Theater of Timesmiths

by Garry Kilworth

Morag MacKenzie, a Timesmith who sells her erotic memories, and anarchist Ben Blakely join forces to destroy The Primary, a tyrannical semi-organic computer that holds the inhabitants of First City within its icy confines

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction

224 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 1984

About the author

Garry Douglas Kilworth is a historical novelist who also published sci-fi, fantasy, and juvenile fiction.

Kilworth is a graduate of King's College London. He was previously a science fiction author, having published one hundred twenty short stories and seventy novels.

Reviews

[Nik Morton · Rating 3 out of 5]

Garry Kilworth’s novel A Theatre of Timesmiths was published in 1984.

It is a cold claustrophobic world that Kilworth has created: ‘It was a city of freezing mists, emerging each morning like a grey, ridged beast through layers of swamp fog’ (p1). The First City is surrounded by an immense cone of ice, too thick to tunnel through, too high to climb or fly beyond. A central computer, the egocentric Primary keeps the city inhabitable, but it is becoming old and unreliable: ‘My city loves me... They all love me, for I am their protector. I keep the ice from entering the city... I am the keeper of mankind’ (p54).

Shouters serve as news disseminators and propagandists. Speaknots are assassins, murderers. Order is maintained by the city’s harsh police, the Trysts, under the dictatorial leadership of chief Raxonberg: ‘The trysts were almost all relatives of one another, recruited as they were only from a dozen or so families’ (p32). Policing is simple enough: citizens have their name tattooed on their cheekbones.

Timesmiths are men and women who, for brief moments, can transport your mind in dreams, to take you out of yourself, to escape the misery of the city: ‘The timesmiths were props to the collective sanity of the city. Without them the whole place would be an asylum of wailing lunatics looking for release valves in the complete abandonment of reason’ (p21).

Inevitable dissatisfaction with their constricted lives – and curiosity about what lies beyond the ice cone – lead Morag and Ben to investigate and track the five Consuls who administer to the Primary in the Green Tower. One of these Consuls is Felix Feverole, who seems to possess some truths about the city’s history, but not all...

Illusion and violence affect the pair in their endeavours until some of that truth is finally imparted by the computer system, the ailing Primary.

The First City is an original creation which needs the help of either Morag or Raxonberg to evolve a solution... A solution that might lead the citizens to a promised land.

Besides the enigma of the First City, Kilworth always provides readable text. Two examples I particularly liked are:

‘... looked out through a space in the frostfern patterns on the pane’ (p6).

‘the straining muscles on his thick forearms, tight as wrung towels’ (p100).

[Kevin Phyland · Rating 3 out of 5]

Garry Kilworth weaves a strange little tale of a group of humans living inside a frozen volcano which is maintained by a senile computer. Morag is a mind prostitute (who lets people into her mind for money) who becomes a radical and eventually mindmelds with the computer before it ceases to function and discovers she is destined to run things. The ice cone melts once the computer systems go offline and the inhabitants discover why they were kept there and that other such facilities exist on this strange marble plain, a plain which suspiciously resembles the way she imagined it would. Has a timesmith from the past become part of Morag's mind, and what does it have to do with the world that the perceive? An enjoyable way to spend a few hours. :)

[Henrique Vogado · Rating 4 out of 5]

Um bom livro de ficção-científica. Fui lendo com muitas pausas nos transportes públicos - livro de bolso é para isso!
O Autor Garry Kilworth tem uma imaginação fabulosa para criar mundos e nesta obra o objectivo é bem conseguido. Vamos escrutinando alguns mistérios, mas é para ler até ao fim para saber o cenário completo. Bons diálogos e personagens bem estruturadas.
Um livro do início dos anos 80, em que a heroína é uma mulher, sendo um pioneiro também nesse aspecto. Este é o autor de inúmeros livros de diversos géneros. Fiquei a saber que escreveu o "highlander" que chegou a filmes e séries com grande sucesso. Um autor para continuar a descobrir.