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The Year of the Quiet Sun
"An H. G. Wells type time machine take this chilling story's anti-hero unto a nightmare only a few-years-from-now future, which many people will feel we have earned by our treatment of minorities. This highly entertaining realistic novel is a Hugo contender, I feel." -- A. E. Van Vogt. "The Year of the Quiet Sun is a story guaranteed to make you reluctant to open up tomorrow morning's paper, fearful that for once a story may be truly predictive. The hell of it is that it all could happen without half trying." --Clifford D. Simak. "ONe of the finest and most credible time travel books I have ever read. You should buy two copies of this one-- if you lend one to a friend you won't get it back." _- James White.
252 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1970
4 people are currently reading
1399 people want to read
About the author
Wilson Tucker
66 books33 followersArthur Wilson "Bob" Tucker was an American mystery, action adventure, and science fiction writer, who wrote as Wilson Tucker.
He was also a prominent member of science fiction fandom, who wrote extensively for fanzines under the name Bob Tucker, a family nickname bestowed in childhood.
He was also a prominent member of science fiction fandom, who wrote extensively for fanzines under the name Bob Tucker, a family nickname bestowed in childhood.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 71 reviews
August 14, 2025
A forgotten gem of time travel and future history!
Dateline 1978. The US Bureau of Standards has developed a Time Displacement Vehicle in the style of HG Wells' famous Time Machine. The president has issued top secret orders that a small group of three scientists be sent forward a scant 20 years to apprise the government of the day of the critical issues it would be facing in the decades to come. Clifford Simak praised the novel as being frighteningly possible. He suggested that he would now be frightened to open the morning's paper for fear that Tucker's powerful novel of a world turned very, very ugly would be truly predictive. Certainly today's readers will be breathing a sigh of relief that the world is not quite the place that Tucker suggested it could be but any thinking reader will acknowledge that it could have easily turned out in exactly the fashion a darkly, deeply pessimistic Tucker suggested.
While paying due attention to the standard sci-fi difficulties of time travel paradoxes, THE YEAR OF THE QUIET SUN is more by way of a post-apocalypse novel or perhaps an alternate future history novel that deals with rather scary stuff - atomic retaliation, the unseemly expropriation of science for short term political gains, and widespread atomic fallout combined with the results of racism literally run riot! While it is disheartening to read this kind of bleak futurism, it is perhaps marginally cheering to contemplate that courageous novels like this or John Howard Griffin's BLACK LIKE ME may have been, at least in part, the reason that what we now see in the 21st century is different than Tucker imagined.
Highly recommended.
Paul Weiss
Dateline 1978. The US Bureau of Standards has developed a Time Displacement Vehicle in the style of HG Wells' famous Time Machine. The president has issued top secret orders that a small group of three scientists be sent forward a scant 20 years to apprise the government of the day of the critical issues it would be facing in the decades to come. Clifford Simak praised the novel as being frighteningly possible. He suggested that he would now be frightened to open the morning's paper for fear that Tucker's powerful novel of a world turned very, very ugly would be truly predictive. Certainly today's readers will be breathing a sigh of relief that the world is not quite the place that Tucker suggested it could be but any thinking reader will acknowledge that it could have easily turned out in exactly the fashion a darkly, deeply pessimistic Tucker suggested.
While paying due attention to the standard sci-fi difficulties of time travel paradoxes, THE YEAR OF THE QUIET SUN is more by way of a post-apocalypse novel or perhaps an alternate future history novel that deals with rather scary stuff - atomic retaliation, the unseemly expropriation of science for short term political gains, and widespread atomic fallout combined with the results of racism literally run riot! While it is disheartening to read this kind of bleak futurism, it is perhaps marginally cheering to contemplate that courageous novels like this or John Howard Griffin's BLACK LIKE ME may have been, at least in part, the reason that what we now see in the 21st century is different than Tucker imagined.
Highly recommended.
Paul Weiss
February 2, 2014
‘Chaney fitted two keys into the twin locks and shoved. A bell rang somewhere behind him. The operations door rolled easily on rolamite tracks. He stepped outside into the chill of the future…’
The first real test of the Time Displacement Vehicle – and Chaney still uncertain why he had been chosen. best known for his scholarly work on the Dead Sea Scrolls, he was a most reluctant pioneer.
Still, the planning had been meticulous: time, expense and technical resources had all been lavished on the programme.
But none of it seemed quite adequate when he took his first step into the unknown.'
Blurb from the 1978 Arrow paperback edition
Historical researcher Brian Chaney has achieved notoriety by a recent book in which he has translated an earlier version of The Book of Revelations and describes it as merely ‘Midrash’, a word which translates as entertaining fiction, i.e. possibly the earliest known example of genre fiction that we have.
He is then approached by a Miss Katrina Van Hise representing a secretive government agency with the offer of a job. The offer, it transpires, is merely a courtesy as the agency have bought out Chaney’s contract with his current employer and effectively seconded him.
Chaney soon discovers that he and two others, Arthur Sirtus and the dourly religious Colonel Moresby are to be part of a time-travel project in which they will research the near future.
One of Tucker’s favourite themes is time-travel, but his novels are no mere joyride into the past or future for the hell of it.
In ‘The Lincoln Hunters’ Tucker obliquely examined America’s romanticised view of the Old West via a Time Agent who was visiting the past to make a record of Lincoln’s ‘lost speech’.
Here, agents are sent to the year Nineteen Ninety-Nine and beyond, to discover a racial civil war in which Chicago is divided along racial lines both socially and in a physical sense by a wall. America has also initiated an escalating game of tit-for-tat nuclear attacks with China. The American Presidency is corrupt and has, so Chaney deduces, employed its knowledge of the future gained from the project to foil a coup from the Joint Chiefs of Staff and keep the President in power.
Written in Nineteen Seventy, it is, in terms of some political developments, scarily prophetic.
To modern ears the dialogue seems a little cheesy in places but this shouldn’t dissuade anyone from reading what is a powerful and serious novel with themes perhaps even more relevant now than they were when it was written.
The first real test of the Time Displacement Vehicle – and Chaney still uncertain why he had been chosen. best known for his scholarly work on the Dead Sea Scrolls, he was a most reluctant pioneer.
Still, the planning had been meticulous: time, expense and technical resources had all been lavished on the programme.
But none of it seemed quite adequate when he took his first step into the unknown.'
Blurb from the 1978 Arrow paperback edition
Historical researcher Brian Chaney has achieved notoriety by a recent book in which he has translated an earlier version of The Book of Revelations and describes it as merely ‘Midrash’, a word which translates as entertaining fiction, i.e. possibly the earliest known example of genre fiction that we have.
He is then approached by a Miss Katrina Van Hise representing a secretive government agency with the offer of a job. The offer, it transpires, is merely a courtesy as the agency have bought out Chaney’s contract with his current employer and effectively seconded him.
Chaney soon discovers that he and two others, Arthur Sirtus and the dourly religious Colonel Moresby are to be part of a time-travel project in which they will research the near future.
One of Tucker’s favourite themes is time-travel, but his novels are no mere joyride into the past or future for the hell of it.
In ‘The Lincoln Hunters’ Tucker obliquely examined America’s romanticised view of the Old West via a Time Agent who was visiting the past to make a record of Lincoln’s ‘lost speech’.
Here, agents are sent to the year Nineteen Ninety-Nine and beyond, to discover a racial civil war in which Chicago is divided along racial lines both socially and in a physical sense by a wall. America has also initiated an escalating game of tit-for-tat nuclear attacks with China. The American Presidency is corrupt and has, so Chaney deduces, employed its knowledge of the future gained from the project to foil a coup from the Joint Chiefs of Staff and keep the President in power.
