stars are Gods* by Benford and Eklund). I think that the stories which Laumer stitched together for this volume weren't originally meant to be viewed as one continuous story, and it shows. I haven't read the stories that Laumer ended up framing alongside each other for this story, but it seems like they weren't met to go together, and if that's true this is probably one of the worst examples I've read in terms of cramming stories together and binding them up for a book just to have something for authors to sell and for shops to put on the shelves...
That's not to say that these stories are bad; I mean, they're kind of generic, but they aren't offensive. Our main characters being captured by cavemen was a fun little romp, and the escape from the police in the city of the future could've been fun too if it wasn't weirdly bogged down by Chester's sudden Macguyvering (seriously, I thought this guy was just kind of a nepo-baby, where'd he learn to do all this crazy crap?). The best part in and of itself is probably when Chester has to go through some spiritual training, because it actually transitions his character away from his more anxious self and towards a more calm and collected Chester who can save the day by remembering his mental training. But that being said, he already showed extreme resourcefulness under potentially lethal pressure in the third section of the book, so does it really matter that he was able to take a deep breath and show resourcefulness in the fifth? Honestly, probably not, and I think I just lost my argument for Laumer being able to write genuine character growth...
As far as prose goes, Laumer is pretty workman-like. This is pretty typical early 60s SF writing, with a bit of a dry tone and a good deal of dialogue that flows better than the somewhat blocky action does. I wasn't particularly surprised by that. I wasn't surprised by the ending either; I think the whole revelation seemed really obvious and cheap by the end of the day. The other strand of the ending that Laumer ties into Chester's monk training was a bit more heartening, but still, the most interesting part of it all - how - is brushed away and possibly nullified by Genie's actions at the end. It just... doesn't make sense as a time travel novel, or a character novel, or an adventure novel. Okay, maybe that last one, but it still didn't flow well...
I really didn't mind reading this book, though, so I don't think I can give it two stars. It has charm, and the first thirty percent of the book was worth four stars. So I'm going to meet somewhere in the middle and give this a 6/10. If you like kind of all-the-rails adventures from this time period you could do a lot worse than *The Great Time Machine Hoax*, but I also wouldn't recommend this to anyone who's not a hardcore science fiction fan, and even then you should have better things on your radar. Hopefully the next fixup I read is a bit more cohesive and engaging; either way, I'll be here on Goodreads to talk about it. Maybe I'll even see you there; until then, here's to happy reading...
*The Great Time Machine Hoax* begins with a man named Chester visiting his friend Case's circus by helicar to tell him that he's in a bit of a financial pickle, and that he'll need to sell of the circus in order to make his own ends meet. The pickle in question is that the government's finally getting around to sorting out his great-grandfather's estate generations after he passed, making his property and the associated taxes Chester's responsibility. I don't know how tax law makes it that Chester has to sell off things to make inheritance meet, but I guess it is what it is... Case is naturally bummed but still wants to visit the Chester estate in order to see the GNE (the Generalized Nonlinear Extrapolator), the unique computer the old man had installed throughout his house. Case is able to ask it silly questions about Atlantis and whatnot, but when Chester touches the console a secret corridor and room appear; the inventor set it aside for his ancestors, the GNE is willing to tell them a lot more in there - like how it's bene manipulating world markets to keep its estate rich since its invention or how it discovered evidence of long-past alien contact and the like. Then Case starts asking to see things (like his ancestors), and through watching representations of dinosaurs appear on the room's four walls they realize they've got their own little version of Tri-D here, and Case wants to sell off admission under the guise of a real time machine; always a hustler, that one. His interests are further piqued when the GNE creates Genie, a beautiful brunette avatar, but when the GNE opens a "spacio-temporal contiguity," the angry pack of cavemen barreling towards our heroes turn out to be more than a Holodeck simulation...
After all three of them are captured by the cavemen, ...
The first nice thing I'll say is that *The Great Time Machine Hoax* starts off in a really fun and charming way. Chester and Case are a really comedic duo and I found myself laughing out loud at their antics; and when Case started dreaming up the idea of a fake time machine theater, I was ready for that humor to carry through the whole book. Instead, the narrative turns into something caught halfway between *Quantum Leap* and *Macguyver*. There are sill some funny bits, but they largely get lost somewhere in this book's fixup nature. Fixup novels can go down as classics (like Simak's *City* or Asimov's now-criticized *I, Robot*), or they can find themselves in the background of SF history (like this book or another one I just read, *If the Stars are Gods* by Benford and Eklund). I think that the stories which Laumer stitched together for this volume weren't originally meant to be viewed as one continuous story, and it shows. I haven't read the stories that Laumer ended up framing alongside each other for this story, but it seems like they weren't met to go together, and if that's true this is probably one of the worst examples I've read in terms of cramming stories together and binding them up for a book just to have something for authors to sell and for shops to put on the shelves...
That's not to say that these stories are bad; I mean, they're kind of generic, but they aren't offensive. Our main characters being captured by cavemen was a fun little romp, and the escape from the police in the city of the future could've been fun too if it wasn't weirdly bogged down by Chester's sudden Macguyvering (seriously, I thought this guy was just kind of a nepo-baby, where'd he learn to do all this crazy crap?). The best part in and of itself is probably when Chester has to go through some spiritual training, because it actually transitions his character away from his more anxious self and towards a more calm and collected Chester who can save the day by remembering his mental training. But that being said, he already showed extreme resourcefulness under potentially lethal pressure in the third section of the book, so does it really matter that he was able to take a deep breath and show resourcefulness in the fifth? Honestly, probably not, and I think I just lost my argument for Laumer being able to write genuine character growth...
