The Chronocide Mission

by Lloyd Biggle Jr.

His name was Vladislav Kuznetsov, and he had been a twenty-one-year-old student at Mount Harwell College in Mount Harwell, Ohio. On a Friday afternoon, March 24, 2001, he succumbed to a sudden attack of spring fever and cut his classes for a stroll in a public park near the campus. Even after fifty years and several hundred centuries, he remembered it as vividly as though it had happened an hour before. It was a warm, fresh day with a promise of spring?the first really pleasant day of the year after the usual vagaries of a midwest winter. He strolled leisurely through the park, thinking with shameless delight of the stuffy classrooms he was avoiding. Eventually he seated himself on a patch of greening grass with a convenient tree to lean against and enjoyed the soft breeze and the peaceful surroundings while he absently whittled on a twig he had picked up. He felt sleepy. Probably he dozed off. Then came a tremendous jerk, like having a chair pulled from under him at the same instant that a truck hit him, and he almost lost consciousness. He landed with a painful bump and skidded for a short distance along a very rough wood floor. For a moment he sat gazing about him dazedly. He had been abruptly translated from his seat on the ground in a pleasant park on a lovely spring day to a seat on a wood floor in a large, dim room with a thunderstorm raging outside. He had a distinct impression that the two scenes had been linked by an earthquake. He tried hard to focus his thoughts, staring first at a table where a candle burned brightly and then at an animal tied to one of the table's legs by a short leash. It was a hairy pig. He raised his eyes to the room's two small, water-streaked windows and saw nothing beyond but branches swaying in a strong wind . . .

Genres: Science Fiction, Time Travel

308 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

Biggle was born in 1923 in Waterloo, Iowa. He served in World War II as a communications sergeant in a rifle company of the 102nd Infantry Division; during the war, he was wounded twice. His second wound, a shrapnel wound in his leg received near the Elbe River at the end of the war, left him disabled for life.

After the war, Biggle resumed his education. He received an A.B. Degree with High Distinction from Wayne State University and M.M. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Michigan. Biggle taught at the University of Michigan and at Eastern Michigan University in the 1950s. He began writing professionally in 1955 and became a full-time writer with the publication of his novel, All the Colors of Darkness in 1963; he continued in the writing profession until his death.

Reviews

[SciFiOne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jan 22, 2022

2022 Grade B+

Social SciFi with amazing world building of the society and excellent character development. The first two thirds is barley SciFi with the exploration of the brutal future dystopian feudal society. The book is not too graphic, but this future is not a nice place. The mission is to prevent this society from ever developing and that is the last third - which was difficult to put down. The end was predicted the early on, but the details of getting there are what make it work so well. The first and last chapters, bookend the content and are delightful.

The book is not grade A because it is overwritten. I'd guess it is about 20% too long. Each chapter is from a different POV, and some seemed out of place. This structure made selected chapters easy to speed read though. The POV swapping was not a problem because the prose is extremely well written third person. I never had any problems.

This is the kind of novel Biggle specializes in and it is
Recommended.

[Clint Peden · Rating 4 out of 5]

To Save the Future

This review contains spoilers.
It's the distant future and most of society is mindless slaves. One man from the past has been brought there and devises a plan to change history.
The story concerns his escape and the country he flees to, which is facing a war against an overwhelming for.
Eventually a plan to alter the past is set in motion but the country is overrun and they have to work with people who are unfamiliar with customs in that time.
Added to this is the seemingly impossible task of finding the inventor who will create the terrible weapon that devastated society.
With the help of a local scientist they're able to find and destroy the tech just before being attacked by an army from tomorrow.

[Mark Zodda · Rating 1 out of 5]

I usually enjoy time travel stories. When I was in school, the library had some old Lloyd Biggle Jr. novels and I enjoyed reading them. So when I saw this reasonably priced time travel story written by Lloyd Biggle Jr., I picked it up and now regret it. A complicated mess of a book that was completed before his death in 2002. Parts of the story take place in 2001, but a 2001 that reads like it was written in the 1950s. After reading the first chapter, I was sure that somehow I had gotten the wrong book since this wasn't a time travel novel; but it was. This is the first Lloyd Biggle Jr. story that I haven't liked at all and it makes me wonder if I'll chance reading any more of his later stories.

[Chriss · Rating 2 out of 5]

I liked the writing, but after a quarter of the book I realized this was a go-back-in-time-to-kill-a-guy-to-stop-it-happening plot I lost interest in the book altogether. I I'd known it was that kind of book I never would have picked it up (for description, the back of the book had a scene from the second chapter).

It's a good post-apocalyptic story, with some similarities to Brave New World.

[Samuel · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's Biggle's last book, and though it's completed in one sense, you can tell he wasn't really through with it. Good ideas, less clever execution than usual from one of the great science fiction writers of the 20th century.