Book Review: No Enemy But Time

As I near the end of making my way through David Pringle's Science Fiction: The 100 Best Books, I am increasingly glad for both the new finds and the authors I'm returning to again.

Case in point, last week I read Michael Bishop's 1982 Time Travel novel No Enemy But Time.  This was my third time reading a Bishop novel, but my first time reading his Science Fiction.  Previously I had read the horror novel Who Made Stevie Crye? and the Fantasy novel Brittle Innings and had really enjoyed both.

No Enemy But Time focuses on John Monegal, a chrononaut (Time Travelling explorer) who has been dreaming of the African Pleistocene era since birth, and with the help of an American agency begins the novel by travelling back in time to that specific era.

The novel moves back and forth between his study of the Homo Habilis people he finds in prehistoric Africa and his own life's journey that lead him to this point.

I found the novel fascinating throughout (but was a little confused as to why the cover image (seen above) depicts a white guy when the character is black), and enjoyed both John's journey from boy to man and his later journey with people who only see him as a strange creature.

As a man lost in time novel, it was a heck of a lot of fun, and leaves me interested in both finding more of Bishop's work, and of reading my next (and final) book on this crazy SF list I've been reading for nearly eight years now.

Book Review: Who Made Stevie Crye?

Last week I read a 1984 horror novel called Who Made Stevie Crye? by Michael Bishop. The book begins as a horror novel, and then begins to move in a pretty surreal direction, ending up with a novel that works both as horror and as parody.

The story in a nutshell - Journalist Stevenson (Stevie) Crye is a mother of two and a recent widow. Her husband Ted, before dying of cancer left her a typewriter which she could use for her work as a freelance journalist. The book begins as the typewriter dies, leaving Stevie little choice but to get it repaired.

The repair, done by a suspicious young man named Seaton for $10 (the book was written in the '80s so the costs seemed a little small to me), begins acting strangely, first typing on its own and eventually transcribing Stevie's dreams. The strangest part about the writings however is they are given chapter numbers, numbers which match the chapters in the novel and are made up of the same text...

The book gets pretty strange but I've got to admit it was a fun ride and it definitely had me confused throughout (as was its aim) as to what was actually going on.

A fun read.