As far as prose goes, Laumer is pretty workman-like. This is pretty typical early 60s SF writing, with a bit of a dry tone and a good deal of dialogue that flows better than the somewhat blocky action does. I wasn't particularly surprised by that. I wasn't surprised by the ending either; I think the whole revelation seemed really obvious and cheap by the end of the day. The other strand of the ending that Laumer ties into Chester's monk training was a bit more heartening, but still, the most interesting part of it all - how - is brushed away and possibly nullified by Genie's actions at the end. It just... doesn't make sense as a time travel novel, or a character novel, or an adventure novel. Okay, maybe that last one, but it still didn't flow well...
I really didn't mind reading this book, though, so I don't think I can give it two stars. It has charm, and the first thirty percent of the book was worth four stars. So I'm going to meet somewhere in the middle and give this a 6/10. If you like kind of all-the-rails adventures from this time period you could do a lot worse than *The Great Time Machine Hoax*, but I also wouldn't recommend this to anyone who's not a hardcore science fiction fan, and even then you should have better things on your radar. Hopefully the next fixup I read is a bit more cohesive and engaging; either way, I'll be here on Goodreads to talk about it. Maybe I'll even see you there; until then, here's to happy reading...
September 25, 2009
Is not is not not is
This book took me a ridiculous amount of time to read; at 176 pages a novel that should have taken me a few days to finish took about a year. Oddly enough, I’m thinking about re-reading it. The premise is a great one: Chester W. Chester IV owes a million credits in back taxes; he decides selling his circus is his best bet in paying most of the money back. His eccentric great-grandfather passes away, leaving Chester as his sole heir. He inherits a run-down old mansion and an antiquated computer. He is less than thrilled with his inheritance until he discovers this computer holds the whole of the world’s history and can recreate in a life-like fashion any time period. Chester and his friend Case devise a scheme to make money by bringing dinosaurs and other blasts from the past back to life. Basically, the plan is to fake a time machine.
All doesn’t go as planned as the computer simulations are a little too life-like. Chester, Case, and the computer made companion Genie become stuck in various eras. And speaking of stuck, this is one of my biggest complaints about this novel. It has a very 1960s feel to it despite it taking place in the future. I know to a certain extent that can’t be helped as it was indeed written in the 60s, but it really distracted me. Everything about the characters- their dialogue, their attitudes- just seemed too limited to me. Another complaint: Boring, unlikeable characters. I didn’t care about the exploits of the main character Chester. The humor didn’t work for me even though the cover promised this book is “Hilarious and swinging”.
Chester’s experience stuck in time is full of thought-provoking philosophical concepts regarding achieving a higher state through conditioning oneself by testing one’s mental and physical limitations. Also, some groovy words worth pondering, such as the above mentioned “Is not is not not is”.
Unfortunately, this journey through time (or not, it’s never 100% clear that they’ve actually time traveled) has more drawn out boring parts than swinging moments. I somewhat dug the first half, but then it became a bit of a drag.
This book took me a ridiculous amount of time to read; at 176 pages a novel that should have taken me a few days to finish took about a year. Oddly enough, I’m thinking about re-reading it. The premise is a great one: Chester W. Chester IV owes a million credits in back taxes; he decides selling his circus is his best bet in paying most of the money back. His eccentric great-grandfather passes away, leaving Chester as his sole heir. He inherits a run-down old mansion and an antiquated computer. He is less than thrilled with his inheritance until he discovers this computer holds the whole of the world’s history and can recreate in a life-like fashion any time period. Chester and his friend Case devise a scheme to make money by bringing dinosaurs and other blasts from the past back to life. Basically, the plan is to fake a time machine.
All doesn’t go as planned as the computer simulations are a little too life-like. Chester, Case, and the computer made companion Genie become stuck in various eras. And speaking of stuck, this is one of my biggest complaints about this novel. It has a very 1960s feel to it despite it taking place in the future. I know to a certain extent that can’t be helped as it was indeed written in the 60s, but it really distracted me. Everything about the characters- their dialogue, their attitudes- just seemed too limited to me. Another complaint: Boring, unlikeable characters. I didn’t care about the exploits of the main character Chester. The humor didn’t work for me even though the cover promised this book is “Hilarious and swinging”.
Chester’s experience stuck in time is full of thought-provoking philosophical concepts regarding achieving a higher state through conditioning oneself by testing one’s mental and physical limitations. Also, some groovy words worth pondering, such as the above mentioned “Is not is not not is”.
Unfortunately, this journey through time (or not, it’s never 100% clear that they’ve actually time traveled) has more drawn out boring parts than swinging moments. I somewhat dug the first half, but then it became a bit of a drag.
December 18, 2017
When I first gave the book a 2-star rating on finishing it, I wondered if maybe I was being too harsh. But now that I've given it a bit more thought, I think it's justified. Laumer does a decent enough job on the technical level, but the "fix-up" nature of the story becomes painfully clear in the "second act" when pretty much all momentum from the first act vanishes into a puff of faintly Objectivist smoke.
The premise starts off like it might be a good silly time: Chester W. Chester IV, the owner of a failing circus in 20XX (I forget the actual year), inherits from his crazy old grandfather a crumbling "neo-Victorian" mansion (the descriptions of the "neo-Victorian" aesthetic are amusing), a mountain of unpaid back taxes, and... basically a "paperclip-maximizing" A.I. that self-described futurists of the modern day write about. Sadly, the potential, comedic or otherwise, of such technology is bound up in the beginning and end of the book.
