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Dinosaur Beach
Appearing from the remote future, Nexx Central agent Ravel is emplaced in America, circa 1936. His mission: to undo successive tamperings of the time stream which threaten the survival of Mankind. He falls in love with a lovely, simple girl, Lisa, but in the midst of his happiness is called away to Dinosaur Beach.
Dinosaur Beach is a Nexx Central station located millions of years in the past, in the Jurassic Age. But shortly after Ravel's arrival, the station is attacked and destroyed, and Ravel begins a terrifying odyssey through time.
For the attackers were another time-tampering team from still a different future era. And Ravel himself is not only in growing danger but the human world as we know it.....
Dinosaur Beach is the most exciting and ambitious novel yet by the author of The Other Side of Time, Envoy to New Worlds, and the famous "Retief" stories.
Dinosaur Beach is a Nexx Central station located millions of years in the past, in the Jurassic Age. But shortly after Ravel's arrival, the station is attacked and destroyed, and Ravel begins a terrifying odyssey through time.
For the attackers were another time-tampering team from still a different future era. And Ravel himself is not only in growing danger but the human world as we know it.....
Dinosaur Beach is the most exciting and ambitious novel yet by the author of The Other Side of Time, Envoy to New Worlds, and the famous "Retief" stories.
204 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1971
4 people are currently reading
424 people want to read
About the author
Keith Laumer
499 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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Displaying 1 - 30 of 86 reviews
May 23, 2020
DAW Collectors #21
Laumer, John Keith 9 June 1925 -- 23 January 1993
Alternate Names: Кейт Лаумер , Кейт Ломер , Anthony LeBaron, Kit Lomer
Cover Artist: Kelly Freas
"A shorter version of this novel appeared in the August 1969 issue of Analog under the title, "The Time Sweepers", and is copyright © 1969
Appearing from the remote future, Nexx Central agent Ravel is emplaced in America, circa 1936. His mission: to undo successive tamperings of the time stream which threaten the survival of Mankind. He falls in love with a lovely, simple girl, Lisa, but in the midst of his happiness is called away to Dinosaur Beach.
"Dinosaur Beach" is a Nexx Central station located millions of years in the past, in the Jurassic Age. But shortly after Ravel’s arrival, the station is attacked and destroyed, and Ravel begins a terrifying odyssey through time.
For the attackers were another time-tampering team from still a different future era. And Ravel himself is not only in growing danger but the human world as we know it
Laumer, John Keith 9 June 1925 -- 23 January 1993
Alternate Names: Кейт Лаумер , Кейт Ломер , Anthony LeBaron, Kit Lomer
Cover Artist: Kelly Freas
"A shorter version of this novel appeared in the August 1969 issue of Analog under the title, "The Time Sweepers", and is copyright © 1969
Appearing from the remote future, Nexx Central agent Ravel is emplaced in America, circa 1936. His mission: to undo successive tamperings of the time stream which threaten the survival of Mankind. He falls in love with a lovely, simple girl, Lisa, but in the midst of his happiness is called away to Dinosaur Beach.
"Dinosaur Beach" is a Nexx Central station located millions of years in the past, in the Jurassic Age. But shortly after Ravel’s arrival, the station is attacked and destroyed, and Ravel begins a terrifying odyssey through time.
For the attackers were another time-tampering team from still a different future era. And Ravel himself is not only in growing danger but the human world as we know it
July 23, 2025
I’ve read a few “heavy” books lately so was in the mood for something entertaining, and I found it with this piece of late 1960s time travel hokum. I believe the novel was published in 1971 but had been serialised before that. Actually it does have the feel of a novel that was originally published in serial form. The chapters are short and the time travel plot meant that the main character kept jumping from location to location. At the end of each chapter I enjoyed the feeling of thinking, “where will he pop up next?”
One slightly disappointing aspect was that hardly any dinosaurs featured. The title was obviously a ruse designed to lure in those of us who never quite got over our boyish enthusiasm for that subject!
The plot is based around the (nowadays) well-worked idea that there is a sort of “butterfly effect” involved in time travel, where tiny changes to the past made by time travellers have the effect of changing the future – the very future that the travellers started out from. As the protagonist puts it, “every movement of a grain of sand had repercussions that went spreading down the ages.” In the book successive waves of government agents travel back in time to try and repair the damage down by the first time travellers, but only succeed in making things even worse. Will our hero be the one to sort things out?
The plot for this one has more twists and turns than the Gordian Knot! I’m not sure the plot would hold up against much scrutiny, but it’s entertaining enough. The lead character is created in the tradition of “hardboiled" detectives, which gives the book something of a 1950s feel, even though it was written later.
An easy, fun read, and that’s what I was looking for.
One slightly disappointing aspect was that hardly any dinosaurs featured. The title was obviously a ruse designed to lure in those of us who never quite got over our boyish enthusiasm for that subject!
The plot is based around the (nowadays) well-worked idea that there is a sort of “butterfly effect” involved in time travel, where tiny changes to the past made by time travellers have the effect of changing the future – the very future that the travellers started out from. As the protagonist puts it, “every movement of a grain of sand had repercussions that went spreading down the ages.” In the book successive waves of government agents travel back in time to try and repair the damage down by the first time travellers, but only succeed in making things even worse. Will our hero be the one to sort things out?
The plot for this one has more twists and turns than the Gordian Knot! I’m not sure the plot would hold up against much scrutiny, but it’s entertaining enough. The lead character is created in the tradition of “hardboiled" detectives, which gives the book something of a 1950s feel, even though it was written later.
An easy, fun read, and that’s what I was looking for.
March 31, 2025
NEW RULE: Every time I read a real stinker - in this case, John Gardner's License Renewed - I'm going to reread a previous guaranteed 5-star book, just to get the nasty taste out of my mouth. So...below a third (now fourth) reread of Dinosaur Beach; although not a third review per se, just some minor updates to my second reading, as I had pretty much the same feelings - "um, okaay..." for the first 170 pages and then "WOW!" for the rest. I really hate to say this, but it was almost as if Laumer somehow knew he was just months away from a major stroke, and so dredged up some inner, previously-untapped genius to wrap up what really has to be considered his masterpiece. (NOTE: since my first reading DB back in 2014, I have read at least 10 more of Laumer's sci-fi works, and yup - none of them hold a candle to this one.)
FINAL UPDATE (4TH READING): Last review - I promise. I only reread this (again) because my younger son also started reading it, so we thought we'd turn it into our first "father/son book club."
So anyway...no major changes from before, although this time around I found the middle "half" more dated and frankly (and unnecessarily) complicated than I remember. That said, still a great first quarter and an outstanding ending, so fully sticking with my earlier comments and rating. Only thing I want to add is that I recently also watched "Loki" on Disney+, and have to say that Laumer here does a pretty good take on the multiverse decades before MARVEL came up with it (at least "movie MARVEL") - even going one step further and actually fixing the whole problem, (or as Laumer calls it "grafting all the threads of unrealized history back into the Mainstem").
So, y'know...nice.
UPDATE FROM 2ND AND 3RD READINGS: Reread this again (and now again) to see if it lived up to my original review. For much of the book I thought, "okay, good; but why did I give it five stars?" - but then I hit that ending and was once again pretty blown away, considering when this was written.
In some ways, this almost reads as an even older book - Laumer is big on Sam Spade-type "here's looking at YOU, kid" dialogue, (including such gems as "don't go female on me now; we don't have time for nonsense" - yikes). But I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt and hoping this is a remnant of his character's last earthly "incarnation" being in the mid-1930's. Anyway, on second (and now third) read I'm still sticking with at least 4 1/2 stars. I know some other reviewers criticize the science behind this, but hey, it's time travel; there's really no science involved here to criticize. And I still think Laumer came up with a great solution to a problem that looked insoluble as the whole "fix the previous fixes" scheme just got more and more hopeless, (really loved his comment about how "no amount of paddling the surface of a roiled pond is going to restore it to a mirror surface," despite the repeated "surface" - and yes, as always Laumer could have used a better editor).
ORIGINAL REVIEW: This little book frankly blew me away. A non-descript 1969 "pocket book" with an embarrassing cover and a misleading title, I saved this book at the last minute from my dad's bookshelves before the rest got tossed out. But what a save - Dinosaur Beach turned out to be about the smartest, deepest and most elegantly plotted time travel book I've read. Forty-five years later, not a single technology or idea sounds outdated - this could have been written yesterday, and would make a great movie. Indeed, buried in its 200 pages are ideas that would later resurface in The Matrix, Terminator, and even Total Recall (but not Jurassic Park, as the story has almost nothing to do with dinosaurs - "Dinosaur Beach" is just a place name, like "China Beach" in the old TV series about Vietnam).