Written in Nineteen Seventy, it is, in terms of some political developments, scarily prophetic.
To modern ears the dialogue seems a little cheesy in places but this shouldn’t dissuade anyone from reading what is a powerful and serious novel with themes perhaps even more relevant now than they were when it was written.
February 20, 2021
-Producto de las preocupaciones sociopolíticas de su tiempo, cuando quizá tuvo cierto impacto.-
Género. Ciencia ficción.
Lo que nos cuenta. En el libro El año del sol tranquilo (publicación original: The Year of the Quiet Sun, 1970) conocemos a Brian Chaney, demógrafo, traductor bíblico, estadístico, investigador y escritor, entre otras capacidades y ocupaciones, que es trasladado a la Oficina de Pesos y Medidas del gobierno de los Estados Unidos de América pero, en realidad, no es más que la fachada de un proyecto secreto autorizado por el propio presidente de la nación para viajar en el tiempo hacia el futuro.
¿Quiere saber más de este libro, sin spoilers? Visite:
https://librosdeolethros.blogspot.com...
Género. Ciencia ficción.
Lo que nos cuenta. En el libro El año del sol tranquilo (publicación original: The Year of the Quiet Sun, 1970) conocemos a Brian Chaney, demógrafo, traductor bíblico, estadístico, investigador y escritor, entre otras capacidades y ocupaciones, que es trasladado a la Oficina de Pesos y Medidas del gobierno de los Estados Unidos de América pero, en realidad, no es más que la fachada de un proyecto secreto autorizado por el propio presidente de la nación para viajar en el tiempo hacia el futuro.
¿Quiere saber más de este libro, sin spoilers? Visite:
https://librosdeolethros.blogspot.com...
July 23, 2022
This is a strange time travel novel from the year 1970. I read it as a part of the monthly reading for July 2022 at Hugo & Nebula Awards: Best Novels group, for it has been nominated for both Hugo and Nebula (also to Locus and it won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award in 1976). Both Hugo and Nebula went to Ringworld that year.
The usual setting for a time travel novel is a protagonist gets access to a time traveling device at the beginning, within the first quarter of the book and then the ‘true’ story starts, from The Time Machine to The Accidental Time Machine, to name just two. Not so with this book – the travel starts in the second half (page-wise). Instead, the story starts with Brian Chaney, a Dead Sea Scrolls scholar, think-tank demographer and futurist, on a beach in Florida, when he is accosted by a pretty-looking woman under the name of Kathryn van Hise from the Bureau of Standards. He is attracted to her (the book is full of ‘male gaze’ depictions, which read quite uncomfortably today) but not eager to join the research project she represents. There is the Time Displacement Vehicle (TDV) that allows travel to the future and the US government is interested to be first in this area, seeing it as a new space race (after all, when the story was written, Apollo 11 was just making its landing in 1969).
The year the story starts is 1978, i.e. less than a decade after it is written. The USA is still bogged down in a broadened Viet Nam war, which is now called the Asian war; Israel was nuclear bombed by Egypt; Communist China joined the fray and A-bombed Australia, and the US reiterated by H-bombing two Chinese cities… meanwhile the fashions become even more revealing, with topless swimsuit Those transparent plastic cups some women now wore in place of a bra or a halter was only one of the many little jolts he’d known on his return to the States. and the situation within the States radicalized. It is perfectly normal when an SF doesn’t predict perfectly, after all (despite what a lot of people, who don’t read it think) it isn’t the goal. Happily, in reality, there were no nuclear strikes after Nagasaki, Nixon was the one who got the Viet Nam war ended and befriended China.
Chaney together with two men from the military finally gets to travel to the future and their test goal is set by the White House – to check, who won 1980 US presidential elections, and whether the current POTUS stays. This is actually a nice twist from usual time travel stories and actually, such petty usage of a state-funded time travel project isn’t that unlikely. On their visit, they don’t only find out who won, but also that Chicago is now under martial law and is divided by a wall, initially erected by Black rebels, but later used by the authorities not to allow hungry homeless refugees from the destroyed part of the city out. Once again, the author possibly extrapolated The long, hot summer of 1967 and the growing popularity of militant groups like Black Panthers.
After the successful test run, the three chrononauts go on solo missions to the years 1999, 2000 and somewhere later to find out what the US looks like 30 years after the story is written. And it isn’t a pleasant sight.
One prediction, which may look surprisingly prescient is a mention of old What’s-his-name, the actor fellow as a presidential candidate, but actually, Ronald Reagan was at the time of writing the 33rd Governor of California and took part in the Republican primaries of 1968, so not that much of a prediction.
Overall, I haven’t enjoyed the book. It was a-ok, even if I disliked the narcissistic jerk of the protagonist and his attitudes toward everyone and women in particular. It surprises me how this novel can be a nominee for so many genre awards, but maybe this is because the author was famous in the US fandom, He was a guest of honor at Torcon I (the 1948 Worldcon) and NyCon3 (the 1967 Worldcon), as well as a lot of others; in 1940, he served on the committee of the Worldcon and in Chicago and in 1970 won the Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer (the year of this novel publication). It is said that he was a very pleasant fellow, with the era jokes like printed business cards reading, “Wilson Tucker, Natural Inseminations.” So, I guess it was he, not his book that got nominated.
The usual setting for a time travel novel is a protagonist gets access to a time traveling device at the beginning, within the first quarter of the book and then the ‘true’ story starts, from The Time Machine to The Accidental Time Machine, to name just two. Not so with this book – the travel starts in the second half (page-wise). Instead, the story starts with Brian Chaney, a Dead Sea Scrolls scholar, think-tank demographer and futurist, on a beach in Florida, when he is accosted by a pretty-looking woman under the name of Kathryn van Hise from the Bureau of Standards. He is attracted to her (the book is full of ‘male gaze’ depictions, which read quite uncomfortably today) but not eager to join the research project she represents. There is the Time Displacement Vehicle (TDV) that allows travel to the future and the US government is interested to be first in this area, seeing it as a new space race (after all, when the story was written, Apollo 11 was just making its landing in 1969).
The year the story starts is 1978, i.e. less than a decade after it is written. The USA is still bogged down in a broadened Viet Nam war, which is now called the Asian war; Israel was nuclear bombed by Egypt; Communist China joined the fray and A-bombed Australia, and the US reiterated by H-bombing two Chinese cities… meanwhile the fashions become even more revealing, with topless swimsuit Those transparent plastic cups some women now wore in place of a bra or a halter was only one of the many little jolts he’d known on his return to the States. and the situation within the States radicalized. It is perfectly normal when an SF doesn’t predict perfectly, after all (despite what a lot of people, who don’t read it think) it isn’t the goal. Happily, in reality, there were no nuclear strikes after Nagasaki, Nixon was the one who got the Viet Nam war ended and befriended China.
Chaney together with two men from the military finally gets to travel to the future and their test goal is set by the White House – to check, who won 1980 US presidential elections, and whether the current POTUS stays. This is actually a nice twist from usual time travel stories and actually, such petty usage of a state-funded time travel project isn’t that unlikely. On their visit, they don’t only find out who won, but also that Chicago is now under martial law and is divided by a wall, initially erected by Black rebels, but later used by the authorities not to allow hungry homeless refugees from the destroyed part of the city out. Once again, the author possibly extrapolated The long, hot summer of 1967 and the growing popularity of militant groups like Black Panthers.
After the successful test run, the three chrononauts go on solo missions to the years 1999, 2000 and somewhere later to find out what the US looks like 30 years after the story is written. And it isn’t a pleasant sight.
One prediction, which may look surprisingly prescient is a mention of old What’s-his-name, the actor fellow as a presidential candidate, but actually, Ronald Reagan was at the time of writing the 33rd Governor of California and took part in the Republican primaries of 1968, so not that much of a prediction.