On with the setup (the first act is basically all set-up): Chester's circus friend Case suggests using the computer to generate "tri-D" scenes of reconstructed history to amuse and titillate the paying public, and so eliminate Chester's debt. The computer, meanwhile, takes their demands for detail a bit too literally and ends up sending them, a rug, two armchairs, and a human avatar named Genie (the naked woman on several of the colors) back in time. Shenanigans ensue, and Case and Genie are accidentally left stranded in circa 1,000,000 B.C. and 1964, respectively. (There's some humor to be mined in late-Fifties/early-Sixties expectations of what the mid-decade would hold, but it's far too brief.)
We're left with a story that really hasn't aged well. Even from Laumer's contemporaries there are better time travel stories (see de Camp, L. Sprague); there are better sf/comedic stories (see Sheckley, Robert); and there are far better satirical/social-critical uses of sf (see Tenn, William, though I need to dive deeper there). I haven't written Laumer off entirely―some of his short stories were quite good, and he wouldn't be the only sf author who suffers in the novel format―but he's rapidly closing in on my "Not Worth Seeking Out On Their Own Merits" folder.
Multiple POV characters could have helped: giving Case, Genie, and Chester their own stories would have been interesting; notably, it would have cut down on Chester's story. Plus there would have been more openings for actual humor.
So yeah, 2 stars. It's not unreadable on a technical level (and besides, it's short), and there are some good bits in the beginning. Too bad it really, really didn't pay off for me.
The premise starts off like it might be a good silly time: Chester W. Chester IV, the owner of a failing circus in 20XX (I forget the actual year), inherits from his crazy old grandfather a crumbling "neo-Victorian" mansion (the descriptions of the "neo-Victorian" aesthetic are amusing), a mountain of unpaid back taxes, and... basically a "paperclip-maximizing" A.I. that self-described futurists of the modern day write about. Sadly, the potential, comedic or otherwise, of such technology is bound up in the beginning and end of the book.
On with the setup (the first act is basically all set-up): Chester's circus friend Case suggests using the computer to generate "tri-D" scenes of reconstructed history to amuse and titillate the paying public, and so eliminate Chester's debt. The computer, meanwhile, takes their demands for detail a bit too literally and ends up sending them, a rug, two armchairs, and a human avatar named Genie (the naked woman on several of the colors) back in time. Shenanigans ensue, and Case and Genie are accidentally left stranded in circa 1,000,000 B.C. and 1964, respectively. (There's some humor to be mined in late-Fifties/early-Sixties expectations of what the mid-decade would hold, but it's far too brief.)
We're left with a story that really hasn't aged well. Even from Laumer's contemporaries there are better time travel stories (see de Camp, L. Sprague); there are better sf/comedic stories (see Sheckley, Robert); and there are far better satirical/social-critical uses of sf (see Tenn, William, though I need to dive deeper there). I haven't written Laumer off entirely―some of his short stories were quite good, and he wouldn't be the only sf author who suffers in the novel format―but he's rapidly closing in on my "Not Worth Seeking Out On Their Own Merits" folder.
Multiple POV characters could have helped: giving Case, Genie, and Chester their own stories would have been interesting; notably, it would have cut down on Chester's story. Plus there would have been more openings for actual humor.
So yeah, 2 stars. It's not unreadable on a technical level (and besides, it's short), and there are some good bits in the beginning. Too bad it really, really didn't pay off for me.
July 26, 2017
Ouch. Disappointing. For some reason I had convinced myself this was a "good book" (i.e. on David Pringle's list of the best SF novels, or some such thing). Well, that wasn't the case, and it was abundantly clear soon enough.
It was somewhat competently written, with a few interesting moments, enough to earn it a grudging 2 star rating. But oh, the many annoyances:
1. Bait and switch--there is no great time machine hoax. I was expecting a fun, perhaps dated, perhaps sexist, romp, with characters attempting to keep this hoax going against all odds, etc., but nope, no hoax. It's like calling The Lion The Witch and the Wardrobe "The Pevenseys' Delightful Visit with the Professor."
2. The plot structure feels like the author embarked on one book, couldn't figure out where to go, switched plans midstream, got stuck again, tried a new tack, and then eventually wrapped it up and called it a day. It reeks of Firstdraftitis.
3. The viewpoint character appears to shift between the opening and the unfolding of the plot. Not the end of the world, if handled knowingly, but in this case it's just odd.
4. Little that happens is remotely plausible, especially the central premise. "This ... makes ... no ... sense ..." I kept repeating to myself.
5. Some serious Marty-Stu going on as the book develops.
6. As others have noted, there's a good third of the book (and by "a good third" I mean "at least a third" not "wow, this is good") that's so far removed from the tone of the prior passages (and increasingly boring to boot) as to cause considerably headscratching, between yawns.
Not happy!
(Note: 5 stars = rare and amazing, 4 = very good book, 3 = a decent read, 2 = disappointing, 1 = awful, just awful. There are a lot of 4s and 3s in the world!)
It was somewhat competently written, with a few interesting moments, enough to earn it a grudging 2 star rating. But oh, the many annoyances:
1. Bait and switch--there is no great time machine hoax. I was expecting a fun, perhaps dated, perhaps sexist, romp, with characters attempting to keep this hoax going against all odds, etc., but nope, no hoax. It's like calling The Lion The Witch and the Wardrobe "The Pevenseys' Delightful Visit with the Professor."
2. The plot structure feels like the author embarked on one book, couldn't figure out where to go, switched plans midstream, got stuck again, tried a new tack, and then eventually wrapped it up and called it a day. It reeks of Firstdraftitis.
3. The viewpoint character appears to shift between the opening and the unfolding of the plot. Not the end of the world, if handled knowingly, but in this case it's just odd.
4. Little that happens is remotely plausible, especially the central premise. "This ... makes ... no ... sense ..." I kept repeating to myself.