This was a literal page-turner that I just had to race through; but I will definitely reread it to get a better understanding of the science/theory/technology behind it, most of which is well ahead of it's time. My biggest fear was that the ending just couldn't live up to all that came before - but then it turned out to be even better than I could have hoped for, and a total surprise.
So the real question is: who the heck is Keith Laumer, and why hadn't I heard of him before? Well, in fact I had - but only as the author of a few unfortunate late-60's "The Avengers" tie-in books I've got stored in my basement somewhere, (and not even from the Emma Peel era, but her sorry replacement Tara King). So I looked at some of Laumer's other books on Goodreads, and sadly, while this book got many well-deserved 5-star reviews, there were also more than a few that ranked this his best, so it's a bit disappointing to hear that everything else will be downhill from here. Still, based on this one book alone, even mediocre Keith Laumer might be better than a lot of what's out there today...maybe I should dig up those old "Avengers" books and give them a reread...
(And oops - since writing the above I did go back and read the Avengers books - and good God they were awful. So WHATEVER you do, if you're interested in trying some Laumer, stay away from anything that implies humor...)
SOME MISCELLANEOUS QUOTES: Regardless of his other flaws, Laumer has always had a good ear for simile and metaphor or whatever...basically "Keith use words good!" A few choice samples:
FINAL UPDATE (4TH READING): Last review - I promise. I only reread this (again) because my younger son also started reading it, so we thought we'd turn it into our first "father/son book club."
So anyway...no major changes from before, although this time around I found the middle "half" more dated and frankly (and unnecessarily) complicated than I remember. That said, still a great first quarter and an outstanding ending, so fully sticking with my earlier comments and rating. Only thing I want to add is that I recently also watched "Loki" on Disney+, and have to say that Laumer here does a pretty good take on the multiverse decades before MARVEL came up with it (at least "movie MARVEL") - even going one step further and actually fixing the whole problem, (or as Laumer calls it "grafting all the threads of unrealized history back into the Mainstem").
So, y'know...nice.
UPDATE FROM 2ND AND 3RD READINGS: Reread this again (and now again) to see if it lived up to my original review. For much of the book I thought, "okay, good; but why did I give it five stars?" - but then I hit that ending and was once again pretty blown away, considering when this was written.
In some ways, this almost reads as an even older book - Laumer is big on Sam Spade-type "here's looking at YOU, kid" dialogue, (including such gems as "don't go female on me now; we don't have time for nonsense" - yikes). But I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt and hoping this is a remnant of his character's last earthly "incarnation" being in the mid-1930's. Anyway, on second (and now third) read I'm still sticking with at least 4 1/2 stars. I know some other reviewers criticize the science behind this, but hey, it's time travel; there's really no science involved here to criticize. And I still think Laumer came up with a great solution to a problem that looked insoluble as the whole "fix the previous fixes" scheme just got more and more hopeless, (really loved his comment about how "no amount of paddling the surface of a roiled pond is going to restore it to a mirror surface," despite the repeated "surface" - and yes, as always Laumer could have used a better editor).
ORIGINAL REVIEW: This little book frankly blew me away. A non-descript 1969 "pocket book" with an embarrassing cover and a misleading title, I saved this book at the last minute from my dad's bookshelves before the rest got tossed out. But what a save - Dinosaur Beach turned out to be about the smartest, deepest and most elegantly plotted time travel book I've read. Forty-five years later, not a single technology or idea sounds outdated - this could have been written yesterday, and would make a great movie. Indeed, buried in its 200 pages are ideas that would later resurface in The Matrix, Terminator, and even Total Recall (but not Jurassic Park, as the story has almost nothing to do with dinosaurs - "Dinosaur Beach" is just a place name, like "China Beach" in the old TV series about Vietnam).
This was a literal page-turner that I just had to race through; but I will definitely reread it to get a better understanding of the science/theory/technology behind it, most of which is well ahead of it's time. My biggest fear was that the ending just couldn't live up to all that came before - but then it turned out to be even better than I could have hoped for, and a total surprise.
So the real question is: who the heck is Keith Laumer, and why hadn't I heard of him before? Well, in fact I had - but only as the author of a few unfortunate late-60's "The Avengers" tie-in books I've got stored in my basement somewhere, (and not even from the Emma Peel era, but her sorry replacement Tara King). So I looked at some of Laumer's other books on Goodreads, and sadly, while this book got many well-deserved 5-star reviews, there were also more than a few that ranked this his best, so it's a bit disappointing to hear that everything else will be downhill from here. Still, based on this one book alone, even mediocre Keith Laumer might be better than a lot of what's out there today...maybe I should dig up those old "Avengers" books and give them a reread...
(And oops - since writing the above I did go back and read the Avengers books - and good God they were awful. So WHATEVER you do, if you're interested in trying some Laumer, stay away from anything that implies humor...)
SOME MISCELLANEOUS QUOTES: Regardless of his other flaws, Laumer has always had a good ear for simile and metaphor or whatever...basically "Keith use words good!" A few choice samples:
A streetcar clacked and sparked past the intersection, a big toy with cutout heads pasted against the row of little square windows.(Think about that one)
I saw the neon sign, the color of red-hot iron, half a block ahead.
The surf pounded and whooshed, indifferent to the personal problems of one erect biped who had no business being anywhere within sixty-five million years of here.
"Are you addressing me?" he said in a voice as chill as Scott's last camp on the icecap.
Total darkness and a roar of sound like Niagara Falls going over me in a barrel.
Read
December 1, 2024sometimes I just need to read this again.
July 5, 2025
“Брегът на динозаврите” е плод на онзи замах на въображението от златната ера на фантастиката, който не признава космически или времеви ограничения. Разбира се, подплатен с голяма доза симпатична наивност.
Борбата на съперничещи си групи, епохи и дори различни съзнателни видове за контрол над времето, хода на историята и хода на еволюцията на свой ред е пряко ехо от студената война с нейната битка на реалности и идеи. Научната фантастика истински схваща мащаба на битката, като само го увеличава по космическите мерки, осигурявайки стабилна доза екшън в случая.
Тази кратичка новела, гъмжаща от скокове във времето и малко романтика, е приятно ретро преживяване с много почти магични обрати, но пък - толкова свежо забавни!
3,5⭐️
November 30, 2024
Dinosaur Beach is my favorite of the Laumer books that I've read. It's a good, twisty-turny (timey/wimey?) time-travel novel about a Time Agent who's marooned in the ancient past and has to make his way back to the future to reunite with his lady love. There aren't any dinosaurs to amount for much in the story, but it's a cool title and accounted for some great cover paintings over the years, including a Michael Whelan and a Frank Kelly Freas. It's not quite as convoluted as David Gerrold's The Man Who Folded Himself, but it's a fine novel, certainly one of Laumer's best.
May 15, 2012
Hardboiled time cop is stranded in a time loop during the age of dinosaurs, and has to untangle a muddled web of intrigue and time paradoxes to get home alive. Very complex history and mechanics of time-travel make this one interesting; I like its presentation of time as something everyone wants to fix, yet every attempt to do so throws the time stream into greater and greater chaos.
Laumer's a good writer; the protagonist is easy to sympathize with, and has a fine noir-style personality. What I'm less enthused about is the plot. The protagonist spends half the book pining for the sleeper-cell life he was assigned in 1936 as a time agent, of the wife he married and subsequently walked out on when his amnesia wore off and he was pulled back to his future time-base. Then, he finds another time cop who looks just like her. Fascinating setup, right? Well, it's abruptly abandoned near the end, which detracts from the powerful message the finale was going for.
I have a lot of good feelings about this book, but it was very mixed. The plot didn't feel right, there's a ton of plot holes and contrivances (though those were intentional, time travel plot and all), and while I liked it, I feel it could have been better.
(Full review found here.)
Laumer's a good writer; the protagonist is easy to sympathize with, and has a fine noir-style personality. What I'm less enthused about is the plot. The protagonist spends half the book pining for the sleeper-cell life he was assigned in 1936 as a time agent, of the wife he married and subsequently walked out on when his amnesia wore off and he was pulled back to his future time-base. Then, he finds another time cop who looks just like her. Fascinating setup, right? Well, it's abruptly abandoned near the end, which detracts from the powerful message the finale was going for.
I have a lot of good feelings about this book, but it was very mixed. The plot didn't feel right, there's a ton of plot holes and contrivances (though those were intentional, time travel plot and all), and while I liked it, I feel it could have been better.
(Full review found here.)
October 23, 2021
Ouch! My head hurts, but in a good way.
