I don’t much like reading books about time travel. Mostly it just makes me dizzy, I don’t deal well with paradoxes. There are a few exceptions, like Lest Darkness Fall by L. Sprague de Camp and Time and Again by Jack Finney. John Varley’s Millennium is another that has taken up permanent occupancy on my bookshelves, and I’ve been puzzling over why.

I think it’s because the premise for time travel in this novel is practical. The future is robbing/mining/harvesting/exploiting the past to save the future, to ensure the survival of humankind. It wasn’t a bolt of lightning (Lest Darkness Fall), it wasn’t a self-induced hypnotic state (Time and Again), no, this time the future creates a time travel machine specifically for this task and none other.

The motivation is great on a character level, too—Louise and the rest of her Snatch Team are sacrificing their own lives for the sake of the rest of the human race, and FAA investigator Bill Smith’s job and personal curiosity, not to mention his love for Louise, pushes him inevitably toward solving this mystery.

Sherman is one of the best robot characters ever created in SF, too. Nothing not to love here.

The film based on the book, with Cheryl Ladd and Kris Kristofferson, isn’t bad, either.

Book Review Monday Chatter John Varley Millennium