5. Some serious Marty-Stu going on as the book develops.
6. As others have noted, there's a good third of the book (and by "a good third" I mean "at least a third" not "wow, this is good") that's so far removed from the tone of the prior passages (and increasingly boring to boot) as to cause considerably headscratching, between yawns.
Not happy!
(Note: 5 stars = rare and amazing, 4 = very good book, 3 = a decent read, 2 = disappointing, 1 = awful, just awful. There are a lot of 4s and 3s in the world!)
December 17, 2012
My least favorite Keith Laumer story, I think it just tried too hard to walk down the middle as both a serious sci-fi book and something light and humorous. It failed at both -- the funniest thing in the book was worthy of a smirk at best. But the whole thing felt like it wanted to be a light and fanciful tale that was just fun to read...in other words, it failed at really having the depth or drive of a good sci-fi story, too.
Very disappointing. I think I'll read some more Retief stories by Laumer before I try anything else from "The Lighter Side".
Very disappointing. I think I'll read some more Retief stories by Laumer before I try anything else from "The Lighter Side".
January 16, 2008
The first half of this book was the most amazingly funny, wickedly humorous thing I had ever read up to that point (I read "Hitchhiker's Guide" the next year). The second half, however, changed things tremendously and inexplicably. The protagonist goes from being a bumbler and a buffoon to this super-hero who can do no wrong, and the story becomes quite formulaic from that point on. A very schizophrenic book.
June 26, 2013
review of
Keith Laumer's The Great Time Machine Hoax
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - June 26, 2013
The advantage of reading bks as entertaining as this one is that I don't feel compelled to write anything intellectually substantial about them. The drawback is that I read them in one day & thusly accumulate bks that I 'must' write reviews of (according to the laws of my own process(es) of intellectual stimulation) more rapidly than my inclination to write such reviews happens. Stalemate. Is that 'Puritanical' of me or what? I pay for my pleasure w/ neurotic afterthought.
Laumer is 'my' 'new' SF 'discovery' & very enjoyable for me indeed. He's joined the ranks of C. M. Kornbluth, Frederik Pohl, & John Brunner. This was the 3rd bk of his I've read so far. Time Trap ( http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16... ) was 1st, Worlds of the Imperium ( http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30... ) was 2nd. I liked them both but it wasn't until this one that I got thoroughly sucked in. Bk as vagina for my head as a dick? Fuck it.
The previous 2 bks & this one all use the main theme, time travel & parallel universes, as a formal excuse for sudden dramatic/comedic plot twists - but The Great Time Machine Hoax took it to a new level. In pre-SF picaresque stories (picaresque not being quite the right term here since The Great Time Machine Hoax's protagonist isn't necessarily a 'rogue' & does, definitely, develop as a character) the adventures were somewhat limited by what was plausible (albeit far-fetched) in the socio-physical reality experienced by the readership (given the way my mind works, objections/exceptions clamor to my mind: The Epic of Gilgamesh, The Thousand Nights and One Night - &, then, my mind objects to those 'exceptions' - in other words this critical process cd go on much longer than I'll hereby allow it to). In SF, however, a character can jump from pre-historic times to the future instantaneously - thusly changing the conditions of the drama w/ whole paradigm shifts.
One of the things that immediately captured (arrested? caught? hhmmm..) my interest was the idea of computers having a limit &, thereby, reaching a point of obsolescence. This was published in 1964.
""The old gentleman called it a Generalized Nonlinear Extrapolator. G.N.E. for short. He made his money in computer components, you know. He was fascinated by computers, and he felt they had tremendous unrealized possibilities. of course, that was before Crmblznski's Limit was discovered. Great-grandfather was convinced that a machine with sufficiently extensive memory banks, adequately cross-connected and supplied with a vast store of data, would be capable of performing prodigious intellectual feats simply by discovering and exploring relationships among apparently unrelated facts."" - p 12
Crmblznski, by the by, is a recurring figure in Laumer's fiction - at least he's referred to on p 69 of The Monitors & I'm expecting to see the name again. Laumer is one of those great SF writers w/ a keen imagination for humorous detail:
"Two hours later, under a bright sun, Chester settled the heli gently onto a patch of velvety grass surrounded by varicolored tulips directly before the ornate decorated portico of the old house. The two men rode the balustraded escalator to the broad verandah, stepped off under a carved dinosaur with fluorescent eyes. The porter chimed softly as the door slid open. Inside, light filtering through stained-plastic panels depicted traditional service-station and supermarket scenes bathed the cavernous entry hall in an amber glow.
"Case looked around at the plastic alligator-hide hangings, the beaded glass floor, the ostrich-feather chandeliers, the zircon doorknobs.
""I see why neo-Victorian stuff is rare," he said. "It was all burned by enraged mobs as soon as they got a look at it."