I picked this book because it had "dinosaur" in the title. Sadly, it isn't about dinosaurs (much) but it IS about time travel. Lucky I like time travel stories. Now this book has more twists than a yoga convention. Just when I thought I had figured out what would happen next...it didn't! This goes on until the end. Honestly - it's like a friggin' babushka doll. Makes for a good page-turner.
Probably one of the best time travel novels I've ever read. Even though I'm languishing on the shores of "Old Fart Land" with the associated malfunctioning gray matter, and sometimes couldn't fathom this complex plot, I still enjoyed this book a lot. ALSO, it will probably be one of the few books I read more than once.
I award this book, The Doctor Who medal of honor with a 5 star cluster. 🥇🎇🎇🎇🎇🎇
I picked this book because it had "dinosaur" in the title. Sadly, it isn't about dinosaurs (much) but it IS about time travel. Lucky I like time travel stories. Now this book has more twists than a yoga convention. Just when I thought I had figured out what would happen next...it didn't! This goes on until the end. Honestly - it's like a friggin' babushka doll. Makes for a good page-turner.
Probably one of the best time travel novels I've ever read. Even though I'm languishing on the shores of "Old Fart Land" with the associated malfunctioning gray matter, and sometimes couldn't fathom this complex plot, I still enjoyed this book a lot. ALSO, it will probably be one of the few books I read more than once.
I award this book, The Doctor Who medal of honor with a 5 star cluster. 🥇🎇🎇🎇🎇🎇
January 26, 2013
This is one of my favorite Laumer novels. His take on time travel was pretty unique when it came out, and it anticipates a lot of the Transhumance/Singularity concepts so fashionable today. Laumer provides fast pacing, plenty of plot twists, and for me, a satisfying if bittersweet ending. I still retread this book from time to time, to enjoy the pacing and grand sweep of the story from one individual to all possible future histories and back again.
January 17, 2025
This is, without a doubt, one of the most incredible works of science fiction I've ever read and instantly claims a coveted spot as one of my favourite books of all time. Absolutely brilliant.
Dinosaur Beach is a Russian doll of time travel; a narrative strategy that can get extremely messy, but Laumer executes it so perfectly and organically that following along is smooth and effortless.
It's metaphysical, philosophical, and adventurous. It contemplates existence, human ambition, the evolution and emotional capabilities of artificial intelligence, and most importantly of all, love.
Magnificent writing, extraordinary story, impressive execution, imaginative tech, and ultimately one of the most enjoyable experiences I've ever had with a book.
I cannot recommend this highly enough.
p.s. one tiny criticism... there could have been more dinosaurs.
Dinosaur Beach is a Russian doll of time travel; a narrative strategy that can get extremely messy, but Laumer executes it so perfectly and organically that following along is smooth and effortless.
It's metaphysical, philosophical, and adventurous. It contemplates existence, human ambition, the evolution and emotional capabilities of artificial intelligence, and most importantly of all, love.
Magnificent writing, extraordinary story, impressive execution, imaginative tech, and ultimately one of the most enjoyable experiences I've ever had with a book.
I cannot recommend this highly enough.
p.s. one tiny criticism... there could have been more dinosaurs.
March 30, 2019
If you were expecting dinosaurs in a book titled "Dinosaur Beach," you'll be disappointed, as there are very few in this book published in 1971. Dinosaur Beach is a station for time travelers. Our hero is Ravel, who is involved in a war across time against robots who seem intent on destroying the time line. But, in dealing with time, paradox piles on top of paradox. Laumer gives us a better than average time travel story here and to quote a blurb on the book, it's "an exciting philosophical puzzle." A thought-provoking book to be sure and I could just about overlook the fact that there weren't a lot of dinosaurs!
March 30, 2025
A lively example of the traditional tightly-coiled, meticulously-constructed time travel adventure. A palate cleanser.
May 18, 2011
AAAAHHHHHH! TO THIS DAY I still love this book! Every summer I regret giving it away because I want to go back and read it every day forever. My mind was BLOWN in the last couple chapters. Seriously, one of the best books I have ever read. It has stuck with me for two years now, and I seriously cannot forget how great and detailed it was. I seriously need to track down a copy so I can just reread it whenever I've got a couple hours to spare.
December 8, 2010
Appearing from the remote future, Nexx Central agent Ravel is emplaced in America, circa 1936. His mission: to undo successive tamperings of the time stream which threaten the survival of Mankind. He falls in love with a lovely, simple girl, Lisa, but in the midst of his happiness is called away to Dinosaur Beach.
Dinosaur Beach is a Nexx Central station located millions of years in the past, in the Jurassic Age. but shortly after Ravel's arrival, the station is attacked and destroyed, and Ravel begins a terrifying odyssey through time. For the attackers were another time-tampering team from still a different future era. And Ravel himself is not only in growing danger but the human world as we know it... -The (poorly written) back cover
DAW Books UQ1021. Published 1971. 151 pages. 95c cover price.
Laumer starts Dinosaur Beach off strong with time-sweep agent Ravel abruptly awakening from a hypnotic state as a sleeper agent, which involved a happy marriage, to eliminate a rogue cyborg in the 'distant past' of 1936. Mission accomplished, our protagonist is zipped back to the Jurassic in order to have his memory wiped and a new personality laid over ita procedure Ravel is looking forward to since the wound from leaving his dear wife is still raw and painful.
Right around this point in the novel, which isn't too far in, I noticed the many this storys many inconsistencies. Granted, picking apart time travel yarns is a hobby in itself, particularly for the losers that flock to the SF genre (like myself). However, Dinosaur Beach had far too many to list in this little blog. E.g.: If Nexx Central is attempting to clean up numerous generations of abuse from the past, why destroy an anachronistic (for 1936) piece of technology like a cyborg, only to leave all of its parts for the natives to discover? Why are Nexx Central agents eating baby stegosaur and partying on the beach millions of years ago when their mission is to leave behind no trace? Laumer just doesnt make an effort to make the story logical, so after about 50 pages, I decided I wouldnt concern myself with paradoxes and plot holes.
Concerns about plausibility ditched, Dinosaur Beachbecomes more enjoyable, but it still has its issues. A love story that takes up a good chunk of the book is tossed aside for a lukewarm 'twist' at the end, and the result is that the little emotional impact the novel was striving for falls flat. Likewise, the time travel itself takes us to very few exotic locales in favor of vague 'null spaces,' plus different variations of the titular beach that Ravel on which keeps finding himself stranded.
Im intrigued by the short story The Time Sweepers on which this novel was based, as I think Dinosaur Beach could be much more memorable if boiled down to a 30 page story about killing robots in the Jurassic. Maybe move the party to the Cretaceous so a T-Rex can crash it? Make that a cyborg T-Rex with lasers firing out of its little vestigial arms and now youre cooking with gas!
Altogether, this ended up being a filler week. Sorry guys!
from my lil' blog pulpaweek.blogspot.com
Dinosaur Beach is a Nexx Central station located millions of years in the past, in the Jurassic Age. but shortly after Ravel's arrival, the station is attacked and destroyed, and Ravel begins a terrifying odyssey through time. For the attackers were another time-tampering team from still a different future era. And Ravel himself is not only in growing danger but the human world as we know it... -The (poorly written) back cover
DAW Books UQ1021. Published 1971. 151 pages. 95c cover price.
Laumer starts Dinosaur Beach off strong with time-sweep agent Ravel abruptly awakening from a hypnotic state as a sleeper agent, which involved a happy marriage, to eliminate a rogue cyborg in the 'distant past' of 1936. Mission accomplished, our protagonist is zipped back to the Jurassic in order to have his memory wiped and a new personality laid over ita procedure Ravel is looking forward to since the wound from leaving his dear wife is still raw and painful.
Right around this point in the novel, which isn't too far in, I noticed the many this storys many inconsistencies. Granted, picking apart time travel yarns is a hobby in itself, particularly for the losers that flock to the SF genre (like myself). However, Dinosaur Beach had far too many to list in this little blog. E.g.: If Nexx Central is attempting to clean up numerous generations of abuse from the past, why destroy an anachronistic (for 1936) piece of technology like a cyborg, only to leave all of its parts for the natives to discover? Why are Nexx Central agents eating baby stegosaur and partying on the beach millions of years ago when their mission is to leave behind no trace? Laumer just doesnt make an effort to make the story logical, so after about 50 pages, I decided I wouldnt concern myself with paradoxes and plot holes.
Concerns about plausibility ditched, Dinosaur Beachbecomes more enjoyable, but it still has its issues. A love story that takes up a good chunk of the book is tossed aside for a lukewarm 'twist' at the end, and the result is that the little emotional impact the novel was striving for falls flat. Likewise, the time travel itself takes us to very few exotic locales in favor of vague 'null spaces,' plus different variations of the titular beach that Ravel on which keeps finding himself stranded.