Overall, I haven’t enjoyed the book. It was a-ok, even if I disliked the narcissistic jerk of the protagonist and his attitudes toward everyone and women in particular. It surprises me how this novel can be a nominee for so many genre awards, but maybe this is because the author was famous in the US fandom, He was a guest of honor at Torcon I (the 1948 Worldcon) and NyCon3 (the 1967 Worldcon), as well as a lot of others; in 1940, he served on the committee of the Worldcon and in Chicago and in 1970 won the Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer (the year of this novel publication). It is said that he was a very pleasant fellow, with the era jokes like printed business cards reading, “Wilson Tucker, Natural Inseminations.” So, I guess it was he, not his book that got nominated.
December 28, 2018
At the moment, I've changed the thrust of my old SF reading to full novels, rather than short stories. As much fun as short stories are to dissect, they're time consuming, and I haven't really had time recently.. So with this, we go to a novel nominated for a Hugo in 1971, which isn't all that old, but still well before our current generation of Science Fiction and Fantasy.
Note: The rest of this review has been withheld due to the changes in Goodreads policy and enforcement. You can read why I came to this decision here.
In the meantime, you can read the entire review at Smorgasbook
Note: The rest of this review has been withheld due to the changes in Goodreads policy and enforcement. You can read why I came to this decision here.
In the meantime, you can read the entire review at Smorgasbook
September 24, 2022
If you've ever wondered what the ultimate nightmare of Donald Trump, MAGA and the Alt.Right in America would be, this is it. In some near future the Red Chinese ally themselves to Black militants in America's inner cities (You can read this as Black Panthers or Black Lives Matter). The Chicoms nuke the USA, and the Blacks, left militants and other "illegals and undesirables" take over, while China conquers most of the world, including what is left of Free America. Punks, hippies, women living without male companions, ghetto hoods sow anarchy! A fascist fantasy, yes, but also a gripping read and incredible and prophetic insight as to how the Sixties might have played out or the way white nationalists, and not just in USA, fear the future will turn out. In case you are wondering, "The Year of the Quiet Sun" comes from the chronology of ancient Hebrew apocrypha.
September 26, 2025
Check out my full, spoiler free, video review HERE.
This is a solid time travel story with some dystopian elements. A US team of government and military personnel lead a mission to go forward in time to gather intel on the future of society. There are well thought out rules regarding the time travel concepts. The first half of the book sets up the premise and rules as well as introduces all the characters and their relationships. The second half takes off as the team starts travelling into the future. There are some predictable plot points, but it was still entertaining. There were also a few things at the end that surprised me. If you like time travel stories and some societal themes (war and race issues) from the late 60’s early 70’s then this one is for you.
This is a solid time travel story with some dystopian elements. A US team of government and military personnel lead a mission to go forward in time to gather intel on the future of society. There are well thought out rules regarding the time travel concepts. The first half of the book sets up the premise and rules as well as introduces all the characters and their relationships. The second half takes off as the team starts travelling into the future. There are some predictable plot points, but it was still entertaining. There were also a few things at the end that surprised me. If you like time travel stories and some societal themes (war and race issues) from the late 60’s early 70’s then this one is for you.
April 6, 2010
Wilson Tucker is a long time Sf wirteer and this book won the John W. Campbell award. I surely do not know why.
It promises a lot; delivers little. The premise is fairly basic; send three travlers seperately back in time. The resulting time paradoxes I found confusing; the characters rather stereotyped.
I read Tucker's the Time Masters years ago and it was--is--much better. NOt a bad book--just not interesting at all.
It promises a lot; delivers little. The premise is fairly basic; send three travlers seperately back in time. The resulting time paradoxes I found confusing; the characters rather stereotyped.
I read Tucker's the Time Masters years ago and it was--is--much better. NOt a bad book--just not interesting at all.
January 18, 2020
Storyline: 3/5
Characters: 3/5
Writing Style: 4/5
World: 2/5
What an odd book. Though 252 pages, it read like a short story. It was an easy, breezy read, though not in the passive and simple-minded way of so many paperbacks. I actually really liked the writing. It was descriptive and attentive, finding a great balance between bare narrative and ostentatious embellishment. Pages could go by with little happening, but I was never bored. It was simply pleasant. Much like with short stories, the plot was very limited, the background circumscribed. Nothing momentous really happens in the first half of the book. The characters are introduced, the backdrop is set, and the adventure wound. Tucker found a way to keep the book streamlined, simple, and engaging.
This was also neat because of its forecasting of the future. It is definitely of the Cold War scare era. Tucker was more focused on Vietnam and the outlook for US-China relations than he was the stereotypical target of most writers at the time and their interest in US-Soviet ties. The book is deliberately hazy on the details and the politics, using a science fiction technological development instead to spring us forward to a different possible future. Ultimately, though, the book is about home – America. Good ‘ole Middle of America, at that. In the way of a good short story, it ends powerfully. The book’s ambitions were very modest, and it was successful in accomplishing them. Though not an amazing book, I wish all the mediocre books I read were this good. I’ve come across a few others of similar style and quality, many of them I recollect fondly. There was Leigh Brackett’s The Long Tomorrow , C.M. Kornbluth’s Not This August , Poul Anderson’s The Enemy Stars, and Clifford Simak’s Time is the Simplest Thing . I eagerly recommend any of those to avid science fiction readers who appreciate slow-moving, short, pungent tales without much sensationalism. I am happy to have found and added The Year of the Quiet Sun to that list.
Characters: 3/5
Writing Style: 4/5
World: 2/5
What an odd book. Though 252 pages, it read like a short story. It was an easy, breezy read, though not in the passive and simple-minded way of so many paperbacks. I actually really liked the writing. It was descriptive and attentive, finding a great balance between bare narrative and ostentatious embellishment. Pages could go by with little happening, but I was never bored. It was simply pleasant. Much like with short stories, the plot was very limited, the background circumscribed. Nothing momentous really happens in the first half of the book. The characters are introduced, the backdrop is set, and the adventure wound. Tucker found a way to keep the book streamlined, simple, and engaging.
This was also neat because of its forecasting of the future. It is definitely of the Cold War scare era. Tucker was more focused on Vietnam and the outlook for US-China relations than he was the stereotypical target of most writers at the time and their interest in US-Soviet ties. The book is deliberately hazy on the details and the politics, using a science fiction technological development instead to spring us forward to a different possible future. Ultimately, though, the book is about home – America. Good ‘ole Middle of America, at that. In the way of a good short story, it ends powerfully. The book’s ambitions were very modest, and it was successful in accomplishing them. Though not an amazing book, I wish all the mediocre books I read were this good. I’ve come across a few others of similar style and quality, many of them I recollect fondly. There was Leigh Brackett’s The Long Tomorrow , C.M. Kornbluth’s Not This August , Poul Anderson’s The Enemy Stars, and Clifford Simak’s Time is the Simplest Thing . I eagerly recommend any of those to avid science fiction readers who appreciate slow-moving, short, pungent tales without much sensationalism. I am happy to have found and added The Year of the Quiet Sun to that list.
July 15, 2014
The Year of the Quiet Sun was nominated for several awards, later winning the 1976 Campbell Award as "a truly outstanding original novel that was not adequately recognized in the year of its publication." I did find this novel to be original, if not completely outstanding.
The setting is Chicago in the late 70s, which is not far in the future of the 1971 publication. Wilson Tucker has the Vietnam war continuing and much racial strife on US soil - both reasonable (if false) predictions from 1970. Main character Brian Chaney is invited to join two military men as time travelers.
