Mutiny in the Time Machine

by Donald Keith

A thrilling science-fiction story of four adventurous Scouts and their travels through time.

Genres: Young Adult, Science Fiction

181 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1963

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Pseudonym for father-and-son team Donald (1888–1972) and Keith Monroe (1917–2003). They are best known for their series of stories in the Time Machine series, which were originally published in Boys' Life magazine between 1959 and 1989.

Reviews

[Nadine Brandes · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book countless times as a child. It's my favorite time travel story and, no matter how old I get, I'll never outgrow the wonder of this story.

[Steven Clark · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book in 1962-1963 in Boy's Life, and when this was published, it was one of the first books I bought. I always liked the story and characters, especially the emotional tug-of-war between Bob Tucker, patrol leader, and Brains Baynes, his buddy. The prose is very good and readable, and I find no problem with the "racist" language. It's all good. The major challenge in the book is finding the origin of the time machine, and although the story is slender, it has a good theme of what makes a leader, and how do you work together as a unit. Bob has to come to terms with that, and Kai, the scout brought from the future, is a good Spock to Bob's Kirk. Dion, the Spartan scout, is a tad underdeveloped, but after decades, the story really was enjoyable and had good suspense and action, moving along at a good clip. There's also a lot of scout lore that comes in to save the day. Donald Keith really knew how to write for kids. Of course, there is a dog, and he does okay. I smell a screenplay here if someone would try it.
Interestingly enough, the time machine (which they never found out where it came from) came from the year 2035. Seems very close now, but not in 1960.
The book is illustrated Marilyn Miller. I liked the illustrations in Boy's Life, but hers, if sketchy and
following the period taste, are good and capture the characters. Interestingly, in Boy's Life, Kai was always shown with an enormous head, while in the book he is a normal boy, bald, but wears a wig. So she actually read the story. Good artist. This was great nostalgia and still a good read.

[Roy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very old perspective on how one would act if you found a time machine, and were an active patrol of Boy Scouts. Not a great story, but fun. Four stars mainly because it was good enough to get me into science fiction when I was a boy.

I discovered this as a book at the San Jose WorldCon ; I had read the stories as published in Boy's Life when I was a kid. I really think this was the first science fiction I ever read. I read it again this week, partly nostalgia, partly curiosity.

It's far to simple in story-telling than a modern YA would be, and certainly far too focused on the idea that Scouting principles would be the same in any time. But it is still fun: how the multi-timeline patrol gets together, how they work out where the time machine is from, and the adventure that creates. It's still a fun quick read.

[Julie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a fun book for my two little Scouts. I'm glad I read it out loud, though, because there was some racist language (ex. the book used "red skins" in reference to Native Americans) that I needed to change on the fly as we were going along. The story was decent and treated all the characters with respect , other than the use of some outdated language which was probably used innocently if you consider the year it was published in.