Im intrigued by the short story The Time Sweepers on which this novel was based, as I think Dinosaur Beach could be much more memorable if boiled down to a 30 page story about killing robots in the Jurassic. Maybe move the party to the Cretaceous so a T-Rex can crash it? Make that a cyborg T-Rex with lasers firing out of its little vestigial arms and now youre cooking with gas!
Altogether, this ended up being a filler week. Sorry guys!
from my lil' blog pulpaweek.blogspot.com
January 20, 2023
Time travel loop-de-loo slams through chronal calamities and bangs into temporal twists but stays on the tracks till its final thrill. A really well thought out, bonkers story, written in Laumer’s snappy style.
May 4, 2025
One beach, zero dinosaurs, five stars!
I’ve read a lot of time travel books in my entropic chronalities but this was the wildest of all potentialities, it just keeps turning on itself and jumping up its own ass.
The plot of this book reminds me of the scene in the princess bride where Vizzini is having this incredibly circular argument with himself about which cup of wine Westley poisoned. Inconceivable!
It’s choc full of pulpy goodness that never lets up, and as a token of my esteem for your primitive era, I shall avail you of some of its masterful dialogue.
“When you patch time, you poke holes in it; and patching the patches makes more holes, requiring still larger patches. It's a geometric progression that soon gets out of hand; each successive salvage job sends out waves of entropic dislocation that mingle with, reinforce, and complicate the earlier waves—and no amount of paddling the surface of a roiled pond is going to restore it to a mirror surface.”
"You know what. When you get all choked up about the old lady it's yourself you're grieving for. She's you— fifty years on. You know it and I know it.”
"What is the basis for that astonishing statement?" he said, not looking astonished.
"Easy," I said. "I should have seen it sooner. You've infiltrated Nexx Central."
"And you've infiltrated our infiltration.”
And also you can time travel by having sex and there’s future robots from the future who are also up to some time fuckery.
This may be the most advanced book ever written, possibly beyond the human capacity to truly comprehend its temporal ramifications!
Imagine patching the patches and infiltrating the infiltration, all the while being one step ahead of them, one step behind of yourself and also not that and everything else all at once and not at all forever and ever, up your ass and around the corner!
I’ve read a lot of time travel books in my entropic chronalities but this was the wildest of all potentialities, it just keeps turning on itself and jumping up its own ass.
The plot of this book reminds me of the scene in the princess bride where Vizzini is having this incredibly circular argument with himself about which cup of wine Westley poisoned. Inconceivable!
It’s choc full of pulpy goodness that never lets up, and as a token of my esteem for your primitive era, I shall avail you of some of its masterful dialogue.
“When you patch time, you poke holes in it; and patching the patches makes more holes, requiring still larger patches. It's a geometric progression that soon gets out of hand; each successive salvage job sends out waves of entropic dislocation that mingle with, reinforce, and complicate the earlier waves—and no amount of paddling the surface of a roiled pond is going to restore it to a mirror surface.”
"You know what. When you get all choked up about the old lady it's yourself you're grieving for. She's you— fifty years on. You know it and I know it.”
"What is the basis for that astonishing statement?" he said, not looking astonished.
"Easy," I said. "I should have seen it sooner. You've infiltrated Nexx Central."
"And you've infiltrated our infiltration.”
And also you can time travel by having sex and there’s future robots from the future who are also up to some time fuckery.
This may be the most advanced book ever written, possibly beyond the human capacity to truly comprehend its temporal ramifications!
Imagine patching the patches and infiltrating the infiltration, all the while being one step ahead of them, one step behind of yourself and also not that and everything else all at once and not at all forever and ever, up your ass and around the corner!
April 3, 2015
review of
Keith Laumer's Dinosaur Beach
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - April 3, 2015
That was fun. This is the 4th Laumer bk I've read in the past few days. I made a bit of fun of 2 of them as hack work. I looked him up online & read in one place that he had a stroke in the early 1970s & that he cdn't write for awhile after that but that he eventually started writing again. Here's one person's take on him:
"John Keith Laumer was an extremely successful man, an author who kept fit, always. It was therefore more difficult for him when he suffered a massive stroke in 1971 that paralyzed one side of his body and part of his brain and therefore his mind."
[..]
"He was a master of his mind but he could no longer write. He tried, over and again but the paralysis took control of his mind and the rage drove everyone away.
"His writing suffered horribly. He could not write but he was published. It seems apparent no editor would tell Keith Laumer, a world famous author, that he could not write any longer. The publishers were too interested in taking advantage of Keith as he tried desperately to live up to his previous mastery." - http://www.keithlaumer.com/biography.htm
That's a tough break. Everything I've read so far was written up to 1970 but not beyond. Dinosaur Beach was published in 1971. I have 4 more laying around that I might read next. At least 2 of them were written post-stroke. It'll be interesting to see how his writing's changed. Given that I, too, might one day be the old-person-who-has-a-crippling-experience, I'm rooting for Laumer. I'm hoping that I find redeeming qualities in the writing that the above-quoted fan didn't.
In the meantime, I enjoyed this Laumer more than the other 3 I've read recently. In my most recent review of one of his bks, The World Shuffler, I started by quoting the 1st paragraph:
"It was a warm autumnal afternoon in Artesia. Lafayette O'Leary, late of the U.S.A., now Sir Lafayette O'Leary since his official investiture with knighthood by Princess Adoranne, was lounging at ease in a brocaded chair in his spacious library, beside a high, richly draped window overlooking the palace gardens, He was dressed in purple kneepants, a shirt of heavy white silk, gold-buckled shoes of glove-soft kid. A massive emerald winked on one finger beside the heavy silver ring bearing the device of the ax and the dragon. A tall, cool drink stood at his elbow. From a battery of speakers concealed behind the hangings, A Debussy tone poem caressed the air." - p 1, The World Shuffler
Now cf that to the 1st paragraph of Dinosaur Beach:
"It was a pleasant summer evening. We were sitting on the porch swing, Lisa and I, watching the last of the pink fade out of the sky and listening to Fred Hunnicut pushing a lawn mower over his weed crop next door. A cricket in the woodwork started up his fiddle, sounding businesslike and full of energy. A car rattled by, its weak yellow headlights pushing shadows along the brick street and reflecting in the foliage of the sycamores that arched over the pavement. Somewhere a radio sang about harbor lights." - p 7, Dinosaur Beach
Ok, there are some formulaic similarities. The season & place are established, the paragraph ends w/ music referenced. I don't claim this is great writing but expressions like "yellow headlights pushing shadows" & "a radio sang about harbor lights" please me. Headlights, strictly speaking, don't "push" anything (they illuminate the area they drive toward) & radios, strictly speaking, don't sing (the humans being broadcast by the radios do). The writing's just figurative enuf to make it not dryly predictable.
"Then I lifted the pistol I had palmed while he was arranging the chairs, and shot him under the left eye.
"He settled in his chair. His head was bent back over his left shoulder as if he were admiring the water spots on the ceiling. His little pudgy hands opened and closed a couple of times. He leaned sideways quite slowly and hit the floor like two hundred pounds of heavy machinery.
"Which he was, of course."
Right off the fiddling cricket bat, the reader is notified that there are machines posing as humans out to get the narrator. Of course, I'm reminded of James Cameron & Gale Anne Hurd's 1984 Terminator, the extremely popular SciFi story-become-movie about a robot posing as human traveling back in time to kill someone whose future influence is threatening the robot's hegemony. Oddly, this same robot became governor of California after that. Go figger. Anyway, I'm glad Laumer got to this type of story 1st.
""Beautiful, don't you agree?" the Karg said. He waved a hand at the hundred or so square miles of stainless steel we were standing on. Against a black sky, sharp-cornered steel buildings thrust up like gap teeth. Great searchlights dazzled against the complex shapes of giant machines that trundled slowly, with much rumbling, among the structures." - p 104
"In the case of the space garbage, it had taken half a dozen major collisions to convince the early space authorities of the need to sweep circumterrestrial space clean of fifty years' debris in the form of spent rocket casings, defunct telemetry gear, and derelict relay satellites long lost track of. In the process they'd turned up a surprising number of odds and ends, including lumps of meteoric rock and iron, chondrites of clearly earthly origin, possibly volcanic, the mummified body of an astronaut lost on an early space walk, and a number of artifacts that the authorities of the day had scratched their heads over and finally written off as the equivalent of empty beer cans tossed out by visitors from out-system." - p 18
I'm stretching things a bit here but one might even say that military-man Laumer was a mite bit ahead of peacenik Ed Sanders in regard to the latter's 1972 "Beer Cans on the Moon" ecological warning song - or, at least, roughly contemporaneous to it. In short, I found much more to laud in Dinosaur Beach than I have in t'other bks I've read by him recently. I even liked this bit of love-sickness:
"But every train of thought led back to her. If I tasted a daka-fruit—extinct since the Jurassic—I thought Lisa would like this, and I'd imagine her expression if I brought a couple home in a brown paper sack from the IGA store at the corner, picturing her peeling them and making a fruit salad with grated coconut and blanched almonds. . . ." - p 22
I like the way he sneaks in "a daka-fruit—extinct since the Jurassic" in the context of domestic bliss & segues into the details of a 1939 food store (presumably period-accurate) & foods that might be combined w/ the daka. Nice.