The first project to get approval from the president is to go forward two years and see if he wins reelection. While the approved project fits politicians like a glove, what is unexpected is how much Chicago has changed in those two years.
A subsequent survey takes them further afield, and gives the only chapters not narrated by Chaney. Again the changes seem larger than reasonable. The impact and consequences bring this tidy tale to a satisfying conclusion.
The time travel in this novel reminds me of the film Primer - very reasonable and borderline believable. The writing is excellent and the story well constructed. The pessimistic predictions of 1970 fall down somewhat, which is fine by me. Easily merits 4 stars, and I will seek out more from Wilson Tucker in the near future.
The setting is Chicago in the late 70s, which is not far in the future of the 1971 publication. Wilson Tucker has the Vietnam war continuing and much racial strife on US soil - both reasonable (if false) predictions from 1970. Main character Brian Chaney is invited to join two military men as time travelers.
The first project to get approval from the president is to go forward two years and see if he wins reelection. While the approved project fits politicians like a glove, what is unexpected is how much Chicago has changed in those two years.
A subsequent survey takes them further afield, and gives the only chapters not narrated by Chaney. Again the changes seem larger than reasonable. The impact and consequences bring this tidy tale to a satisfying conclusion.
The time travel in this novel reminds me of the film Primer - very reasonable and borderline believable. The writing is excellent and the story well constructed. The pessimistic predictions of 1970 fall down somewhat, which is fine by me. Easily merits 4 stars, and I will seek out more from Wilson Tucker in the near future.
March 2, 2020
I've had this book on my shelves for I-couldn't-tell-you-how-many years. The price on the cover (paperback) is 75¢, so it's been a long time! And I couldn't give you any good reason why I never read it until now, except that it might just be that the times in which we live made it "feel" that now was the right time for it. Because we really could be living the last few chapters of it right now, had things gone just a little differently.
I have few quibbles with this novel: one or two fine points that don't quite fit properly, and the inevitable complaint about all time travel stories: "But, if they did that, then wouldn't they have screwed things up so that they couldn't have gone back/forward in time?" (or "so that they couldn't have gone back to where they started from?"). None of them matter. This is close to as well-written a novel as exists in SF: there are some better, but darned-few, and even fewer are of such import.
Others have done a better job than I could of trying to boil down the plot, so I won't try. Suffice it to say that the best way to boil down the plot of this tale is to read it yourself, and draw your own conclusions. And if you are old enough (as I am) to remember such things as the Marches from Selma to Birmingham (including Bloody Sunday) and the Watts Riots, be glad that enough people have stood up in protest of oppression, so that things never have gotten as bad as they could have.
I have few quibbles with this novel: one or two fine points that don't quite fit properly, and the inevitable complaint about all time travel stories: "But, if they did that, then wouldn't they have screwed things up so that they couldn't have gone back/forward in time?" (or "so that they couldn't have gone back to where they started from?"). None of them matter. This is close to as well-written a novel as exists in SF: there are some better, but darned-few, and even fewer are of such import.
Others have done a better job than I could of trying to boil down the plot, so I won't try. Suffice it to say that the best way to boil down the plot of this tale is to read it yourself, and draw your own conclusions. And if you are old enough (as I am) to remember such things as the Marches from Selma to Birmingham (including Bloody Sunday) and the Watts Riots, be glad that enough people have stood up in protest of oppression, so that things never have gotten as bad as they could have.
December 6, 2024
SCI-Fi's Greatest Time Travel Novel despite anachronisms rendering it somewhat dated
"The Year of the Quiet Sun" is acknowledged by many as among the greatest time travel novels of the golden era of mass market paperbacks. It is also the masterpiece of author Wilson Tucker who also wrote mysteries. Several of his SCI-FI novels are regarded as classics.
It's 1978, and Brian Chaney, the nation's foremost futurist, master statistician, and expert in ancient Middle East languages and literature is lounging on a Florida beach following the publication of his latest book, a commentary on two Qumran scroll translations, one being Revelation (from the Bible) and the other, an obscure "Midrash" minor prophecy book he calls Eschatos. Chaney represents modern man, circa 1970s. He is a brilliant renaissance-man type, a skirt chaser and romantic, an academic with a curious but skeptical mind, and a former government researcher who had previously been involved in writing a statistical look at the future based on predictive analysis--a research work that has gotten the attention of key people in the US government. A mysterious woman appears on the beach to inform him that he has been recruited via his employer to serve as a statistical researcher for her organization, an obscure US government agency overseeing what he will later discover is a Top Secret time travel project. He is immediately smitten by both the woman's beauty and her hints of an earth-shattering new technology that might help him answer the questions of the past generated by his work. The woman, Kathryn van Hise, becomes an obsession of sorts for Chaney who ends up joining her team on a small military base outside Chicago that is home to the TDV time travel project.
The novel is about the team's time travel launches, the unexpected discoveries and dangers of time travel, and the final mission in which the TDV takes Chaney beyond the edge of an American social collapse, WWIII and an American race war.
This novel starts off slow... but don't give up too easily, it picks up pace quickly once the missions start. There is a lot of character building, some pot-boiler tension among the team members, much hocus-pocus speculative scientific mumbo-jumbo to explain the time travel "science", and the initial tentative exploration two years into the future, the one that sets the tone for the powerful unexpected bombshell ending with many interesting plot twists along the way. I can't say much more without spoiling the ending. Let's just say that there is an element of Chaney's identity that isn't revealed until nearly the end. And the surprise ending, although set up early on in the novel, is just so well done.
This novel was published in 1970. Which, alas, meant 1978 got here rather quickly and much of the novel's speculation about 1978 seems quaint and unreaslistic today. But let it ride. The prose and the plot pacing are pitch perfect. I thought perhaps this novel was taking some pages from Heinlein's "Farnham's Freehold" (published in 1964) with talk about nudity, a race war, and our protagonist's fascination with the fairer sex. But then I discover Wilson Tucker covered much of this ground previously in his 1952 novel, "The Long Loud Silence." The race war aspect will be important to the impact of the final revelation about Chaney at the end. And Tucker's apocalypse comes sometime around 2008... which again, seems quaint. Perhaps the election of Barack Obama that year prevented it? Who knows. Those are the anachronism's that probably prevent this book from being reprinted today. Which is a shame because it is a very fine novel indeed!
Time travel is always a dicey proposition for a speculative novel. Travels to the past can disrupt the future. And time travels to the future can become very anachronistic... unless they take us thousands of years into the future when none of us will be around to criticize the author's predictions. Interestingly, Tucker's Year 2000 features an electric-vehicle that is almost identical to a Tesla Y-series car. Very, very cool.
This novel is highly recommended and I hope people will rediscover it. It's a product of 1970 but features a strong female lead. The dialogue includes flirty talk and discussions about nudity, but there is nothing inappropriate or erotic here. And despite the race war angle, it is not racist at all.
But you need to read it, and you need to read it to the end to appreciate its value.
"The Year of the Quiet Sun" is acknowledged by many as among the greatest time travel novels of the golden era of mass market paperbacks. It is also the masterpiece of author Wilson Tucker who also wrote mysteries. Several of his SCI-FI novels are regarded as classics.
It's 1978, and Brian Chaney, the nation's foremost futurist, master statistician, and expert in ancient Middle East languages and literature is lounging on a Florida beach following the publication of his latest book, a commentary on two Qumran scroll translations, one being Revelation (from the Bible) and the other, an obscure "Midrash" minor prophecy book he calls Eschatos. Chaney represents modern man, circa 1970s. He is a brilliant renaissance-man type, a skirt chaser and romantic, an academic with a curious but skeptical mind, and a former government researcher who had previously been involved in writing a statistical look at the future based on predictive analysis--a research work that has gotten the attention of key people in the US government. A mysterious woman appears on the beach to inform him that he has been recruited via his employer to serve as a statistical researcher for her organization, an obscure US government agency overseeing what he will later discover is a Top Secret time travel project. He is immediately smitten by both the woman's beauty and her hints of an earth-shattering new technology that might help him answer the questions of the past generated by his work. The woman, Kathryn van Hise, becomes an obsession of sorts for Chaney who ends up joining her team on a small military base outside Chicago that is home to the TDV time travel project.
