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Book Review of The Year of the Quiet Sun

The Year of the Quiet Sun
Gandalara avatar reviewed on + 23 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 1


Year of the Quiet Sun won the Campbell Award in 1976.

The plot hasn't aged well, and is certainly politically incorrect by today's standards. And the idea of time travelers from the 1970s bravely going forward to the year 2000 is ... amusing. I suppose we can now call it an alternative history.

The main character is a civilian scholar who has published a controversial book about the origins of the Bible's Book of Revelations. This creates some tension between him and the two military men who work with him on the government's time travel reconnaissance project.

The book contains an unusual time machine (it has to be plugged into an electrical source), some military action, speculation about the near future (now past), a romance, and lots of interesting discussion about society and world politics.

While I'm glad I read Year of the Quiet Sun and regard it as a worthwhile work of science fiction, this is not a book I would strongly recommend as a "must read." It may grab some readers for historical reasons or because of its specific topics. This is a very well-written book, which continually presents unexpected but logical surprises.

Who should read this: Readers interested in 1970s science fiction, Wilson Tucker, fiction set in Chicago, fiction with modernist Biblical commentary, black-white racial issues, or unusual time travel stories.