&, yeah, once again again, there are some similarities to The World Shuffler, written in fairly close proximity to each other, the narrator keeps encountering himself - in the 1st case b/c of parallel worlds, in this case b/c of time-traveling:
"I took three steps and stooped and picked up the gun. It was a .01 microjet of Nexx manufacture, with a grip that fitted my hand perfectly.
"It ought to. It was my gun. I looked at the hand it had fallen from. It looked like my hand. I didn't like doing it, but I turned the body over and looked at the face.
"It was my face," - p 43
I've sd it before & I'll say it again again again, I like time travel & parallel worlds stories b/c of the way their logic 'permits' all sorts of things that wd be illogical in more conventional stories - & I seem to like Laumer's writing the best when he's writing in those niches. As the character travels in time, Laumer takes advantage of the possibilities to imagine a prehistoric Earth as well as a future one:
"It was cold on the beach; the sun was too big, but there was no heat in it. I wondered if it had engulfed Mercury yet; if the hydrogen phoenix reaction had run its course; if Venus was now a molten world gliding along the face of the dying monster Sol that filled half its sky." - p 123
In other words, a red giant. Not a Red Star, mind you, That's a Pittsburgh based Adult Kombucha Brewery that I'm hereby promoting b/c my friend who runs it works too much & needs to make more money off it. Ahem. Has yr perception just been changed by knowledge?
"I saw the immaculate precision of the Nexx-built chamber disintegrate in my eyes into the shabby makeshift that it was, saw the glittering complexity of the instrumentation dwindle in my sight until it appeared as no more than the crude mud images of a river tribesman, or the shiny trash in a jackdaw's nest." - p 144
Anyway, all isn't really right in the world but romance wins out in the end - but what will the children be like?
Keith Laumer's Dinosaur Beach
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - April 3, 2015
That was fun. This is the 4th Laumer bk I've read in the past few days. I made a bit of fun of 2 of them as hack work. I looked him up online & read in one place that he had a stroke in the early 1970s & that he cdn't write for awhile after that but that he eventually started writing again. Here's one person's take on him:
"John Keith Laumer was an extremely successful man, an author who kept fit, always. It was therefore more difficult for him when he suffered a massive stroke in 1971 that paralyzed one side of his body and part of his brain and therefore his mind."
[..]
"He was a master of his mind but he could no longer write. He tried, over and again but the paralysis took control of his mind and the rage drove everyone away.
"His writing suffered horribly. He could not write but he was published. It seems apparent no editor would tell Keith Laumer, a world famous author, that he could not write any longer. The publishers were too interested in taking advantage of Keith as he tried desperately to live up to his previous mastery." - http://www.keithlaumer.com/biography.htm
That's a tough break. Everything I've read so far was written up to 1970 but not beyond. Dinosaur Beach was published in 1971. I have 4 more laying around that I might read next. At least 2 of them were written post-stroke. It'll be interesting to see how his writing's changed. Given that I, too, might one day be the old-person-who-has-a-crippling-experience, I'm rooting for Laumer. I'm hoping that I find redeeming qualities in the writing that the above-quoted fan didn't.
In the meantime, I enjoyed this Laumer more than the other 3 I've read recently. In my most recent review of one of his bks, The World Shuffler, I started by quoting the 1st paragraph:
"It was a warm autumnal afternoon in Artesia. Lafayette O'Leary, late of the U.S.A., now Sir Lafayette O'Leary since his official investiture with knighthood by Princess Adoranne, was lounging at ease in a brocaded chair in his spacious library, beside a high, richly draped window overlooking the palace gardens, He was dressed in purple kneepants, a shirt of heavy white silk, gold-buckled shoes of glove-soft kid. A massive emerald winked on one finger beside the heavy silver ring bearing the device of the ax and the dragon. A tall, cool drink stood at his elbow. From a battery of speakers concealed behind the hangings, A Debussy tone poem caressed the air." - p 1, The World Shuffler
Now cf that to the 1st paragraph of Dinosaur Beach:
"It was a pleasant summer evening. We were sitting on the porch swing, Lisa and I, watching the last of the pink fade out of the sky and listening to Fred Hunnicut pushing a lawn mower over his weed crop next door. A cricket in the woodwork started up his fiddle, sounding businesslike and full of energy. A car rattled by, its weak yellow headlights pushing shadows along the brick street and reflecting in the foliage of the sycamores that arched over the pavement. Somewhere a radio sang about harbor lights." - p 7, Dinosaur Beach
Ok, there are some formulaic similarities. The season & place are established, the paragraph ends w/ music referenced. I don't claim this is great writing but expressions like "yellow headlights pushing shadows" & "a radio sang about harbor lights" please me. Headlights, strictly speaking, don't "push" anything (they illuminate the area they drive toward) & radios, strictly speaking, don't sing (the humans being broadcast by the radios do). The writing's just figurative enuf to make it not dryly predictable.
"Then I lifted the pistol I had palmed while he was arranging the chairs, and shot him under the left eye.
"He settled in his chair. His head was bent back over his left shoulder as if he were admiring the water spots on the ceiling. His little pudgy hands opened and closed a couple of times. He leaned sideways quite slowly and hit the floor like two hundred pounds of heavy machinery.
"Which he was, of course."
Right off the fiddling cricket bat, the reader is notified that there are machines posing as humans out to get the narrator. Of course, I'm reminded of James Cameron & Gale Anne Hurd's 1984 Terminator, the extremely popular SciFi story-become-movie about a robot posing as human traveling back in time to kill someone whose future influence is threatening the robot's hegemony. Oddly, this same robot became governor of California after that. Go figger. Anyway, I'm glad Laumer got to this type of story 1st.
""Beautiful, don't you agree?" the Karg said. He waved a hand at the hundred or so square miles of stainless steel we were standing on. Against a black sky, sharp-cornered steel buildings thrust up like gap teeth. Great searchlights dazzled against the complex shapes of giant machines that trundled slowly, with much rumbling, among the structures." - p 104
"In the case of the space garbage, it had taken half a dozen major collisions to convince the early space authorities of the need to sweep circumterrestrial space clean of fifty years' debris in the form of spent rocket casings, defunct telemetry gear, and derelict relay satellites long lost track of. In the process they'd turned up a surprising number of odds and ends, including lumps of meteoric rock and iron, chondrites of clearly earthly origin, possibly volcanic, the mummified body of an astronaut lost on an early space walk, and a number of artifacts that the authorities of the day had scratched their heads over and finally written off as the equivalent of empty beer cans tossed out by visitors from out-system." - p 18
I'm stretching things a bit here but one might even say that military-man Laumer was a mite bit ahead of peacenik Ed Sanders in regard to the latter's 1972 "Beer Cans on the Moon" ecological warning song - or, at least, roughly contemporaneous to it. In short, I found much more to laud in Dinosaur Beach than I have in t'other bks I've read by him recently. I even liked this bit of love-sickness:
"But every train of thought led back to her. If I tasted a daka-fruit—extinct since the Jurassic—I thought Lisa would like this, and I'd imagine her expression if I brought a couple home in a brown paper sack from the IGA store at the corner, picturing her peeling them and making a fruit salad with grated coconut and blanched almonds. . . ." - p 22
I like the way he sneaks in "a daka-fruit—extinct since the Jurassic" in the context of domestic bliss & segues into the details of a 1939 food store (presumably period-accurate) & foods that might be combined w/ the daka. Nice.
&, yeah, once again again, there are some similarities to The World Shuffler, written in fairly close proximity to each other, the narrator keeps encountering himself - in the 1st case b/c of parallel worlds, in this case b/c of time-traveling:
"I took three steps and stooped and picked up the gun. It was a .01 microjet of Nexx manufacture, with a grip that fitted my hand perfectly.
