THE LAST DAY OF CREATION

by Wolfgang Jeschke ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 16, 1984

Low-key time-travel adventure--with the premise and the mechanics unusually well thought-out. When a number of anachronistic objects--plastics, metals, weapons--turn up in ancient rocks, US Intelligence realizes that time travel must be feasible. So funds, personnel, and equipment are assembled for an expedition into the past of five million years ago (cf. the setting of Julian May's The Many-Colored Land and sequels)--where, in the then-dry Mediterranean basin, drilling crews will steal Middle Eastern oil and pump it up to the present. But things go disastrously wrong: as the various crews arrive in the past (sometimes as much as 50 years apart), they're attacked by sheik/USSR-funded Islamic warriors. The pipeline is never built. And soon the crews, who signed on for five-year stints, realize that the promised return trip will never happen: they are stranded in the past. Worse, the crews aren't all from the same future but alternate futures--futures which, thanks to their meddling in the past, no longer exist. Soon, then, supplies stop arriving. . . so the exiles must adapt themselves to the past forever. There are some glaring inaccuracies in Jeschke's Pliocene backdrop (his human ancestors, australopithecines, talk before they walk erect); and there are no characters worth mentioning. Still, the ideas are thoughtfully developed--in an initially choppy but occasionally absorbing narrative.

Pub Date: April 16, 1984

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1984

Categories: FICTION