The novel is about the team's time travel launches, the unexpected discoveries and dangers of time travel, and the final mission in which the TDV takes Chaney beyond the edge of an American social collapse, WWIII and an American race war.
This novel starts off slow... but don't give up too easily, it picks up pace quickly once the missions start. There is a lot of character building, some pot-boiler tension among the team members, much hocus-pocus speculative scientific mumbo-jumbo to explain the time travel "science", and the initial tentative exploration two years into the future, the one that sets the tone for the powerful unexpected bombshell ending with many interesting plot twists along the way. I can't say much more without spoiling the ending. Let's just say that there is an element of Chaney's identity that isn't revealed until nearly the end. And the surprise ending, although set up early on in the novel, is just so well done.
This novel was published in 1970. Which, alas, meant 1978 got here rather quickly and much of the novel's speculation about 1978 seems quaint and unreaslistic today. But let it ride. The prose and the plot pacing are pitch perfect. I thought perhaps this novel was taking some pages from Heinlein's "Farnham's Freehold" (published in 1964) with talk about nudity, a race war, and our protagonist's fascination with the fairer sex. But then I discover Wilson Tucker covered much of this ground previously in his 1952 novel, "The Long Loud Silence." The race war aspect will be important to the impact of the final revelation about Chaney at the end. And Tucker's apocalypse comes sometime around 2008... which again, seems quaint. Perhaps the election of Barack Obama that year prevented it? Who knows. Those are the anachronism's that probably prevent this book from being reprinted today. Which is a shame because it is a very fine novel indeed!
Time travel is always a dicey proposition for a speculative novel. Travels to the past can disrupt the future. And time travels to the future can become very anachronistic... unless they take us thousands of years into the future when none of us will be around to criticize the author's predictions. Interestingly, Tucker's Year 2000 features an electric-vehicle that is almost identical to a Tesla Y-series car. Very, very cool.
This novel is highly recommended and I hope people will rediscover it. It's a product of 1970 but features a strong female lead. The dialogue includes flirty talk and discussions about nudity, but there is nothing inappropriate or erotic here. And despite the race war angle, it is not racist at all.
But you need to read it, and you need to read it to the end to appreciate its value.
January 13, 2020
Niente di indimenticabile, ma comunque una buona lettura.
E' effettivamente il primo libro che leggo di Wilson Tucker, non mi aspettavo niente di più e niente di meno.
Trattasi di un romanzo centrato sulla possibilità di viaggiare nel tempo.
Quale sarà la scelta del Presidente di turno? Quale epoca sceglierà di far visitare?
La risposta, purtroppo, è così umana da lasciar basiti.
3/5
E' effettivamente il primo libro che leggo di Wilson Tucker, non mi aspettavo niente di più e niente di meno.
Trattasi di un romanzo centrato sulla possibilità di viaggiare nel tempo.
Quale sarà la scelta del Presidente di turno? Quale epoca sceglierà di far visitare?
La risposta, purtroppo, è così umana da lasciar basiti.
3/5
October 17, 2013
When this book came out, in 1969, I found it difficult to get into. I started it about three times.
One night I was awake with a toothache, facing a dental appointment the next morning. I decided to give this one more chance. I finished it that night.
I reread in the 70s and again a couple of years ago; it still holds up. Of course its projections about the future are dated (its future is now the in the past), but older SF is always going to present that problem. For me, it doesn't matter: it's still an engrossing read, with interesting characters and unique ideas.
Yes, it may seem a bit slow at first. (Once I got into it, this was never an issue again.) But it's worth while: a good 70s-style time travel story.
One night I was awake with a toothache, facing a dental appointment the next morning. I decided to give this one more chance. I finished it that night.
I reread in the 70s and again a couple of years ago; it still holds up. Of course its projections about the future are dated (its future is now the in the past), but older SF is always going to present that problem. For me, it doesn't matter: it's still an engrossing read, with interesting characters and unique ideas.
Yes, it may seem a bit slow at first. (Once I got into it, this was never an issue again.) But it's worth while: a good 70s-style time travel story.
July 10, 2017
Libro escrito en 1970, que transcurre en 1978, y cuyos protagonistas (dos militares y un traductor de rollos del Mar Muerto) deben viajar al año 2000 para hacer un informe sobre cómo es el futuro. Aunque la primera parte se extiende sin demasiada acción, no aburre debido al buen manejo de los personajes. La segunda mitad atrapa con la revelación de un futuro diferente al esperado.
Perdonándole los anacronismos del caso, es una muy buena lectura con un final tranquilo, como el Sol, pero no por ello menos dramático.
Perdonándole los anacronismos del caso, es una muy buena lectura con un final tranquilo, como el Sol, pero no por ello menos dramático.
January 23, 2018
Brian Chaney, a Dead Sea Scrolls scholar and think-tank thinker, finds himself volunteered, along with two other men plucked from military ranks, for a government-funded mission to test a Time Displacement Vehicle. Their first field study is an order from the president to go ahead two years to discover whether he wins re-election (yoicks), and, well, they find so much more than that.
Ooof, this one was surprisingly good. And disturbingly relevant. There are a couple of really good twists sprinkled in for good measure, too. Definitely recommended.
Ooof, this one was surprisingly good. And disturbingly relevant. There are a couple of really good twists sprinkled in for good measure, too. Definitely recommended.
September 11, 2009
Fairly good dystopian novel as shown through the eyes of time travellers from the present. It's easy to tell when this is written which makes it a little dated, but still a good read
December 6, 2018
I read this book when it first came out, thirty years ago, and I’d forgotten most of the details. But I remembered enjoying it a great deal, so I set out to find it again, and Inter-Library Loan came through. (They usually do.) It’s only 250 pages, a pretty fast read -- and now I know why it stuck with me all these years. Brian Chaney is an epigrapher in Hebrew and Aramaic documents, translator of a recently discovered scroll at Qumran which has upset a lot of people. He’s also a demographer and futurist and has written a report for the government laying out probable trends for the near future. (The story begins in 1978, which was also the near future for Tucker, who feared the repressive trends he himself observed in the late Sixties.) Chaney gets drafted for a secret project run by the Bureau of Weights and Measures (a nice touch), which has managed to build a forward-traveling time machine. He and his two colleagues -- a no-nonsense Army major and a freewheeling Navy Commander -- will journey to the end of the 20th century to see if those trends have panned out, to bring back information to allow the government of 1978 to lay its plans to deal with future problems. But the President, naturally, sets the target of the preliminary field trial at 1980; he wants to know whether he’s going to be reelected. Oh, yes, the politicians will never hesitate to take over science for their own ends, and Tucker knows it. Then there’s Katherine Van Hise, known as “Katrina,” who is more or less the managing director of the project at the local level. Chaney is very attracted to her, and so is Commander Saltus. And so they make their jumps, singly and one at a time, to 1999 and to 2000 and to sometime in the 2020s (I think) . . . and nothing is as they thought it would be. This is an intimate drama of Armageddon in Illinois, a reduction of global catastrophe to manageable proportions. The style is quiet and perfectly straightforward, the imagery is both subtle and apocalyptic. And the three time travelers -- and Katrina -- will turn out to be unexpected heroes.