"It ought to. It was my gun. I looked at the hand it had fallen from. It looked like my hand. I didn't like doing it, but I turned the body over and looked at the face.
"It was my face," - p 43
I've sd it before & I'll say it again again again, I like time travel & parallel worlds stories b/c of the way their logic 'permits' all sorts of things that wd be illogical in more conventional stories - & I seem to like Laumer's writing the best when he's writing in those niches. As the character travels in time, Laumer takes advantage of the possibilities to imagine a prehistoric Earth as well as a future one:
"It was cold on the beach; the sun was too big, but there was no heat in it. I wondered if it had engulfed Mercury yet; if the hydrogen phoenix reaction had run its course; if Venus was now a molten world gliding along the face of the dying monster Sol that filled half its sky." - p 123
In other words, a red giant. Not a Red Star, mind you, That's a Pittsburgh based Adult Kombucha Brewery that I'm hereby promoting b/c my friend who runs it works too much & needs to make more money off it. Ahem. Has yr perception just been changed by knowledge?
"I saw the immaculate precision of the Nexx-built chamber disintegrate in my eyes into the shabby makeshift that it was, saw the glittering complexity of the instrumentation dwindle in my sight until it appeared as no more than the crude mud images of a river tribesman, or the shiny trash in a jackdaw's nest." - p 144
Anyway, all isn't really right in the world but romance wins out in the end - but what will the children be like?
March 20, 2022
9- A great pallet cleanser after the disappointing book I read before this one. This is classic SF, written in 1971, but some of its idea's feel pretty modern. It's not afraid to postulate ultra intelligent machine societies hundreds of millions of years in the future, for example. Despite the title there are few dinosaurs in here - the 'Dinosaur Beach' of the title is the location for a base in the Jurassic Era from which missions through time are staged. Nexx Central- a civilisation 10.000 years in our future is trying to clean up the past. Earlier time travelers have damaged the time stream, by introducing anachronisms, or branching up too many time lines. Later civilisations have tried to repair the damage, by sending out Kargs (robots running on tapes), but doing that only made the problem worse. Ravel is a time agent tasked by taking out one of these robots in 1936. After his successful mission he retreats to Dinosaur Beach, but the base is attacked and he flees in time. He meets himself in the 17th century, botches the mission of his past self, and then enters a time loop. During which he discovers another agent who looks a lot like his wife from 1936 ... As you can imagine this is a labyrinthine tale, where little is explained. I found it best to just follow along and accept some confusion. Some of the science was indeed hard to follow (a problem in almost all time travel books), and Laumer did not hold back - placing his characters out of time, in time loops, having them meet other versions of themselves and even taking them to a far future earth where she sun has become a red giant and the moon is fallen appart to form a dust ring around our planet. I found that part beautifully described. Laumer has a great turn of phrase, always coming up with evocative descriptions and metaphors. The prose has a nice flow and I liked the self deprecating narration by the protagonist. Some aspects of the story are dated (is the protagonist really misogynistic, or is that a holdover from his 1936 persona?), but I could look past that and enjoy some truly imaginative scenario's. This book takes the reader on a wild ride, and just when you think Laumer cannot extricate himself from the knots he has woven in his story, he one ups himself and delivers a mind blowing finale that tops everything that came before. I can see why this has become a classic in the SF field. It's worth reading, especially if you are interested in time travel-stories. With its story of a robot pursuing a time agent it even predates Terminator ... And worth reading if you like great descriptions and evocative metaphors. Not really for the casual SF-reader or someone easily confused by a complex plot. But worth checking out for fans of classic SF.
August 2, 2023
I have finished. IT took me a while, I play videogames.
This is Daw book, number 21 and it was published back in 71.
So, what's this book about? If you have read the back cover, it has nothing to do with dinossaurs. They appear 1 or 2 pages and are barely there. The Dinoussaur beach is a a beach where the time travellers have their HQ. From there they go, through time, changing stuff. Well not changing, our main protagonist (Ravel) is a third generation time traveller which is solving the problems created by the first two eras. It's a simple book, fast pace. It has 40 chapters in 150 pages and it's okay book.
BUT I have a problem with Time Travels and this book really brought the issue back. If I went back in time and kill person X, then a second age from far into the future went bacck to stop me from killing person X. How does this work? Killing X (I know you all want to kill Hitler, so let's go with Stalin). I am in a future and go back and kill Stalin - right from the bat our timeline would be different (better or worse) , would my timeline even exist at all? Then how the second guy would know he had to act, because if he is in the future but acting on the past, well it doesn't need right? It's very hard dealing with timesweepers and I don't like it and this one felt confused.. man by the end we had 7th era timsweepers... all thinking we are the last, we are the last.
Want to solve everything? go to the past and kill the inventor. Job Done BUT WAIT... if timesweepers were never invented how could you go to the past to kill the creator of it? Well... I give up.
Overall, nice fast pace story. Don't think to much. 5/10
This is Daw book, number 21 and it was published back in 71.
So, what's this book about? If you have read the back cover, it has nothing to do with dinossaurs. They appear 1 or 2 pages and are barely there. The Dinoussaur beach is a a beach where the time travellers have their HQ. From there they go, through time, changing stuff. Well not changing, our main protagonist (Ravel) is a third generation time traveller which is solving the problems created by the first two eras. It's a simple book, fast pace. It has 40 chapters in 150 pages and it's okay book.
BUT I have a problem with Time Travels and this book really brought the issue back. If I went back in time and kill person X, then a second age from far into the future went bacck to stop me from killing person X. How does this work? Killing X (I know you all want to kill Hitler, so let's go with Stalin). I am in a future and go back and kill Stalin - right from the bat our timeline would be different (better or worse) , would my timeline even exist at all? Then how the second guy would know he had to act, because if he is in the future but acting on the past, well it doesn't need right? It's very hard dealing with timesweepers and I don't like it and this one felt confused.. man by the end we had 7th era timsweepers... all thinking we are the last, we are the last.
Want to solve everything? go to the past and kill the inventor. Job Done BUT WAIT... if timesweepers were never invented how could you go to the past to kill the creator of it? Well... I give up.
Overall, nice fast pace story. Don't think to much. 5/10
March 11, 2017
I love it. I first read it in my 12 years because time travel. I first recommended it to fellow engineers when I was 26. I still believe it is the best book about concurrent programming - edited - coding in general - edited - engineering in general - edited - quality - edited - responsibility ever written.
Certain ideas overlap with other stories by the same author, or time travel fiction by other writers, but this book comes dense and concentrated in every possible way. Not so much a political pamphlet as "The Plague"; not so much a parable as "Assignment to Nowhere"; not so much a single-shot narrative as Azimov's "End of Eternity". How we lay out the present, so that it could be built upon; how we let it go, and let ourselves matter no more. Trivial things to hear, but we humans of flesh and blood tend to forget about them every day even though we don't possess immortality, or time machines, or one-off clones of ourselves. This book is a saturated solution of those truths - still holding the reader's breath tight till the last page and containing no single sentence written in preaching tone.
Hint: read this book with your loved one and let it become your secret language.
Certain ideas overlap with other stories by the same author, or time travel fiction by other writers, but this book comes dense and concentrated in every possible way. Not so much a political pamphlet as "The Plague"; not so much a parable as "Assignment to Nowhere"; not so much a single-shot narrative as Azimov's "End of Eternity". How we lay out the present, so that it could be built upon; how we let it go, and let ourselves matter no more. Trivial things to hear, but we humans of flesh and blood tend to forget about them every day even though we don't possess immortality, or time machines, or one-off clones of ourselves. This book is a saturated solution of those truths - still holding the reader's breath tight till the last page and containing no single sentence written in preaching tone.
Hint: read this book with your loved one and let it become your secret language.
July 19, 2022
Fun time travel adventure, quick reading due to pacing and it being only 151 pages. I try every summer to read a few older science fiction novels, from say the 1930s through the 1980s, and I thought this one from 1971 (developed from a short story published in 1969) would be great and it was. I did go in expecting dinosaurs and though they definitely made an appearance, they are mostly local color in a few scenes. Instead of an adventure in the Mesozoic, I was treated to a timey-whimey time war between different factions from throughout history, all aware of each other, and the story of how three people kept connecting and reconnecting throughout time as a part of this war, the main character Igor Ravel (just called Ravel throughout most of the book, a Timesweeper, part of an agency that goes throughout history and cleans up problems with the timeline, mostly caused by either the first misadventures in time travel or by the disasters caused by later time travelers trying to fix these problems), the love of his life Lisa, and a robotic assassin, a type of “machine-men” called a Karg, “a corruption of “cargo””, robots that can pass for humans sent out by Third Era Timesweep efforts to undo problems from not only “Old Era temporal explorers, but to eliminate the even more disastrous effects of the Second Program Enforcers,” with Ravel and Lisa continually encountering the same Karg again and again (and each other at different points in their lives and on different timelines). As for Ravel, he is from an organization called Nexx Central, which controls Fourth Era time travel. Second, Third, and Fourth era operatives are all aware of each other and sometimes ally, but mostly work against each other throughout time and space.