""Great-grandfather liked it," said Chester, averting his eyes from a lithograph titled Rush Hour at the Insemomat. "I told you he was eccentric."" - p 14
As Chester & Case explore the capabilities of the G.N.E. they ask it "What happened to Ambrose Bierce?" (p 18). Bierce, of course, was the author of The Devil's Dictionary, an icon of iconoclasm, & he disappeared while traveling w/ revolutionaries during the Mexican Revolution. Laumer's far-reaching imagination uses the main plot of The Great Time Machine Hoax to enable him to go off on little tangents like this. [I was listening to the music of György Kósa & now I'm listening to that of Fletcher Henderson while I write this.] 15pp later, the G.N.E. clarifies things for its slow-witted interrogators:
""You make the understandable error of egocentric anthropomorphization of viewpoint, Mr. Chester," said the voice. "Your so-called 'reality' is, after all, no more than a pattern produced in the mind by abstraction from a very limited set of sensory impressions. You perceive a pattern of reflected radiation at the visible wave lengths—only a small fraction of the full spectrum, of course; to this you add auditory stimuli, tactile and olfactory sensations, as well as other perceptions in the Psi group of which you are not consciously aware at the third power—all of which can easily be misled by mirrors, ventriloquism, distorted perspective, hypnosis, and so on. The resultant image appears to you an adequate approximation of reality."" - pp 33-34
When I review narratives, I like to take the reader thru the bk w/o necessarily spoiling the plot for them. As such, my review is somewhat deliberately skewed toward "asides". One of the asides I'm often on the look-out for are anti-religious ones:
""It's going to be a headache picking the right kind of scenes. Take ancient Greece, for example. They had some customs that wouldn't do for a family-type show. In the original Olympics none of the contestants wanted to be loaded with anything as confining as a G string. And there were the public baths—coeducational—and the slave markets, with the merchandise in full view. We'll have to watch our step, Chester. Practically everything in ancient history was too dirty for the public to look at."
""We'd better restrict ourselves to later times when people were Christians," Chester said. "We can show the Inquisition, seventeenth-century witch burnings—you know, wholesome stuff." - p 45
Yep, y'know, Christians & Moslems, the 2 largest practitioners of brotherly love & charity? The ones that brought us the atomic bomb & 9/11?
""What do you say to a nice cave-man scene, Chester?" said Case. "Stone axes, animal skins around the waist, bear-tooth necklaces—the regular Alley Oop routine." - p 45
"Alley Oop"? Presumably most of Laumer's readers wd've gotten this pop culture reference in 1964 - but now? I reckon this has become somewhat esoteric.
I'm reminded of my review of Captains Outrageous Or, For Doom the Bell Tolls (see that here: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41... ): "As in the Kipling, there's a spoiled wealthy young male thrust into difficult circumstances & maturing as a result. This is standard fare for a coming-of-age plot.":
""What were you trained in, Chester?"
""Well," said Chester, considering, "I . . . ah . . . majored in liberal arts."
""You mean you paint pictures?"
""No, nothing like that. Business administration."
""I don't think I've heard of that. Is it a game of skill or chance?"
""Both." Chester smiled patiently. "No, in biz ad we're taught how to manage large commercial enterprises."
""I see. And after receiving your training you went on to actual management of some such organization?"
""Well, no. Funny, but I couldn't seem to find any big businessmen who were looking for a fresh college graduate to tell them how to run their companies."" - pp 78-79
When Chester does receive a valuable & arduous training as a result of his adventures Laumer's vision of what they'd consist of is perhaps the most practically inspired part of the bk - & one of the things about it that distinguishes it from the mere pulp humor of someone like Ron Goulart (whose stories I still like anyway). This education, however, leads to Laumer putting words in Chester's mouth that I find disappointingly naive:
""Bandon, learn to do something that other people want or need and you won't have to worry about being stepped on. Most of the shrill cries of social injustice come from people who contribute nothing to the scene that a chimpanzee couldn't do better. Why do you think people treasure the few really talented singers, actors, ball players, medical men, engineers that crop up? Because there are far too few of them—every one is a treasure." - p 147
Really, Laumer?! What a disappointment you are here! Does the above describe the treatment that Vincent Van Gogh received in his lifetime? His paintings sell for incredible sums of money now but poor ole Vincent certainly never saw a penny of it! He's EXPLOITED in retrospect by typical art market forces. & what about the great architect Antonio Gaudi? He died in a hospital ward for indigents - it appears he believed a little too much in the Catholic Church, poor guy.
Later, Chester encounters a society in wch ""Everybody dances and everybody sings. They all play games and they all make statues out of mud and they all paint. Some are better than others, but it's doing it that counts. In our setup everybody's an artist, not just a few half-cracked far-outers."" (p 168) This whole issue of "everybody's an artist" vs 'only the talented can be great artists' is a theoretical issue that's been at the forefront of much 20th c discussion. In some ways, I don't find it very interesting anymore.
I can clean a wound & put a bandage on it - does that make me a doctor? I can arbitrate a disagreement - does that make me a lawyer? The problem here, for me, is that a person who dedicates their life to being creative gets lumped together w/ 'Sunday painters'. That doesn't happen to lawyers & doctors. They get respect AND MONEY. Artists are undervalued while they're alive largely b/c the standards for appraising their work are so often incomprehensibly abstract to the general public.
Doctors have practical standards that they can be appraised by: if the patient gets better, the doctor's good. Same w/ lawyers, if the client 'gets off', the lawyer's good. But doctors get paid big money no matter whether they succeed or fail & are still respected even if the patient dies - & lawyers get the rich & white-collar criminals off all the time: money buys 'justice'. Now, imagine, a painter hired to do a portrait: the painter charges hundreds of thousands of dollars &, in the end, the painting doesn't look anything like the sitter, the sitter dies of boredom sitting there, & a relative who brought the painter & the sitter together knowing of this probable eventuality takes off w/ a huge inheritance. Wd the painter still be respected?
Keith Laumer's The Great Time Machine Hoax
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - June 26, 2013
The advantage of reading bks as entertaining as this one is that I don't feel compelled to write anything intellectually substantial about them. The drawback is that I read them in one day & thusly accumulate bks that I 'must' write reviews of (according to the laws of my own process(es) of intellectual stimulation) more rapidly than my inclination to write such reviews happens. Stalemate. Is that 'Puritanical' of me or what? I pay for my pleasure w/ neurotic afterthought.