The late Arthur Wilson Tucker, known throughout science fiction fandom as “Bob,” was not a scientist like Asimov or Benford. He was, in fact, a motion picture projectionist from Illinois who wrote mysteries and science fiction stories and novels on the side, beginning in 1941. This book and The Lincoln Hunters are certainly his best (and best known) work, but there was another whole side to him -- the raconteur and noted wit who hung out with the “ordinary” fans at WorldCons, and who held forth at hotel room parties on the benefits of bourbon (“Smoooooth!”), and who cheerfully distributed business cards with only his name on one side and the words “Natural Inseminations” on the reverse. (I still have my card from MidAmericon in 1976.) The fans loved him and he loved them. In fact, Bob Tucker was the first Fan Guest of Honor at a WorldCon (Torcon in 1948). And when the room parties burned themselves down to glowing coals in the small hours, you could find him on someone’s balcony arguing literature and political theory and social dynamics as astutely as any Oxford don. He had a longtime interest in Near Eastern archaeology which is obvious in this book. I expect most younger sf fans have never heard of Tucker, and that’s their loss.
(
The late Arthur Wilson Tucker, known throughout science fiction fandom as “Bob,” was not a scientist like Asimov or Benford. He was, in fact, a motion picture projectionist from Illinois who wrote mysteries and science fiction stories and novels on the side, beginning in 1941. This book and The Lincoln Hunters are certainly his best (and best known) work, but there was another whole side to him -- the raconteur and noted wit who hung out with the “ordinary” fans at WorldCons, and who held forth at hotel room parties on the benefits of bourbon (“Smoooooth!”), and who cheerfully distributed business cards with only his name on one side and the words “Natural Inseminations” on the reverse. (I still have my card from MidAmericon in 1976.) The fans loved him and he loved them. In fact, Bob Tucker was the first Fan Guest of Honor at a WorldCon (Torcon in 1948). And when the room parties burned themselves down to glowing coals in the small hours, you could find him on someone’s balcony arguing literature and political theory and social dynamics as astutely as any Oxford don. He had a longtime interest in Near Eastern archaeology which is obvious in this book. I expect most younger sf fans have never heard of Tucker, and that’s their loss.
(
March 18, 2018
Encontré este libro en una tienda de saldo hará ya más de 15 años. Por el precio y la premisa de viajes en el tiempo lo compré sin dudarlo, y lo disfruté (más o menos) dos veces, con varios años de separación entre ambas lecturas. Lo bueno de tener un poco de mala memoria es que es posible volver a disfrutar de un final sorprendente, que había olvidado por completo.
Debo decir que el desarrollo de los personajes es lento, así como el ritmo de la narración durante la primera mitad del libro, que se puede hacer algo tediosa de leer. Pasado ese punto nos adentramos de lleno en los viajes en el tiempo anunciados previamente, cada vez un poquito más lejos (unas pocas décadas), hasta el último de ellos, en el que se descubre una terrible verdad y un pequeño pero importantísimo detalle que el narrador explícitamente no nos había dado con anterioridad sobre el protagonista. Esa intencionalidad es el punto más brillante de todo el libro, y nos deja reflexionando sobre nuestro mundo actual, de dónde venimos y, ante todo, hacia dónde creemos que vamos.
No es una novela brillante sino algo irregular (como digo, parece dividida en dos partes diferenciadas tanto en el estilo como en la historia), pero el final merece mucho la pena.
Debo decir que el desarrollo de los personajes es lento, así como el ritmo de la narración durante la primera mitad del libro, que se puede hacer algo tediosa de leer. Pasado ese punto nos adentramos de lleno en los viajes en el tiempo anunciados previamente, cada vez un poquito más lejos (unas pocas décadas), hasta el último de ellos, en el que se descubre una terrible verdad y un pequeño pero importantísimo detalle que el narrador explícitamente no nos había dado con anterioridad sobre el protagonista. Esa intencionalidad es el punto más brillante de todo el libro, y nos deja reflexionando sobre nuestro mundo actual, de dónde venimos y, ante todo, hacia dónde creemos que vamos.
No es una novela brillante sino algo irregular (como digo, parece dividida en dos partes diferenciadas tanto en el estilo como en la historia), pero el final merece mucho la pena.
May 8, 2014
I had no expectations for "The Year of the Quiet Sun" and when it started out a bit slow, I was prepared to give up on it. Then, it caught me, surprised me, and made me think about the power and downfall of being privy to too much information.
This novel deserves another read just so I can look at it from another bent...and take into account that surprising twist near the very end. So good!
If you're a fan of end-of-the-world desolation/destruction, this deserves a read.
This novel deserves another read just so I can look at it from another bent...and take into account that surprising twist near the very end. So good!
If you're a fan of end-of-the-world desolation/destruction, this deserves a read.
March 16, 2017
Well, that was an interesting read!
I did not have to struggle to wonder about the characters, I was not left with lots of questions, just some sadness. If you want to dis-interest me in a book, mix in any of the following: time-travel, biblical references, and religion. This one had all three. Still I read on. I don't think I will re-read this one, but I still give it 4 stars.
I did not have to struggle to wonder about the characters, I was not left with lots of questions, just some sadness. If you want to dis-interest me in a book, mix in any of the following: time-travel, biblical references, and religion. This one had all three. Still I read on. I don't think I will re-read this one, but I still give it 4 stars.
September 9, 2021
https://eclectictheist.wordpress.com/...
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:sigh:
Literary, boring, ugly, pretentious. In my own personal opinion. Absolutely no Sense of Wonder, and the What If is ridiculously implausible; the author knows nothing of social or political science or human nature, though he thinks he does. I can't even find anything to like about the time travel element.
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:sigh:
Literary, boring, ugly, pretentious. In my own personal opinion. Absolutely no Sense of Wonder, and the What If is ridiculously implausible; the author knows nothing of social or political science or human nature, though he thinks he does. I can't even find anything to like about the time travel element.
June 20, 2017
3.5/5
Very boring start with not much happening and a lot of wooden dialogue. Once the time traveling begins, then it gets interesting.
Very boring start with not much happening and a lot of wooden dialogue. Once the time traveling begins, then it gets interesting.
September 16, 2020
This book is full of casual sexism and doesn’t get interesting until well after page 100. The ending is good though.
September 28, 2019
Voilà un roman qui a fortement marqué son époque... et qui a été fortement marqué par elle. Nominé aussi bien pour le prix Nebula que pour le prix Hugo et le prix Locus en 1971, il échoue comme La tour de verre de Silverberg à remporter une récompense toutes raflées par L’anneau-monde de Niven. Jacques Sadoul a beau considérer en 1984 dans son Histoire de la Science-Fiction Moderne, 1911-1984 que 1970 était un crû médiocre, en 1976 le Centre pour l’étude de la science-fiction de l’Université du Kansas n’en avait pas moins attribué au roman de Tucker un John W. Campbell Memorial Award rétrospectif faute de se décider pour un lauréat paru en 1975 et en motivant son choix sur le fait que L’année du soleil calme n’avait pas été récompensé à sa juste valeur auparavant. Alors que le livre est réédité régulièrement jusque 1997 dans le monde anglo-saxon, il ne l’a pas été en France depuis son édition chez Presse Pocket en 1985.
Sans doute fallait-il être Américain dans les années 70 pour trouver un écho dans le roman de Wilson Tucker. Autour d’une histoire de voyage dans le temps, c’est en fait des problèmes de l’Amérique de 1970 dont il traite. Les Etats-Unis sont toujours embourbés au Vietnam en dépit des promesses électorales de Richard Nixon. Remarquons que le président de L’année du soleil calme s’appelle Meeks, ce qui est phonétiquement assez proche du Nix de Nixon, et qu’il est considéré comme un homme faible. Paradoxalement, l’homme faible a ordonné le bombardement atomique de deux centres ferroviaires chinois, informations toujours confidentielles révélées au héros par son acolyte Arthur Saltus. Par la suite, en raison de l’état d’urgence, il se maintient au pouvoir et abolit l’état de droit. Comme beaucoup d’Américains de l’époque, Wilson Tucker semble éprouver une véritable méfiance envers le pouvoir exécutif et l’armée, guerre du Vietnam oblige.