The mechanics of time travel are not explained and the book uses a lot of jargon one could easily just skim past, not even whole sentences most of the time, about fatalistics theory, mutually exclusive base timetracks, the Temporal Core, etc but in the end I gathered the flow of time can be damaged locally especially and one can create side timelines and loops that exist maybe for only one person. Also, all attempts to fix issues from time travel simply create more problems and it is a matter of exchanging big problems for small problems, though even small problems can have unforeseen consequences. One can create pockets of reality outside of time as bases or places to hide, but with the right time jump one can prevent the pockets from existing in the first place.
Memory is a fun thing in the story, as not only does altering the timeline apparently often (but by no means always) alter a person’s memory of the past but Ravel and other Timesweep agent have their memory wiped after missions, with one wondering how complete these wipes are.
It was interesting to read Ravel’s dialogue and thoughts, how he spoke felt very mid twentieth century, with Ravel sometimes calling Lisa a girl (to Lisa’s objection), saying words and phrases like “swell,” “you don’t know the half of it,” and a rather Raymond Chandler sounding “We picked separate rooms. Nobody bothered to say good night.” I was unclear (and fine with that) if this was simply how the author wrote (born in 1925) or it was because when we first meet Ravel, he is on a mission in 1936 in the United States and didn’t have his memory wiped before the adventures of the book.
Not perfect, as it was hard to follow at times all the changes time travel made, but if you focus on the three main characters, it didn’t really matter, as they are what matters. Some monologuing from the Karg at times and though Lisa was shown as capable and heroic, there are some contemporary gender norms that didn’t surprise me, though nothing at least for me deal breaking. I liked the ending. Wish it had more dinosaurs.
The mechanics of time travel are not explained and the book uses a lot of jargon one could easily just skim past, not even whole sentences most of the time, about fatalistics theory, mutually exclusive base timetracks, the Temporal Core, etc but in the end I gathered the flow of time can be damaged locally especially and one can create side timelines and loops that exist maybe for only one person. Also, all attempts to fix issues from time travel simply create more problems and it is a matter of exchanging big problems for small problems, though even small problems can have unforeseen consequences. One can create pockets of reality outside of time as bases or places to hide, but with the right time jump one can prevent the pockets from existing in the first place.
Memory is a fun thing in the story, as not only does altering the timeline apparently often (but by no means always) alter a person’s memory of the past but Ravel and other Timesweep agent have their memory wiped after missions, with one wondering how complete these wipes are.
It was interesting to read Ravel’s dialogue and thoughts, how he spoke felt very mid twentieth century, with Ravel sometimes calling Lisa a girl (to Lisa’s objection), saying words and phrases like “swell,” “you don’t know the half of it,” and a rather Raymond Chandler sounding “We picked separate rooms. Nobody bothered to say good night.” I was unclear (and fine with that) if this was simply how the author wrote (born in 1925) or it was because when we first meet Ravel, he is on a mission in 1936 in the United States and didn’t have his memory wiped before the adventures of the book.
Not perfect, as it was hard to follow at times all the changes time travel made, but if you focus on the three main characters, it didn’t really matter, as they are what matters. Some monologuing from the Karg at times and though Lisa was shown as capable and heroic, there are some contemporary gender norms that didn’t surprise me, though nothing at least for me deal breaking. I liked the ending. Wish it had more dinosaurs.
June 27, 2022
"Call me Igor Ravel, Timesweeper" is not how this story begins. But it could have. Time travel stories have a tendency to get very convoluted and this time travel story is no exception.
Meeting yourself is pretty standard stuff, but getting yourself killed by yourself – not directly or intentionally is not. Nor is meeting yourself at such an advanced age you don't recognize yourself, or maybe you do but don't want to think about it.
So Igor Ravel, as he is called, is an agent sent to clean up various anomalies left by previous – earlier – time-travelling agencies.
"I laid the Karg out on its back and cut the seal on its reel compartment, lifted out the tape it had been operating on..." This was published in 1971 so crystal-matrix-memory was not well-known. Well, it still isn't, I don't think, as I just made it up. But I am surprised that Mr Laumer who is otherwise capable of feats of staggering imagination would settle for a mundane "tape" to program an android.
"My last item of preparation was a small crater gun from the armoury. I strapped it to my wrist, just out of sight under the cuff... A crater gun at wide diffusion stung just enough to get the message through to [the dinosaurs] pea-sized brains." This is a piece of hardware worthy of the invention. Dinosaurs prowl around agent Ravel's home base located, somewhere in the Jurassic as I recall, on a beach.
“'Don’t get ahead of yourself,' I told her. 'When I make a pass at you that’ll be time enough to slap me down. Don’t go female on me now. We don’t have time for nonsense.'”
This also dates the book, and the audience. Written for pimply teen-age boys who know nothing about women it possibly gave them a feeling of superiority to be guided, socially, by a strong male character. I guess. The story has many passages of romance though, and loss. Agent Ravel leaves the love of his life in 1930's USA to head back to base sparking off the adventure.
"She gave me a look that made me feel as if I’d just kicked a cripple down the stairs..." and
"The smile again, as if I was Lindy and I’d just flown an ocean, all for her..."
One twist of the story which I may possibly reveal without it being a spoiler is that agent Ravel only becomes aware of certain things when "the time is ripe" so to speak. Embedded in a time-stream he doesn't recall being an agent until some event triggers the fact. The same is true of his powers which suddenly reveal themselves to him, and even new technology which he suddenly realizes he can access.
I have previously read Retief's War by Mr Laumer, a book which I enjoyed more. It had plenty of tongue-in-cheek humour, and sharp satire on diplomats and diplomacy, on nations and leaders of nations as well as inventing exciting new species. Unfortunately this was only occasionally funny. There is plenty of action here too.
This is the kind of intricate time-travel story which, when you have finished it, you feel you should reread it immediately. And I did but I didn't.
Meeting yourself is pretty standard stuff, but getting yourself killed by yourself – not directly or intentionally is not. Nor is meeting yourself at such an advanced age you don't recognize yourself, or maybe you do but don't want to think about it.
So Igor Ravel, as he is called, is an agent sent to clean up various anomalies left by previous – earlier – time-travelling agencies.
"I laid the Karg out on its back and cut the seal on its reel compartment, lifted out the tape it had been operating on..." This was published in 1971 so crystal-matrix-memory was not well-known. Well, it still isn't, I don't think, as I just made it up. But I am surprised that Mr Laumer who is otherwise capable of feats of staggering imagination would settle for a mundane "tape" to program an android.
"My last item of preparation was a small crater gun from the armoury. I strapped it to my wrist, just out of sight under the cuff... A crater gun at wide diffusion stung just enough to get the message through to [the dinosaurs] pea-sized brains." This is a piece of hardware worthy of the invention. Dinosaurs prowl around agent Ravel's home base located, somewhere in the Jurassic as I recall, on a beach.
“'Don’t get ahead of yourself,' I told her. 'When I make a pass at you that’ll be time enough to slap me down. Don’t go female on me now. We don’t have time for nonsense.'”
This also dates the book, and the audience. Written for pimply teen-age boys who know nothing about women it possibly gave them a feeling of superiority to be guided, socially, by a strong male character. I guess. The story has many passages of romance though, and loss. Agent Ravel leaves the love of his life in 1930's USA to head back to base sparking off the adventure.
"She gave me a look that made me feel as if I’d just kicked a cripple down the stairs..." and
"The smile again, as if I was Lindy and I’d just flown an ocean, all for her..."
One twist of the story which I may possibly reveal without it being a spoiler is that agent Ravel only becomes aware of certain things when "the time is ripe" so to speak. Embedded in a time-stream he doesn't recall being an agent until some event triggers the fact. The same is true of his powers which suddenly reveal themselves to him, and even new technology which he suddenly realizes he can access.
I have previously read Retief's War by Mr Laumer, a book which I enjoyed more. It had plenty of tongue-in-cheek humour, and sharp satire on diplomats and diplomacy, on nations and leaders of nations as well as inventing exciting new species. Unfortunately this was only occasionally funny. There is plenty of action here too.
This is the kind of intricate time-travel story which, when you have finished it, you feel you should reread it immediately. And I did but I didn't.