Laumer is 'my' 'new' SF 'discovery' & very enjoyable for me indeed. He's joined the ranks of C. M. Kornbluth, Frederik Pohl, & John Brunner. This was the 3rd bk of his I've read so far. Time Trap ( http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16... ) was 1st, Worlds of the Imperium ( http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30... ) was 2nd. I liked them both but it wasn't until this one that I got thoroughly sucked in. Bk as vagina for my head as a dick? Fuck it.
The previous 2 bks & this one all use the main theme, time travel & parallel universes, as a formal excuse for sudden dramatic/comedic plot twists - but The Great Time Machine Hoax took it to a new level. In pre-SF picaresque stories (picaresque not being quite the right term here since The Great Time Machine Hoax's protagonist isn't necessarily a 'rogue' & does, definitely, develop as a character) the adventures were somewhat limited by what was plausible (albeit far-fetched) in the socio-physical reality experienced by the readership (given the way my mind works, objections/exceptions clamor to my mind: The Epic of Gilgamesh, The Thousand Nights and One Night - &, then, my mind objects to those 'exceptions' - in other words this critical process cd go on much longer than I'll hereby allow it to). In SF, however, a character can jump from pre-historic times to the future instantaneously - thusly changing the conditions of the drama w/ whole paradigm shifts.
One of the things that immediately captured (arrested? caught? hhmmm..) my interest was the idea of computers having a limit &, thereby, reaching a point of obsolescence. This was published in 1964.
""The old gentleman called it a Generalized Nonlinear Extrapolator. G.N.E. for short. He made his money in computer components, you know. He was fascinated by computers, and he felt they had tremendous unrealized possibilities. of course, that was before Crmblznski's Limit was discovered. Great-grandfather was convinced that a machine with sufficiently extensive memory banks, adequately cross-connected and supplied with a vast store of data, would be capable of performing prodigious intellectual feats simply by discovering and exploring relationships among apparently unrelated facts."" - p 12
Crmblznski, by the by, is a recurring figure in Laumer's fiction - at least he's referred to on p 69 of The Monitors & I'm expecting to see the name again. Laumer is one of those great SF writers w/ a keen imagination for humorous detail:
"Two hours later, under a bright sun, Chester settled the heli gently onto a patch of velvety grass surrounded by varicolored tulips directly before the ornate decorated portico of the old house. The two men rode the balustraded escalator to the broad verandah, stepped off under a carved dinosaur with fluorescent eyes. The porter chimed softly as the door slid open. Inside, light filtering through stained-plastic panels depicted traditional service-station and supermarket scenes bathed the cavernous entry hall in an amber glow.
"Case looked around at the plastic alligator-hide hangings, the beaded glass floor, the ostrich-feather chandeliers, the zircon doorknobs.
""I see why neo-Victorian stuff is rare," he said. "It was all burned by enraged mobs as soon as they got a look at it."
""Great-grandfather liked it," said Chester, averting his eyes from a lithograph titled Rush Hour at the Insemomat. "I told you he was eccentric."" - p 14
As Chester & Case explore the capabilities of the G.N.E. they ask it "What happened to Ambrose Bierce?" (p 18). Bierce, of course, was the author of The Devil's Dictionary, an icon of iconoclasm, & he disappeared while traveling w/ revolutionaries during the Mexican Revolution. Laumer's far-reaching imagination uses the main plot of The Great Time Machine Hoax to enable him to go off on little tangents like this. [I was listening to the music of György Kósa & now I'm listening to that of Fletcher Henderson while I write this.] 15pp later, the G.N.E. clarifies things for its slow-witted interrogators:
""You make the understandable error of egocentric anthropomorphization of viewpoint, Mr. Chester," said the voice. "Your so-called 'reality' is, after all, no more than a pattern produced in the mind by abstraction from a very limited set of sensory impressions. You perceive a pattern of reflected radiation at the visible wave lengths—only a small fraction of the full spectrum, of course; to this you add auditory stimuli, tactile and olfactory sensations, as well as other perceptions in the Psi group of which you are not consciously aware at the third power—all of which can easily be misled by mirrors, ventriloquism, distorted perspective, hypnosis, and so on. The resultant image appears to you an adequate approximation of reality."" - pp 33-34
When I review narratives, I like to take the reader thru the bk w/o necessarily spoiling the plot for them. As such, my review is somewhat deliberately skewed toward "asides". One of the asides I'm often on the look-out for are anti-religious ones:
""It's going to be a headache picking the right kind of scenes. Take ancient Greece, for example. They had some customs that wouldn't do for a family-type show. In the original Olympics none of the contestants wanted to be loaded with anything as confining as a G string. And there were the public baths—coeducational—and the slave markets, with the merchandise in full view. We'll have to watch our step, Chester. Practically everything in ancient history was too dirty for the public to look at."
""We'd better restrict ourselves to later times when people were Christians," Chester said. "We can show the Inquisition, seventeenth-century witch burnings—you know, wholesome stuff." - p 45
Yep, y'know, Christians & Moslems, the 2 largest practitioners of brotherly love & charity? The ones that brought us the atomic bomb & 9/11?
""What do you say to a nice cave-man scene, Chester?" said Case. "Stone axes, animal skins around the waist, bear-tooth necklaces—the regular Alley Oop routine." - p 45
"Alley Oop"? Presumably most of Laumer's readers wd've gotten this pop culture reference in 1964 - but now? I reckon this has become somewhat esoteric.
I'm reminded of my review of Captains Outrageous Or, For Doom the Bell Tolls (see that here: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41... ): "As in the Kipling, there's a spoiled wealthy young male thrust into difficult circumstances & maturing as a result. This is standard fare for a coming-of-age plot.":
""What were you trained in, Chester?"
""Well," said Chester, considering, "I . . . ah . . . majored in liberal arts."
""You mean you paint pictures?"
""No, nothing like that. Business administration."
