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The Time Hoppers
They were disappearing, one at a time, in spite of the fact that in the crowded, hungry world of 2490 there was really nowhere worth going. Then they began to reappear, not in Moscow or Nairobi or LA--but in 1970, 1981, even the nostalgic days of the roaring 2100's. A way to the past had been found & people were flocking thru it for a better life--no matter what peril they might pose to the threatened present.
Earth in the late 25th Century is an unpleasant place for many. People are crowded into most available areas. Unemployment is rampant. A highly stratified society provides luxury & space for a few, while lower levels live crowded in tiny apartments. Into this situation comes a hope of escape�-escape into the past, before the world was crowded.
The story follows several characters. 1st is Joe Quellen, a midlevel Secretariat of Crime bureaucrat with a secret African residence, reached by a private teleportation booth. He heads the investigation into unauthorized time travel. Another is Norman Pomrath, Joe's brother-in-law, an unemployed low-level worker. He swears he wouldn't abandon his wife & children if presented with a chance to become a hopper.
Earth in the late 25th Century is an unpleasant place for many. People are crowded into most available areas. Unemployment is rampant. A highly stratified society provides luxury & space for a few, while lower levels live crowded in tiny apartments. Into this situation comes a hope of escape�-escape into the past, before the world was crowded.
The story follows several characters. 1st is Joe Quellen, a midlevel Secretariat of Crime bureaucrat with a secret African residence, reached by a private teleportation booth. He heads the investigation into unauthorized time travel. Another is Norman Pomrath, Joe's brother-in-law, an unemployed low-level worker. He swears he wouldn't abandon his wife & children if presented with a chance to become a hopper.
182 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1967
7 people are currently reading
382 people want to read
About the author
Robert Silverberg
2,110Ìýbooks1,551ÌýfollowersThere are many authors in the database with this name.
Robert Silverberg is a highly celebrated American science fiction author and editor known for his prolific output and literary range. Over a career spanning decades, he has won multiple Hugo and Nebula Awards and was named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in 2004. Inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame in 1999, Silverberg is recognized for both his immense productivity and his contributions to the genre's evolution.
Born in Brooklyn, he began writing in his teens and won his first Hugo Award in 1956 as the best new writer. Throughout the 1950s, he produced vast amounts of fiction, often under pseudonyms, and was known for writing up to a million words a year. When the market declined, he diversified into other genres, including historical nonfiction and erotica.
Silverberg’s return to science fiction in the 1960s marked a shift toward deeper psychological and literary themes, contributing significantly to the New Wave movement. Acclaimed works from this period include Downward to the Earth, Dying Inside, Nightwings, and The World Inside. In the 1980s, he launched the Majipoor series with Lord Valentine’s Castle, creating one of the most imaginative planetary settings in science fiction.
Though he announced his retirement from writing in the mid-1970s, Silverberg returned with renewed vigor and continued to publish acclaimed fiction into the 1990s. He received further recognition with the Nebula-winning Sailing to Byzantium and the Hugo-winning Gilgamesh in the Outback.
Silverberg has also played a significant role as an editor and anthologist, shaping science fiction literature through both his own work and his influence on others. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife, author Karen Haber.
Robert Silverberg is a highly celebrated American science fiction author and editor known for his prolific output and literary range. Over a career spanning decades, he has won multiple Hugo and Nebula Awards and was named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in 2004. Inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame in 1999, Silverberg is recognized for both his immense productivity and his contributions to the genre's evolution.
Born in Brooklyn, he began writing in his teens and won his first Hugo Award in 1956 as the best new writer. Throughout the 1950s, he produced vast amounts of fiction, often under pseudonyms, and was known for writing up to a million words a year. When the market declined, he diversified into other genres, including historical nonfiction and erotica.
Silverberg’s return to science fiction in the 1960s marked a shift toward deeper psychological and literary themes, contributing significantly to the New Wave movement. Acclaimed works from this period include Downward to the Earth, Dying Inside, Nightwings, and The World Inside. In the 1980s, he launched the Majipoor series with Lord Valentine’s Castle, creating one of the most imaginative planetary settings in science fiction.
Though he announced his retirement from writing in the mid-1970s, Silverberg returned with renewed vigor and continued to publish acclaimed fiction into the 1990s. He received further recognition with the Nebula-winning Sailing to Byzantium and the Hugo-winning Gilgamesh in the Outback.
Silverberg has also played a significant role as an editor and anthologist, shaping science fiction literature through both his own work and his influence on others. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife, author Karen Haber.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 54 reviews
March 28, 2025
The Time Hoppers is an expansion of a novelette called Hopper that appeared in the October 1956 issue of Infinity Science Fiction magazine. Silverberg revisited it a decade later, adding a few more characters and some further speculation about the deleterious effects of pollution and over-population, and Doubleday released the novel in 1967 with a truly boring cover comprised of some white lines in a circle forming arrowheads on a black background. It's an interesting version of the these-are-the-good-old-days theme, with some catchy time-travel and teleportation tricks, but the characters aren't really sympathetic or well-developed. It's a fast, entertaining read, but not really too memorable. It's not among his best work.