May 23, 2022
I usually begin reviews with a synopsis, even if brief, of the book in question. This synopsis is going to be one of the briefest, because trying to explain this will take quite a bit of doing. Suffice to say that it's all about time travel in some faraway future, with the narrator, an Igor Ravel, moving swiftly from one time zone to another, trying to patch up problems created by former time travellers who didn't know how to respect the idea of the Butterfly Effect.
This was one book that started off well for me, and for the first one-third of the book, I was deeply engrossed. Then it began to go off the rails, getting too complicated for me, and with too much faffy jargon being thrown around to hold my interest. Yes, I can see that Laumer probably knew his concepts of time and time travel very well, but he doesn't bother to do anything by way of elucidating some of his concepts for those of us who may not be able to keep up. About midway through Dinosaur Beach, I began to lose patience with all the faffery, and even when I could (sort of) understand - and appreciate - what was going on, I just wasn't invested in Ravel and his doings any more.
Not a book for me.
This was one book that started off well for me, and for the first one-third of the book, I was deeply engrossed. Then it began to go off the rails, getting too complicated for me, and with too much faffy jargon being thrown around to hold my interest. Yes, I can see that Laumer probably knew his concepts of time and time travel very well, but he doesn't bother to do anything by way of elucidating some of his concepts for those of us who may not be able to keep up. About midway through Dinosaur Beach, I began to lose patience with all the faffery, and even when I could (sort of) understand - and appreciate - what was going on, I just wasn't invested in Ravel and his doings any more.
Not a book for me.
January 4, 2026
At first I was questioning the author's sanity - and then I started to doubt my own.
This book is genuinely insane.
The title makes it sound like just another pulpy sci-fi from the 60s, and while the first half of the book bears up that impression somewhat, it then completely morphs into something very special, and kinda New Wave.
It’s a time travel story, sure, but one that’s taken to its logical conclusion - both on the grand, apocalyptic topics, and also on smaller, personal notes.
I wish I could say why it’s as special as it is without spoiling, but take my advice: just stick it out past the halfway mark.
Laumer will more than repay your trust.
Would I re-read: oh yes. I think this one will have so much depth on a reread.
This book is genuinely insane.
The title makes it sound like just another pulpy sci-fi from the 60s, and while the first half of the book bears up that impression somewhat, it then completely morphs into something very special, and kinda New Wave.
It’s a time travel story, sure, but one that’s taken to its logical conclusion - both on the grand, apocalyptic topics, and also on smaller, personal notes.
I wish I could say why it’s as special as it is without spoiling, but take my advice: just stick it out past the halfway mark.
Laumer will more than repay your trust.
Would I re-read: oh yes. I think this one will have so much depth on a reread.
October 27, 2022
I caught Covid, then started this book and "Dying Earth" by Jack Vance. I desired ease and junk food and pulp literature. Which I got from this book; two stars indeed.
Spoilers: Wait what? You are stranded time travel police! Either other time cops come save you in the next five minutes (or whatever protocol is) or they are never coming; you aren't going to starve to death. The only thing I was hoping from this ridiculously cheesy seeming book was the time travel was well considered.... And I don't think that will be happening.
Ch. 8, the main character is a ridiculous fool, you can't stop for a moment outside time to collect your thoughts? What's going to happen? What can even happen outside time? I think time travel must cause brain damage.
Ch. 16, Oh come on, he better be sticking his finger in her nose or like a false flap of skin in the armpit. I don't want to read your dumb 1970s sex fantasy. What if two men get trapped in time? Just stay trapped in time because they don't have a yoni for you to create a hostile work environment over?
Then this contrivance, not just sex but they need to also like each other? That might be a reasonable precaution, but it still does very little for a couple of time bros. Well...they don't go into that fine of detail, at least, so maybe the time bros can indeed stick themselves places, time girls though might still be in trouble.
Ch. 17 Now what? Sigh, I apologize for attempting to take this novel seriously. Go ahead and make whatever schlock you are going to Author.
Ch. 36 What's the point in getting rid of a time-traveler that's already done all their traveling? You need to get rid of the traveler before the loop starts. I mean I don't know. I stopped worrying about the specifics a while ago.
Oh I see, the solution is he has magic plot powers. Well I mean those are easier than thinking things through. Sigh, technically I should probably reread the book to see if it wasn't a bunch of handwaved garbage, but I do not care that much. The story progressed along ok and I managed to finish it. That's as far as I need go.
Spoilers: Wait what? You are stranded time travel police! Either other time cops come save you in the next five minutes (or whatever protocol is) or they are never coming; you aren't going to starve to death. The only thing I was hoping from this ridiculously cheesy seeming book was the time travel was well considered.... And I don't think that will be happening.
Ch. 8, the main character is a ridiculous fool, you can't stop for a moment outside time to collect your thoughts? What's going to happen? What can even happen outside time? I think time travel must cause brain damage.
Ch. 16, Oh come on, he better be sticking his finger in her nose or like a false flap of skin in the armpit. I don't want to read your dumb 1970s sex fantasy. What if two men get trapped in time? Just stay trapped in time because they don't have a yoni for you to create a hostile work environment over?
Then this contrivance, not just sex but they need to also like each other? That might be a reasonable precaution, but it still does very little for a couple of time bros. Well...they don't go into that fine of detail, at least, so maybe the time bros can indeed stick themselves places, time girls though might still be in trouble.
Ch. 17 Now what? Sigh, I apologize for attempting to take this novel seriously. Go ahead and make whatever schlock you are going to Author.
Ch. 36 What's the point in getting rid of a time-traveler that's already done all their traveling? You need to get rid of the traveler before the loop starts. I mean I don't know. I stopped worrying about the specifics a while ago.
Oh I see, the solution is he has magic plot powers. Well I mean those are easier than thinking things through. Sigh, technically I should probably reread the book to see if it wasn't a bunch of handwaved garbage, but I do not care that much. The story progressed along ok and I managed to finish it. That's as far as I need go.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 22, 2013
I've read this book a number of times. It is the very exemplar of "page-turner." More than once I have stayed up to 3am to finish it, unable to put it down.
Clever time travel stuff, bit of transcendence at the end, just moves like greased lightning.
Love the many different metaphors used to describe the physical sensation of each time jump.
One of those books I read and then went looking for more from the same author, only to be disappointed. His best as far as I can tell.
Clever time travel stuff, bit of transcendence at the end, just moves like greased lightning.
Love the many different metaphors used to describe the physical sensation of each time jump.
One of those books I read and then went looking for more from the same author, only to be disappointed. His best as far as I can tell.
May 4, 2018
This book was 151 pages and went no where. There were maybe two dinosaurs but beyond that, there was time travel, robots good and evil, a whole bunch of science jargin and a girl left alone at home in early 1900's Buffalo. But beyond that, THE BOOK WENT NOWHERE.
I'll give it one brief golf clap off appreciation for the somewhat clever thought that the concept of a 'soul mate' can have scientific ramifications. But that's it. Go home book, you're drunk
I'll give it one brief golf clap off appreciation for the somewhat clever thought that the concept of a 'soul mate' can have scientific ramifications. But that's it. Go home book, you're drunk
Want to read
August 29, 2023I might have missed this one, back in the day. Here's what SFE has to say:
It's a Time Police tale; "the deliriously complex Dinosaur Beach (1971) by Keith Laumer, where the fabric of time is increasingly knotted and fragmented by successive, warring human time-regulators, and the stability of a final Time Travel-free history can be achieved only by AI time police willing to accept their own erasure."
So I might look for a cheap copy, to fill out a Thriftbooks order?
It's a Time Police tale; "the deliriously complex Dinosaur Beach (1971) by Keith Laumer, where the fabric of time is increasingly knotted and fragmented by successive, warring human time-regulators, and the stability of a final Time Travel-free history can be achieved only by AI time police willing to accept their own erasure."
So I might look for a cheap copy, to fill out a Thriftbooks order?
November 14, 2021
Such a bad bad book. I hate giving bad reviews to books but the main character is the most unlikeable, revolting man I have ever come across. It ate too many of my braincells for me to remember why I even bothered to finish it.
There's no wonder the title was changed to Dinosaur Beach. Not even 5% of the book contains dinosaurs and looking at it you'ld think it was all about dinosaurs on a beach, scummy marketing.
There's no wonder the title was changed to Dinosaur Beach. Not even 5% of the book contains dinosaurs and looking at it you'ld think it was all about dinosaurs on a beach, scummy marketing.
February 1, 2016
This was a great change of pace book (science fiction) recommended to me by my brother. You had to pay close attention to the time traveling hero, and the intricate plot, but it was definitely clever and entertaining!
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