""I don't think I've heard of that. Is it a game of skill or chance?"
""Both." Chester smiled patiently. "No, in biz ad we're taught how to manage large commercial enterprises."
""I see. And after receiving your training you went on to actual management of some such organization?"
""Well, no. Funny, but I couldn't seem to find any big businessmen who were looking for a fresh college graduate to tell them how to run their companies."" - pp 78-79
When Chester does receive a valuable & arduous training as a result of his adventures Laumer's vision of what they'd consist of is perhaps the most practically inspired part of the bk - & one of the things about it that distinguishes it from the mere pulp humor of someone like Ron Goulart (whose stories I still like anyway). This education, however, leads to Laumer putting words in Chester's mouth that I find disappointingly naive:
""Bandon, learn to do something that other people want or need and you won't have to worry about being stepped on. Most of the shrill cries of social injustice come from people who contribute nothing to the scene that a chimpanzee couldn't do better. Why do you think people treasure the few really talented singers, actors, ball players, medical men, engineers that crop up? Because there are far too few of them—every one is a treasure." - p 147
Really, Laumer?! What a disappointment you are here! Does the above describe the treatment that Vincent Van Gogh received in his lifetime? His paintings sell for incredible sums of money now but poor ole Vincent certainly never saw a penny of it! He's EXPLOITED in retrospect by typical art market forces. & what about the great architect Antonio Gaudi? He died in a hospital ward for indigents - it appears he believed a little too much in the Catholic Church, poor guy.
Later, Chester encounters a society in wch ""Everybody dances and everybody sings. They all play games and they all make statues out of mud and they all paint. Some are better than others, but it's doing it that counts. In our setup everybody's an artist, not just a few half-cracked far-outers."" (p 168) This whole issue of "everybody's an artist" vs 'only the talented can be great artists' is a theoretical issue that's been at the forefront of much 20th c discussion. In some ways, I don't find it very interesting anymore.
I can clean a wound & put a bandage on it - does that make me a doctor? I can arbitrate a disagreement - does that make me a lawyer? The problem here, for me, is that a person who dedicates their life to being creative gets lumped together w/ 'Sunday painters'. That doesn't happen to lawyers & doctors. They get respect AND MONEY. Artists are undervalued while they're alive largely b/c the standards for appraising their work are so often incomprehensibly abstract to the general public.
Doctors have practical standards that they can be appraised by: if the patient gets better, the doctor's good. Same w/ lawyers, if the client 'gets off', the lawyer's good. But doctors get paid big money no matter whether they succeed or fail & are still respected even if the patient dies - & lawyers get the rich & white-collar criminals off all the time: money buys 'justice'. Now, imagine, a painter hired to do a portrait: the painter charges hundreds of thousands of dollars &, in the end, the painting doesn't look anything like the sitter, the sitter dies of boredom sitting there, & a relative who brought the painter & the sitter together knowing of this probable eventuality takes off w/ a huge inheritance. Wd the painter still be respected?
January 26, 2020
Chester inherits a house, which he can have if he can afford the back taxes.* He'll need to sell the circus to pay. He tells his friend Case the news and they head over to see the place. His great-grandfather had built a computer. It wasn't through with his project at the time of his death, but it had instructions to keep gathering data. It did. Chester and Case learn some amazing stuff. They're money making scheme is to create an entertainment venue.** It turns out the computer can show them very realistic historical reenactments.
They want one more demonstration before they decide to go with a see-the-past plan. The first demo was dinosaurs, something tamer this time, cave men. It gets weird here, the cave men see them and abduct them. Once they're outside the viewing room Chester can't end the sequence like he did the first time.
It's off to adventures. While Case distracts the cave men, he and Genie (the computer created the asked for tour guide) escape, but instead of finding their rug and chairs where they left them, the area is surrounded by a 1960s sort of scene. They are immediately arrested and separated. Chester gets free and has the computer send him away. Now he's in some sort of future. Chester is in that future so long I wonder if its going to tie back in with the rest of the story.
Fast read, fun once you stretch your suspension of disbelief. At the end of the book Laumer gives an explanation of why they came upon the different scenes. Nice character building, but a bit far-fetched. 3.75/5 stars.
*Chester somehow equates not paying property taxes with income tax evasion, and gets the idea he'd be facing jail time rather than loss of the property.
**Story was written pre Information Age. We'd sell the location of those archaeological dig sites, rather than thinking entertainment.
They want one more demonstration before they decide to go with a see-the-past plan. The first demo was dinosaurs, something tamer this time, cave men. It gets weird here, the cave men see them and abduct them. Once they're outside the viewing room Chester can't end the sequence like he did the first time.
It's off to adventures. While Case distracts the cave men, he and Genie (the computer created the asked for tour guide) escape, but instead of finding their rug and chairs where they left them, the area is surrounded by a 1960s sort of scene. They are immediately arrested and separated. Chester gets free and has the computer send him away. Now he's in some sort of future. Chester is in that future so long I wonder if its going to tie back in with the rest of the story.
Fast read, fun once you stretch your suspension of disbelief. At the end of the book Laumer gives an explanation of why they came upon the different scenes. Nice character building, but a bit far-fetched. 3.75/5 stars.
*Chester somehow equates not paying property taxes with income tax evasion, and gets the idea he'd be facing jail time rather than loss of the property.
**Story was written pre Information Age. We'd sell the location of those archaeological dig sites, rather than thinking entertainment.
December 15, 2019
This book opens up poorly. The setup feels rushed. The syntax feels like a 19th century book, where the author attempts to seem more educated than they really are by using million dollar words when a dollar word will do. Then, for seemingly no reason, the story abruptly changes at the 90 page mark. The end of the novel feels rushed as if the author was on a dead line and needed to tie things up and get the book out. It feels like how a childrens movie would tie things up nicely with no conflict.
