UP THE LINE
By Robert Silverberg
IBooks (Simon & Schuster) - July 2002
ISBN 0743444973 PB
SF/Time Travel
2059 New Orleans and Byzantium various periods

Reviewed by Rachel A Hyde, MyShelf.com
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Simon & Schuster's ibooks imprint is getting quite a reputation for reprinting some previously hard-to-find quality fiction and this early Silverberg gem is no exception. Written back in 1968, it is a lively sexual black comedy of errors, centering on the hapless Judson Daniel Elliott III's career as a time courier. His job is to take groups of rich tourists around trips back in time to his chosen place and time, Byzantium, and woe betide him if something goes wrong, for the penalty for timecrime is death.

Some couriers are adequate, but one is brilliant - Metaxas, who dines with emperors and has a palatial home hidden away in time. Judson vows to be like him, but in doing this, he goes too far, for Metaxas' obsession with having sex with his own ancestors is a risky hobby for anybody, especially a novice like Judson who has already been labeled a loser.

As Kim Stanley Robinson's excellent introduction points out, this is a very Sixties novel with everybody obsessed by hallucinogenic drugs and free love, but Silverberg's vision of the future still seems, in some ways, startlingly possible and prophetic. Like all the best science fiction, this novel has a wonderfully dovetailed plot, seamlessly slotted into a scientifically fascinating world, with plenty of surprises in store. When the characters aren't having it off with each other, the descriptions of time travel and its technicalities are fascinating, as Judson trains for his new trade, and when the actual "comedy of errors" starts (quite near the end of the book) it seems the culmination that Judson has been building up to, for surely we are all waiting for this too-perfect new job to lead him to a fall. Think Kingsley Amis writing time travel science fiction, and you will have some idea what to expect. This is a jewel of a novel that has been out of print too long - highly recommended.