Car dans le 1978 du roman, non seulement la guerre n’est pas terminée, mais les Etats-Unis y sont engagés profondément puisqu’ils en viennent à attaquer la Chine communiste pour son soutien apporté à l’ennemi que l’on suppose vietnamien puisqu’il n’est pas réellement nommé. De plus d’autres guerres font rage dans le monde et Wilson Tucker évoque la guerre entre les pays arabes et Israël. Il est alors intéressant de se pencher sur la capacité de l’auteur à imaginer la géopolitique de demain. S’il avait bien anticipé les problèmes pétroliers engendrés par le conflit israélo-arabe - il parle à un moment de pénurie -, il n’a pas vu venir le rapprochement sino-américain concrétisé en 1972. Espérons cependant qu’il n’ait pas finalement raison quand il décrit les conséquences d’un conflit entre les deux puissances dans le premier quart du XXIe siècle. L’année du soleil calme est en effet un roman qui annonce la fin d’un monde et l’Amérique visitée par Chaney en 2000 + x est un champ de ruines.
Elle n’a d’ailleurs pas surmonté, bien au contraire, le deuxième problème de l’époque de sa rédaction, celui des droits civiques des Noirs. Il faut dire qu’en 1970, en dépit des progrès réalisés depuis les années 50, la situation n’est guère satisfaisante. Trois ans auparavant des émeutes raciales ont donné lieu à des scènes de pillage et des affrontements entre la communauté noire et les forces de l’ordre dignes de la guerre civile, telles que Kathryn Bigelow les a dépeintes encore récemment dans son film Detroit (2017). Alors qu’en 1969, les radicaux Weathermen lançaient leurs Days of Rage à Chicago, l’action des Black Panthers, arrêtés massivement, laissaient envisager l’éclatement d’une lutte armée et Wilson Tucker s’en est largement inspiré pour imaginer le contexte de son roman. Le soulèvement du quartier noir de Chicago entraîne l’érection d’un mur qui coupe la ville en 1980, puis, lors des expéditions de 1999-2000, menés par les collègues de Chaney, il apparaît que les Noirs se sont attaqués à la base militaire abritant le programme de voyage temporel.
Enfin, le contexte de la libération des mœurs n’est pas absent du récit. De fait, les tenues de Kathryn van Hise laissent largement entrevoir son anatomie et le ton du roman n’est pas sans évoquer ceux des romans de science-fiction de la même époque, notamment ceux de Robert Heinlein, empreints d’un certain libertinage et pourtant non dépourvu d’un certain machisme.
La forte présence du contexte explique sans doute que les petits défauts de cohérences du roman soient passés inaperçus. Certes, il s’agit de problèmes récurrent au genre du récit de voyage temporel, mais, alors que la plupart des auteurs jouent justement sur les problèmes logiques qui se posent, ce n’est pas le cas de L’année du soleil calme. Le véhicule temporel, le DTV pour Time Displacement Vehicle, imaginé par Wilson Tucker, qui ne se penche d’ailleurs pas sur le fonctionnement, est fixe, flottant sur un bassin d’eau hyperbare. Il est unique et une seule personne peut l’emprunter. Le voyageur temporel est donc envoyé dans l’avenir où l’attendent les techniciens qui ont tout préparé pour lui permettre d’aller chercher les renseignements demandés avant de revenir à son époque 61 secondes après en être parti. Au cas où le voyageur ne regagnerait pas le DTV dans les cinquante heures après son arrivée, celui-ci rentre à vide. Dès lors, comment expliquer que, à l’occasion du voyage de 1980, les premiers partis n’aient pas prévenu que le troisième parti était arrivé avant ? Sans vouloir divulgâcher le roman, une ou deux autres questions du même genre se posent.
S’il n’a pas soigné au mieux son histoire de voyage dans le temps, Wilson Tucker a en revanche parfaitement géré son intrigue en dispensant parcimonieusement quelques éléments d’informations ou en assénant quelques phrases en partie énigmatiques telles que la deuxième du roman : « L’affaire commença lorsqu’elle se dressa devant lui sur une plage de Floride, rompant son euphorie ; elle s’acheva lorsqu’il découvrit son initiale sur la plaque d’une tombe, près d’une citerne nabatéenne ». A ce stade le roman laisse envisager un voyage dans un passé lointain. Pour autant, le lecteur parviendra sans doute à anticiper la révélation finale du livre.
Sans doute rééditer aujourd’hui L’année du soleil calme de Wilson Tucker n’a plus de sens, le contexte si pregnant pour l’intrigue ayant évolué, mais en dépit d’une premier moitié qui traine un peu, il n’en reste pas moins passionnant à lire.
Sans doute fallait-il être Américain dans les années 70 pour trouver un écho dans le roman de Wilson Tucker. Autour d’une histoire de voyage dans le temps, c’est en fait des problèmes de l’Amérique de 1970 dont il traite. Les Etats-Unis sont toujours embourbés au Vietnam en dépit des promesses électorales de Richard Nixon. Remarquons que le président de L’année du soleil calme s’appelle Meeks, ce qui est phonétiquement assez proche du Nix de Nixon, et qu’il est considéré comme un homme faible. Paradoxalement, l’homme faible a ordonné le bombardement atomique de deux centres ferroviaires chinois, informations toujours confidentielles révélées au héros par son acolyte Arthur Saltus. Par la suite, en raison de l’état d’urgence, il se maintient au pouvoir et abolit l’état de droit. Comme beaucoup d’Américains de l’époque, Wilson Tucker semble éprouver une véritable méfiance envers le pouvoir exécutif et l’armée, guerre du Vietnam oblige.
Car dans le 1978 du roman, non seulement la guerre n’est pas terminée, mais les Etats-Unis y sont engagés profondément puisqu’ils en viennent à attaquer la Chine communiste pour son soutien apporté à l’ennemi que l’on suppose vietnamien puisqu’il n’est pas réellement nommé. De plus d’autres guerres font rage dans le monde et Wilson Tucker évoque la guerre entre les pays arabes et Israël. Il est alors intéressant de se pencher sur la capacité de l’auteur à imaginer la géopolitique de demain. S’il avait bien anticipé les problèmes pétroliers engendrés par le conflit israélo-arabe - il parle à un moment de pénurie -, il n’a pas vu venir le rapprochement sino-américain concrétisé en 1972. Espérons cependant qu’il n’ait pas finalement raison quand il décrit les conséquences d’un conflit entre les deux puissances dans le premier quart du XXIe siècle. L’année du soleil calme est en effet un roman qui annonce la fin d’un monde et l’Amérique visitée par Chaney en 2000 + x est un champ de ruines.
Elle n’a d’ailleurs pas surmonté, bien au contraire, le deuxième problème de l’époque de sa rédaction, celui des droits civiques des Noirs. Il faut dire qu’en 1970, en dépit des progrès réalisés depuis les années 50, la situation n’est guère satisfaisante. Trois ans auparavant des émeutes raciales ont donné lieu à des scènes de pillage et des affrontements entre la communauté noire et les forces de l’ordre dignes de la guerre civile, telles que Kathryn Bigelow les a dépeintes encore récemment dans son film Detroit (2017). Alors qu’en 1969, les radicaux Weathermen lançaient leurs Days of Rage à Chicago, l’action des Black Panthers, arrêtés massivement, laissaient envisager l’éclatement d’une lutte armée et Wilson Tucker s’en est largement inspiré pour imaginer le contexte de son roman. Le soulèvement du quartier noir de Chicago entraîne l’érection d’un mur qui coupe la ville en 1980, puis, lors des expéditions de 1999-2000, menés par les collègues de Chaney, il apparaît que les Noirs se sont attaqués à la base militaire abritant le programme de voyage temporel.
