Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read.

Start by marking “The Enormous Hourglass” as Want to Read:

Other editions

Enlarge cover

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

Open Preview

The Enormous Hourglass

Ron Goulart

3.23 · Rating details · 31 ratings · 5 reviews

Sam Brimmer, temporal detective, and his android time machine solve a case involving kidnap, murder, and the smuggling of modern weaponry back to pre-WWII Nazis.

Get A Copy

Mass Market Paperback, first, 154 pages

Published 1976 by Award

More Details... Edit Details

Friend Reviews

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

Reader Q&A

To ask other readers questions about The Enormous Hourglass, please sign up.

Be the first to ask a question about The Enormous Hourglass

Lists with This Book

This book is not yet featured on Listopia. Add this book to your favorite list »

Community Reviews

Showing 1-30

Average rating 3.23 ·

Rating details

· 31 ratings · 5 reviews

More filters

Sort order

Start your review of The Enormous Hourglass

Oct 29, 2020 Craig rated it liked it · review of another edition

This is one of Goulart's less well-known novels, a tale of time travel and Nazi-fighting featuring his one of his ubiquitous wise-cracking robots and his human tough-guy but soft-hearted womanizing side-kick. (Or vice versa.) There are some cultural slurs in this one that make it less well-aged than the majority of his work, but it's still a standard Goulart funny farce. ...more

flag 3 likes · Like · see review

Feb 21, 2010 tENTATIVELY, cONVENIENCE rated it liked it

Shelves: sf

Yes, whenever I want to read something to kill time while I wait for something else to happen (in this instance for movies of mine to very, VERY slowly upload to YouTube), it's a not-particularly-guilty pleasure to turn to Goulart - & I still haven't exhausted his selections yet. Once again, we have the futuristic mutations of 1930s pulp detectives & the usual host of stereotype parody characters - many of wch I really wdn't miss if they were to go away - the faux-gay crime-lord nazi for example Yes, whenever I want to read something to kill time while I wait for something else to happen (in this instance for movies of mine to very, VERY slowly upload to YouTube), it's a not-particularly-guilty pleasure to turn to Goulart - & I still haven't exhausted his selections yet. Once again, we have the futuristic mutations of 1930s pulp detectives & the usual host of stereotype parody characters - many of wch I really wdn't miss if they were to go away - the faux-gay crime-lord nazi for example. AND Goulart's trademark semi-dysfunctional back-talking robot - in this case a robot time-machine. Sam Brimmer & the robot, Tempo, are "time cops".

Making it particularly interesting for me is that there's a "Chronic Argonauts Club", a time-travelers club. I'm a member of a time-travel society founded by Richard Ellsberry in Maryland back in the 1970s. This bk was published in 1976. Richard wd've conceived of the Chrononautic Society around the same time & I'm more or less positive he thought of it independently of Goulart. The Chrononauts eventually became the Krononautic Organism. Of course, there may be even earlier examples of such a name for a time-traveler society. I may've even commented on it elsewhere w/o now remembering. You know how memories get all jumbled together when you time-travel into the future & get older.

All the clichés are here but.. Goulart manages to make them entertaining for me - if only b/c he packs so much silliness in. Tempo's constantly talking about the people he hangs w/ when he makes his illegal time jaunts - putting down Aristotle in favor of Anaxagoras, eg. Then there are touches like the motorcycle thugs who're really nazi strike breakers (strictly speaking, maybe only one of them) from the past brought into the future to try to kill the time cop to get the confessional tape spools from him that he found in the murdered man's apartment: ok, it's another stereotype: thugs who ride motorcycles who're also Germans who're nazis - but, in this case, they talk like the Katzenjammer Kids (considered by some to be the 1st real newspaper comic strip - in competition w/ the Yellow Kid (not really the name of the strip - just of a character from the strip) - from whom the term "Yellow Journalism" may've obliquely originated) - wch in itself cd make it another annoying stereotype projection offensive to immigrants for some. The thing is that Goulart just throws it all in there - including a healthy enuf dose of cultural-historical reference to make it over-the-top. &, yes, if someone asked me: "What shd I read at the beach?" I might even recommend it. OR: "What shd I read while I wait for a YouTube upload?" ...more

flag 2 likes · Like · see review

Apr 01, 2010 John rated it liked it

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Nov 08, 2020 Brook rated it it was ok

I was given a free review copy of this audio book, at my request, and am voluntarily leaving this unbiased review.

