04/18/2025
Anytime a friend tells me they have a favorite book, I generally give it a listen if it’s Sci-Fi. This book is a classic, but it was definitely an odd read. The reason? The main character, Mandela, is completely reactive through the whole story. Just taking what life throws at him. Now, that said, I love the concept of hurdling through time because of time dilation, and that part was fun. I’d say thought, thinks like The Time Machine and Three Body Problem pushed outside the tropes of everything descending into tribalism that I felt some of this touched on. I would have liked the future worlds to be even more foreign to the main character than just a shift to a world where same sex is preferred to reduce the population of the world.
For being released in the 70s, I was disappointed by the treatment of women in part of it. When one of them died, just her ability to satisfy the other partners was discussed, but not what she meant at an operational level. I felt woman were always a step behind men in the writing and is likely a product of the time. It was also weird how strange the drug usage was portrayed. Really made even later time periods feel dated. But, at the end of the day, the concept of the over arching story was interesting. I cannot imagine how this book would have landed if Mandela had been more proactive in some way, even if it was all for nothing.
2025-17