January 28, 2018
Published in 1967 and probably written as quickly as it took to read it. It's several centuries in the future, someone has invented or at least has control of the technology of time travel. The world - or at least America - is over populated and jobs are scarce, life is drab - especially for women, who do not work jobs or run things politically. They just stay home in their tiny apartments each looking after their one or two children and worry about their unemployed husbands who do little more than get intoxicated and dream of leaving the little they have behind. In this story, the method is to hook up with this Lanoy character (he's the one with the time machine).
That's pretty much the set up. The society is set in a caste system numbering from one down to the teens - One, being the almost mythical world leader, Two, his top underlings and on down to the pitiful masses.
The idea is along the lines of Silverberg's later 1970 "The World Inside" but with the time travel element included.
BTW, the cover of a space station for this particular Avon edition is not remotely related to the story.
That's pretty much the set up. The society is set in a caste system numbering from one down to the teens - One, being the almost mythical world leader, Two, his top underlings and on down to the pitiful masses.
The idea is along the lines of Silverberg's later 1970 "The World Inside" but with the time travel element included.
BTW, the cover of a space station for this particular Avon edition is not remotely related to the story.
February 18, 2020
The book had an interesting plot line to it. It was a fun read, and my problems with it aren't really problems. I thought it overstressed everybody's 'classes" and there seemed to be a couple characters that didn't need to be in the story. Good book though.
May 5, 2016
After enjoying Silverberg's Up the Line, I was happy to see he had written a previous book about time travel. Sadly, this was not as good as the first one. The book takes place in the late 25th century, where society is very hierarchical, with a Class system. Unemployment is high, but all are given enough money to survive. Many are disillusioned and are doing back in time to find new, more meaningful lives. The book was at its best when dealing with the consequences of using or preventing time travel however, I did not like his characters or the kind of hopeless society portrayed. Nonetheless, I will read more by Silverberg.
February 25, 2015
This longtime sci-fi buff has a confession to make: Some time travel stories leave me with a throbbing headache. Not that I don't enjoy them, mind you; it's just that oftentimes, the mind-blowing paradoxes inherent in many of these tales set off what feels like a Mobius strip feedback loop in my brain that makes me want to grab a bottle of Excedrin. Thus, it was with a bit of decided trepidation that I ventured into Robert Silverberg's "The Time Hoppers," but as it turns out, I needn't have worried. Silverberg is amongst the most lucid of science fiction imaginers, and here, even when setting forth those inevitable temporal paradoxes that come with all time travel stories, he does so clearly, and in a way that gave this reader no problem whatsoever.
Isaac Asimov, one of the giants of the field, has been quoted as saying "I made up my mind long ago to follow one cardinal rule in all my writing--to be clear," and Silverberg, who collaborated with Doc Ike on three occasions, has always seemed to follow that dictate as well. Expanded from his 1954 short story "Hopper," "The Time Hoppers" was released in 1967, a watershed year for Silverberg. (After editor Frederik Pohl induced Silverberg to return to writing sci-fi full-time, the author began to write with a maturity and imaginative depth not seen in his prolific work before; a more literate quality, with greater emphasis on characterization, sex, drugs and adult themes, came to the fore.) The book was originally released as a Doubleday hardcover; just one of six Silverberg sci-fi novels that year, in addition to eight "naughty bawdy" novels, six sci-fi short stories, and 11 books of nonfiction. That's over two books a month, if you're counting!
In "The Time Hoppers," the year is 2490, and the Earth has become an overpopulated, overdeveloped mess. The bulk of humanity--at least, those with a Class 10 rating and below--lives in tiny, windowless, one-room apartments with their small nuclear families. The reader meets Joseph Quellen, a Class 7 by dint of his position as a "CrimeSec" in the Secretariat of Crime, who lives in the impossibly widespread city known as Appalachia. But Quellen, despite his midlevel bureaucratic job and PRIVATE, single-room apartment, harbors a criminal secret--he is guilty of having built for himself a private abode in the heart of the Congo, which he reaches from his place in North America by using a "stat" (think of the transporters on "Star Trek," a program that in 1967 had just barely started to impress). Quellen's lot becomes even more problematic when he is given a new assignment by the unseen High Government: track down the means by which the "hoppers" have been escaping the troubled present by emigrating into the past. For the previous five years, some unknown person has enabled some 60,000 folks to flee backwards in time; the High Government wants the emigration ended, and the time travel device in its own hands. But what will happen if someone who is already in the historical records as a hopper is prohibited from going back? Wouldn't that conceivably change, alter, possibly topple all future history? And meanwhile, as Quellen prosecutes his investigation, his Class 14 brother-in-law, Norman Pomrath, decides that he is at the breaking point, and begins to look for a way to abandon his family and...hop....
Of the two dozen or so Silverberg books that I have read so far, "The Time Hoppers" is the one that reminds me most forcefully of a novel by Philip K. Dick (although it is dedicated to Michael Moorcock AND although Silverberg, of course, is a much better, more disciplined writer than Dick). As in a Dick book, here, Silverberg shows a great empathy for his "little people," for their miserable plight in an environment over which they have zero control; as in Dick's "The Simulacra," top figures at the head of the government are revealed to be (very slight spoiler ahead) fictitious constructs, and even mechanical in nature; as in so many Dick novels, recreational drug use has become not only legal, but encouraged (Norm is a devotee of the "sniffer palaces," where he inhales a hallucinogenic gas in order to escape from his troubles).