Wow, this book has not aged well. If you are offended by the F word, in reference to LGBTQ persons, or people being refereed to as "the black woman" or "the Chinese man" instead of names or job/position, etc. Then you will not enjoy this book.

This book is about a time detective from the future, who is searching for a missing woman who was last seen in the past. In terms of a time tr I was given a free review copy of this audio book, at my request, and am voluntarily leaving this unbiased review.

Wow, this book has not aged well. If you are offended by the F word, in reference to LGBTQ persons, or people being refereed to as "the black woman" or "the Chinese man" instead of names or job/position, etc. Then you will not enjoy this book.

This book is about a time detective from the future, who is searching for a missing woman who was last seen in the past. In terms of a time traveling story, it doesn't make much sense. Lots of little things like **minor spoilers** going to talk to a guy, who dies while trying to tell them something. The obvious remedy would be to go back in time 10 minutes and talk to him while he was alive. There may be an in world reason, but it's never addressed.

The robots in the book are more similar to Bender from Futurama than Data from Star Trek: TNG. All wise cracks and addictions, little logic and processing power. This isn't a bad thing, it brings color to the world. However, is it seldom seen in newer works and it can be distracting at times.

The dialog is fast paced and zippy. This hinders the story, more than helps. It often will have two or more people speaking and will rapid fire between the speakers with no speaker tags. This keeps the pace of the book going, but causes confusion in some readers.

The settings are limited. The world of the future isn't explained well, or explored. The time of 1933 isn't developed beyond it having cleaner air. Nothing really grabbed me of where I was, or why it was special.

The characters, similarly, weren't properly developed. The robot time machine was never really explained, neither where the main character or Sanchez. We never really learned anything about them, or how they tick. They just felt flat.

The biggest problem, aside from the casual racism and homophobia, was the voice narration. Fred Filbrich delivers a poor experience. He does basically no voice differentiation, little emphasis and just kind of speeds his way through the story. The issue I mentioned of the rapid fire conversations is made almost impossible to follow, by a narrator who does the same voice for all the characters and barely takes a breath between sentences. It took a mildly offensive story, that was still interesting, and turned it into a hard to follow mess.

All in all, this book is not worth listening to. Reading maybe, if you're not easily offended. The voice narrator has made this book hard to follow and there is not enough left in the story that makes this worth while to try and follow along. There are better example of time travel and mystery out there, I would go look for one of those. ...more

flag Like · see review

Nov 27, 2020 Kenny Martens rated it it was ok

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

flag Like · see review

Shane Legg rated it liked it
Jan 14, 2021

Terry rated it liked it
Feb 25, 2014

OTIS rated it it was amazing
Nov 03, 2020

Neil Davies rated it it was amazing
Jan 02, 2019

Plch rated it liked it
Apr 30, 2012

Al Brown rated it liked it
Dec 19, 2017

Paolo rated it it was ok
Jan 09, 2016

Carl rated it it was amazing
Feb 21, 2018

Grundlepuck rated it it was ok
Mar 08, 2012

Sean rated it liked it
May 21, 2010

Michael rated it it was amazing
Jul 14, 2015

Tom rated it really liked it
Jul 04, 2014

Ron rated it liked it
Sep 18, 2012

Douglas rated it liked it
Mar 02, 2015

David rated it liked it
Apr 08, 2014

King_In_Yellow rated it liked it
Sep 02, 2014

Andrea Bampi rated it liked it
Sep 04, 2012

Malcolm rated it liked it
Mar 09, 2017

Marco rated it liked it
Sep 23, 2017

Marnie Green rated it it was ok
Apr 19, 2019

Ken rated it liked it
Jan 30, 2010

Norman Lee Madsen rated it liked it
May 25, 2011

Ray rated it liked it
Aug 05, 2019

Scott Rowland rated it it was amazing
Mar 21, 2015

Darin Ursuliak rated it liked it
Feb 22, 2015

« previous 1 2 next »

new topic
Discuss This Book

There are no discussion topics on this book yet. Be the first to start one »

Recommend It | Stats | Recent Status Updates

Readers also enjoyed

See similar books…

Genres

Science Fiction

8 users

Humor

3 users

See top shelves…

About Ron Goulart

Ron Goulart

65 followers

Ron Goulart is a cultural historian and novelist. Besides writing extensively about pulp fiction—including the seminal Cheap Thrills: An Informal History of Pulp Magazines (1972)—Goulart has written for the pulps since 1952, when the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction published his first story, a sci-fi parody of letters to the editor. Since then he has written dozens of novels and countless sh ...more