I gave it two stars, not one, because even though the stories were so different, they really weren't all that bad. At times I was drawn in and did find myself enjoying it.
I would say give this book a go, if youre looking for a short read, and have a few dollars to spare. Worst case scenario, you can put it on your bookshelf as a conversation piece at what may be one of the strangest books out there.
I gave it two stars, not one, because even though the stories were so different, they really weren't all that bad. At times I was drawn in and did find myself enjoying it.
I would say give this book a go, if youre looking for a short read, and have a few dollars to spare. Worst case scenario, you can put it on your bookshelf as a conversation piece at what may be one of the strangest books out there.
July 28, 2019
The Great Time Machine Hoax is probably close to slap-stick comedy. I didn't know what to expect and to tell the truth the ride was something I could not have expected. This was a wacky story from the start till its finish. Keith Laumer threw in a lot of the tropes for time travel, including alternate worlds due to the changes made by our time travellers. This is not the strongest story Keith Laumer has, but is a fine diversionary read. I gave it a four because of Keith Laumer, but it is probbably closer to a 3 1/2 star. The ride was that wacked out. LOL It does have its moments though.
March 17, 2022
I found this to be a very entertaining book for its time. I was in Viet Nam during the war and i found a hard cover copy of this book and got so caught up in it that i was up all night and finished it early in the morning. It was hard to put down. Years later i bought a paper back copy of it and it is now in my library of books. If you love science fiction as much as i do you will love this book. Great story.
November 17, 2022
Our protagonist inherits what's essentially a supercomputer, along with a large tax debt, and decides to use the computer to fake a time machine for public viewing to pay back the debt... until his first trial run ends up in unsuspected places. Unfortunately, in addition to these unsympathetic motives, his character isn't sympathetic or compelling to me. I finished this book, but I didn't like it, and I don't recommend it.
September 11, 2019
Great fun and typical of that era of science fiction with its themes and hand-waving technological elements. Fun characters and, yes, it could make a really good Netflix series nowadays too. Think of a sort of time traveling Austin Powers (not quite as randy, perhaps) and you'd have the idea. Props to my buddy Chris for suggesting I dig this one up!
February 9, 2023
On the who;e it was OK. The first part where they explain how they got a computer that knew everything and how it could re-create any historical even was pretty interesting.
But the middle part where two of the characters go missing and the third basically gets trained to be Batman was kind of disconnected from the rest.
But the middle part where two of the characters go missing and the third basically gets trained to be Batman was kind of disconnected from the rest.
February 19, 2023
Vintage Laumer. Good sci-fi, keeps moving all the time.
February 11, 2025
Read it many years ago in college. Fun read.
November 11, 2013
The first 90 pages are great, exactly the sort of pulpy sf humor from the 60s the book cover promises, the next hundred pages is the uninteresting physical and intellectual development of the protagonist followed by moral arguments against beatniks or socialism deposited on a new character who appears just for that purpose.
A couple of scenes involve relatively complex mechanisms built by the protagonist over a short period- there's something about the level of detail and the way of describing something much better left to a diagram that makes these parts annoying. A better author would leave more to the imagination rather than impart on the reader unimportant specifics about placement of components in unlikely contraptions.
A couple of scenes involve relatively complex mechanisms built by the protagonist over a short period- there's something about the level of detail and the way of describing something much better left to a diagram that makes these parts annoying. A better author would leave more to the imagination rather than impart on the reader unimportant specifics about placement of components in unlikely contraptions.
April 19, 2012
I've read novels expanded from novelettes and novellas that feel seamless. This book, however, the seams are all right there on display during an elongated detour from the primary plot. I picked this book up having enjoyed a past combination of Laumer and time travel in the form of Dinosaur Beach, and this has the same cleverness of ideas and playfulness with the nature of reality. But it does feels like a very different story is being told in the middle than is being told at either end. Neither is a story I inherently disliked, they just didn't feel like they belonged together.
September 24, 2014
Great, hilarious book. Lost a star at the end for some problematic gendering and a general theme of a main female character being naked the whole book but, for it's time, (written in serialised form in the mid 60s) it does pretty well.
Worth the read for the absurdity of the premise if nothing else.
Worth the read for the absurdity of the premise if nothing else.
May 24, 2015
This was an impulse buy at Singularity & Co. -- the title was too good to pass up. Pretty run-of-the-mill 60's pulp, filled with slapstick comedy, a pair of Mary Sue protagonists, and lots of casual misogyny. Still, it was decent subway reading for a couple of days.
August 17, 2007
It's a bit weird to be getting "life reading" from what appears to be run-of-the-mill trashy sci-fi, but it's true: I get depressed, I read this book, I remember, "Hey yeah -- I can do this." and move forward with a positive outlook on life. Is not is not not is.
November 4, 2015
Great book and although at some points the book uses some technical words but if you understand them it makes it better and if not dictionary are your friend. The plot of the book is well thought out with many surprises and a shock ending.
Read
August 22, 2008The Great Time Machine Hoax by Keith Laumer (2000)
July 24, 2012
A quick, fun read.
June 14, 2013
It seems like distinct two distinct novelas put together. Nice ideas for a two good stories but IMO resulted in a strange mix of themes.
July 13, 2013
Liked this book in my teen years good romp, some interesting ideas
October 25, 2014
Read as part of The Lighter Side collection.
March 5, 2014
A fun rip roaring read! Not to be taken seriously. Just jump in and enjoy.
December 15, 2014
1981 grade A
2014 grade A
2014 grade A
Displaying 1 - 30 of 30 reviews