Tue 28 Mar 2023
SF Diary Review: HARRY HARRISON – The Time-Machined Saga.
Posted by Steve under Diary Reviews , Science Fiction & Fantasy[5] Comments
HARRY HARRISON – The Time-Machined Saga. Serialized in Analog SF, March-May, 1967. Published in book form as The Technicolor® Time Machine (Doubleday, hardcover, 1967; Berkley, paperback, 1968).
A movie company finances the construction of an inventor’s time machine, they choose only to make another filmed epic. This time with authentic background, however, with certain alterations in the Hollywood tradition.
Going back to the 11th century, they turn their cameras on the historic Viking expedition to North America. But it is their efforts in promoting the recreated voyage that produces the original – a neat circle in time.
Beginning almost as slapstick, the story gradually settles down to a gentle tongue-in-cheek adventure in time, with nothing else to recommend it. The ending is obvious; something else is hoped for. Actually enjoyable once expectation are lowered.
Rating: ***½
March 28th, 2023 at 6:59 pm
It reads, rather pleasently, like a literary Ealing Comedy, almost as if Harrison was aiming for the type audience that read Leonard Wibberly, Nathaniel Benchley, and Max Schulman.
March 28th, 2023 at 7:58 pm
I sometimes wonder if I should keep on posting these old reviews of books I read so long ago that I can neither remember them nor defend my opinion of them, if need be.
I’m glad I don’t have to defend myself this time!
And for me, I’m always happy when I can read one of these old reviews and say to myself, say, I’d like to read that!
And that’s just what happened with this one.
March 28th, 2023 at 8:09 pm
Steve,
I always enjoy these old reviews—so I hope you keep posting. The fact you don’t remember the book now only proves the foresight you had back in the late 60’s to record your impressions at the time. And hey, like Heraclitus says, you’re not the same guy who wrote those reviews anyway. Too much water has passed thru these shores since then.
March 28th, 2023 at 10:57 pm
I encourage you to continue the old magazine reviews. Starting in the 1960’s I also started to write down my comments on all the books and magazine stories that I read. It’s a lot of fun reading my comments 50 years later and I sometimes reread the story because my old review made it sound so interesting.
My pulp and digest magazine collection is full of slips of paper reviewing thousands of stories.
March 29th, 2023 at 9:51 pm
I’m three-quarters of the way through the first of three notebooks I did of what I’m now calling “diary” reviews, and as long I’m sure I’m not embarrassing myself with them, I don’t see any reason why I shouldn’t continue.
I think I stopped when I started writing reviews for the Hartford Courant and The MYSTERY FANcier (the latter Guy Townsend’s fanzine).
I also did SF reviews for Richard Geis’s SF REVIEW, but the last time I dug them out, I wasn’t impressed.