ne man, plucked out of his native time by accident, has the potential to point the future era in which he's stranded down a new and improved path. But when that path proves apocalyptic, he is also the only man who can remake the past, and give the future a new chance.
Vladislav Kuznetsov was a simple engineering student in our present when the experiments of a scientist some three centuries in the future caused Kuznetsov to be snatched forward. Once trapped in this distant year with no way home, Kuznetsov reluctantly went native. He was christened Egarn, in accordance with the rules of a feudalistic society where only the elite peers boasted two names, and society's real welfare rested on the back of one-namers, no-namers and brutal lashers, or work-enforcers. Contributing his scientific knowledge to this era that struggled along in primitive fashion, Egarn became a trusted advisor to the world's most potent peer, the ruler of Lant. His inventions, added to the strange lens-based technology of the future, created an empire for Lant. As the book opens, however, Egarn has repented of his role in Lant's conquests, and gone over to the last remaining resistance force: the Ten Peerdoms.
Smuggled into the Ten Peerdoms, Egarn finds himself under the protection of Arne, a leading one-namer who seeks to defend the Ten Peerdoms as the last bastion of freedom. But various defeats on the battlefield convince Arne and Egarn that victory against Lant by conventional means is hopeless. There is only one chance for a self-sacrificial victory. If Egarn can recreate and improve the timeprobe that brought him forward, a team can be sent back to the past to destroy the inventor of the Honsun Lens, the pivotal technology that underpins this particular timestream. In a destructive paradox, their success will snuff out three centuries of tortured history.
As the war rages, Arne must contend with interference and treachery from within his own forces, mainly from a willful peer named Terril Deline, who also becomes his lover. Once two loyal scouts, Roszt and Kaynor, are dispatched to 20th-century Rochester, N.Y., the action branches to two parallel stages, and the race is on between the two factions, one struggling to unmake the other.
A welcome blast from the past
The byline of Lloyd Biggle Jr. is probably unknown to the two youngest generations of SF readers. Yet Biggle's old reputation is an admirable one, with over 20 respected titles to his credit. Now, nearly at the age of 80, he and his latest novel finally have a chance to reach this new audience, thanks to the efforts of Wildside Press, which has also returned much of Biggle's oeuvre to print, including his best-known books, the Jan Darzek series.
Biggle's new book harks back to such fondly remembered post-apocalyptic scenarios as Stanley Weinbaum's The Black Flame (1948), Fred Saberhagen's Empire of the East (1979) and Andre Norton's Star Man's Son (1952). After a titanic war fought with the destructive Honsun Lens, the remnants of mankind have reverted to a semi-barbaric existence. The peerage is idle and decadent, while the one-namers are a solid and inventive peasant stock who really keep civilization, such as it is, afloat. No-namers are a deliberately brain-damaged cadre of grunts, kept in line by the slightly smarter lashers. Biggle convincingly inhabits this stratified society, making it tangible and plausible. The entrance of Egarn into the scheme upsets all the old checks and balances, however. But Biggle wisely makes this happen over a span of decades, jumping us right to the end of the process. Egarn's decision to change sides, and all the practical political and military consequences that follow, are well handled, too. In short, Biggle's world-building is up to snuff.
But if only this linear storyline existed, the novel would be too simplistic. Biggle's complicating masterstroke is the time-travel angle. Roughly around the halfway mark, when the pair of scouts is transported back to Rochester, the novel takes on new dimensions of interest and suspense. As Arne and his co-conspirators monitor the time travelers via the viewing functions of the timeprobe, the ongoing tensions of the battlefield are supplemented by the clumsy, vital, sometimes blackly comic efforts of Roszt and Kaynor to track down the inventor of the Honsun Lens and eliminate him. When the Peer of Lant captures the timeprobe and begins to send her own troops back to Rochester to foil her own temporal extinction, the two narrative lines converge in a well-wrought climax.
Modern readers might find Biggle's plotting and dialogue a tad old-fashioned, slower and more formal than that of younger writers. His depiction of 20th-century students is reminiscent a bit of Archie comics. And Arne is incredibly earnest and honorable. But when Arne is torn between lovers, Biggle's maturity and emotional honesty shine through. Additionally, Egarn's crisis of conscience and desperation to overturn Fate are nicely portrayed.
All in all, it's good to have Biggle back. Surely we won't need to wait so long for another book.