Enfin, le contexte de la libération des mœurs n’est pas absent du récit. De fait, les tenues de Kathryn van Hise laissent largement entrevoir son anatomie et le ton du roman n’est pas sans évoquer ceux des romans de science-fiction de la même époque, notamment ceux de Robert Heinlein, empreints d’un certain libertinage et pourtant non dépourvu d’un certain machisme.
La forte présence du contexte explique sans doute que les petits défauts de cohérences du roman soient passés inaperçus. Certes, il s’agit de problèmes récurrent au genre du récit de voyage temporel, mais, alors que la plupart des auteurs jouent justement sur les problèmes logiques qui se posent, ce n’est pas le cas de L’année du soleil calme. Le véhicule temporel, le DTV pour Time Displacement Vehicle, imaginé par Wilson Tucker, qui ne se penche d’ailleurs pas sur le fonctionnement, est fixe, flottant sur un bassin d’eau hyperbare. Il est unique et une seule personne peut l’emprunter. Le voyageur temporel est donc envoyé dans l’avenir où l’attendent les techniciens qui ont tout préparé pour lui permettre d’aller chercher les renseignements demandés avant de revenir à son époque 61 secondes après en être parti. Au cas où le voyageur ne regagnerait pas le DTV dans les cinquante heures après son arrivée, celui-ci rentre à vide. Dès lors, comment expliquer que, à l’occasion du voyage de 1980, les premiers partis n’aient pas prévenu que le troisième parti était arrivé avant ? Sans vouloir divulgâcher le roman, une ou deux autres questions du même genre se posent.
S’il n’a pas soigné au mieux son histoire de voyage dans le temps, Wilson Tucker a en revanche parfaitement géré son intrigue en dispensant parcimonieusement quelques éléments d’informations ou en assénant quelques phrases en partie énigmatiques telles que la deuxième du roman : « L’affaire commença lorsqu’elle se dressa devant lui sur une plage de Floride, rompant son euphorie ; elle s’acheva lorsqu’il découvrit son initiale sur la plaque d’une tombe, près d’une citerne nabatéenne ». A ce stade le roman laisse envisager un voyage dans un passé lointain. Pour autant, le lecteur parviendra sans doute à anticiper la révélation finale du livre.
Sans doute rééditer aujourd’hui L’année du soleil calme de Wilson Tucker n’a plus de sens, le contexte si pregnant pour l’intrigue ayant évolué, mais en dépit d’une premier moitié qui traine un peu, il n’en reste pas moins passionnant à lire.
March 18, 2024
Painful read due to meandering, typical treatment of female characters and a lot of other nonsense. Just laughable how many times the female leads bathing suit was mentioned. I read it to see what kind of cool inventions a writer of the 70s would imagine for year 2000. This book did not deliver on that. Ending was decent. This was nominated for a Hugo which gives me hope as an aspiring writer. Bar is low.
July 13, 2024
This is a rare apocalypse novel focused more on character than spectacle. The majority of the book’s length is devoted to getting to know our protagonists and they’re finally thrust into peril only in the closing chapters. The character work never drags though and I can easily see why it was nominated for both a Hugo and Nebula award, though it had the unfortunate luck of releasing the same year as Ringworld.
April 24, 2019
I’ve reread this book several times and no longer remember when or where I first encountered it. The Year of the Quiet Sun remains one of the best of the time-travel stories despite its having overshot its original future; Tucker begins the book in 1978 and ends it sometime after the year 2000. The cover illustration, which shows a nuclear explosion, hints at the end, but it’s already clear in the early chapters that this is an America that has taken a very wrong path of poor leadership and increasing disorder both foreign and domestic. In particular, race relations are deteriorating, a common theme in science fiction of this vintage.
The characters are few, and although the book mainly follows one man’s life during a crucial phase of a time-travel project, it also presents the actions of two other individuals from their points of view as they emerge from the test facility into a future Illinois. They all see and remember the same things, but at different times or from different slants, emphasizing the importance of key events and places while maintaining the reader’s interest. There is only one important female character, but she is a strong one albeit acting as an assistant to others.
Tucker avoided some of the main problems that newer critics complain about in science fiction of this time. He didn’t lecture about future history or technology. He balanced the presentation of ideas and character development, for the most part allowing readers to come to their own conclusions. And he left some surprises that encourage the fan to return and reread the book from a new point of view. Aside from that, I have been getting new meat from old bones simply by reading old prognostications under a new American regime.
The characters are few, and although the book mainly follows one man’s life during a crucial phase of a time-travel project, it also presents the actions of two other individuals from their points of view as they emerge from the test facility into a future Illinois. They all see and remember the same things, but at different times or from different slants, emphasizing the importance of key events and places while maintaining the reader’s interest. There is only one important female character, but she is a strong one albeit acting as an assistant to others.
Tucker avoided some of the main problems that newer critics complain about in science fiction of this time. He didn’t lecture about future history or technology. He balanced the presentation of ideas and character development, for the most part allowing readers to come to their own conclusions. And he left some surprises that encourage the fan to return and reread the book from a new point of view. Aside from that, I have been getting new meat from old bones simply by reading old prognostications under a new American regime.
March 28, 2018
Time travel ranks as the most difficult of science fiction genres. Though there are numerous stories featuring characters voyaging into the past to change history or venturing into the future to see what will become of humanity, most break down on various points of logic. As a result, in spite of the numerous novels, short stories, movies, and television series which incorporate time travel into the plot, there are only a few in which it is done well enough to deserve to be remembered.
Wilson Tucker’s novel ranks among the few in this category. In it, a demographer and biblical scholar is recruited to join a government team surveying the future. As they do so, they witness a deteriorating world torn apart by racial and political strife thanks to weak and egotistical leaders. Here Tucker establishes time travel using a series of consistent rules that work very effectively, allowing him to focus on the plot and characters. These are the true strengths of the novel, for while the future he extrapolates seems a dated product of its times thanks to the luxury of hindsight, it is just the background for a poignant inquiry into the fate of society as seen through the lives of five very different people. This results in a thoughtful tale that is a must-read for any fan of science fiction, one that demonstrates how best to tell a time travel story that works.
Wilson Tucker’s novel ranks among the few in this category. In it, a demographer and biblical scholar is recruited to join a government team surveying the future. As they do so, they witness a deteriorating world torn apart by racial and political strife thanks to weak and egotistical leaders. Here Tucker establishes time travel using a series of consistent rules that work very effectively, allowing him to focus on the plot and characters. These are the true strengths of the novel, for while the future he extrapolates seems a dated product of its times thanks to the luxury of hindsight, it is just the background for a poignant inquiry into the fate of society as seen through the lives of five very different people. This results in a thoughtful tale that is a must-read for any fan of science fiction, one that demonstrates how best to tell a time travel story that works.
September 12, 2013
An interesting quick time traveling read. All time jumps are done into the future with political interests in mind. Though not explicitly told, the reader sees race tension and biasism towards one of the travelers (written in 1970). Each trip is taken by three people to separate times - either offset by hours, months or years apart. The three researchers are suppose to represent varying views of military and civilian attitudes. The intriguing part is that even though the government knows parts of the future, it can't advert the disaster that is coming for them.
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