"The Time Hoppers" is also a trove of ideas that Silverberg would develop more fully in his later work: Peter Kloofman, the 132-year-old Class One governmental head, who has stayed alive only via multiple organ transplants, is but a warm-up for the Genghis II Mao IV Khan character in 1976's "Shadrach in the Furnace"; the problems of extreme overpopulation would be dealt with more fully in 1971's "The World Inside"; the idea of thrusting political prisoners into the past, only briefly touched on here, would find a fuller expression in that same year's novella "Hawksbill Station" (which first appeared in the August '67 "Galaxy" magazine), and via an even grander exposition in the 1970 "Hawksbill Station" novel. Silverberg makes his Earth of some five centuries hence a colorful one, adding such sci-fi touches as those stat devices, earwatches, quickboats (think: airborne buses), spray-on garments for women, the inevitable visiscreens, some truly ingenious bugging devices...and a listing of some of the atrocious crimes of the future. We are also made privy to a bizarre religious rite that Quellen is forced to attend by his galpal Judith: "social regurgitation." Without going into the yucky details, let's just say that this manner of communion would probably prove a big hit with modern-day bulimics!
"The Time Hoppers" is complexly plotted and moves at a breathless pace. It is filled with well-drawn secondary characters, and--as is the case with all great sci-fi--practically every page boasts some interesting idea, unexpected plot development, or imaginative detail. Silverberg, in this book, even manages to conflate the centuries-old legends of the Princess Caraboo and Kaspar Hauser (possible time travelers?). Quellen makes for a sympathetic and likable lead character, and the reader will cheer at his ultimate fate as the story wraps up marvelously. Finally, a time travel novel that didn't leave this reader with an aching head, despite the many paradoxes brought up. (Perhaps I will not be so leery when I dive into Silverberg's 1969 time travel novel "Up the Line"!) "The Time Hoppers" is an almost perfect novel; I could discern only one flub by the author, and that involves a hopper going back in time from 2490 to the year 2051, and reflecting that he had gone back 449 years; that should be 439 years, of course. But this mistake can easily be forgiven, as the hopper later ponders the fun he'll have thinking of 2490 with his fellow émigrés, and thus gets to deliver the novel's single most memorable line: "We’ll reminisce about the future."
(By the way, this review originally appeared on the FanLit website, an excellent destination for all fans of Robert Silverberg. )
Isaac Asimov, one of the giants of the field, has been quoted as saying "I made up my mind long ago to follow one cardinal rule in all my writing--to be clear," and Silverberg, who collaborated with Doc Ike on three occasions, has always seemed to follow that dictate as well. Expanded from his 1954 short story "Hopper," "The Time Hoppers" was released in 1967, a watershed year for Silverberg. (After editor Frederik Pohl induced Silverberg to return to writing sci-fi full-time, the author began to write with a maturity and imaginative depth not seen in his prolific work before; a more literate quality, with greater emphasis on characterization, sex, drugs and adult themes, came to the fore.) The book was originally released as a Doubleday hardcover; just one of six Silverberg sci-fi novels that year, in addition to eight "naughty bawdy" novels, six sci-fi short stories, and 11 books of nonfiction. That's over two books a month, if you're counting!
In "The Time Hoppers," the year is 2490, and the Earth has become an overpopulated, overdeveloped mess. The bulk of humanity--at least, those with a Class 10 rating and below--lives in tiny, windowless, one-room apartments with their small nuclear families. The reader meets Joseph Quellen, a Class 7 by dint of his position as a "CrimeSec" in the Secretariat of Crime, who lives in the impossibly widespread city known as Appalachia. But Quellen, despite his midlevel bureaucratic job and PRIVATE, single-room apartment, harbors a criminal secret--he is guilty of having built for himself a private abode in the heart of the Congo, which he reaches from his place in North America by using a "stat" (think of the transporters on "Star Trek," a program that in 1967 had just barely started to impress). Quellen's lot becomes even more problematic when he is given a new assignment by the unseen High Government: track down the means by which the "hoppers" have been escaping the troubled present by emigrating into the past. For the previous five years, some unknown person has enabled some 60,000 folks to flee backwards in time; the High Government wants the emigration ended, and the time travel device in its own hands. But what will happen if someone who is already in the historical records as a hopper is prohibited from going back? Wouldn't that conceivably change, alter, possibly topple all future history? And meanwhile, as Quellen prosecutes his investigation, his Class 14 brother-in-law, Norman Pomrath, decides that he is at the breaking point, and begins to look for a way to abandon his family and...hop....
Of the two dozen or so Silverberg books that I have read so far, "The Time Hoppers" is the one that reminds me most forcefully of a novel by Philip K. Dick (although it is dedicated to Michael Moorcock AND although Silverberg, of course, is a much better, more disciplined writer than Dick). As in a Dick book, here, Silverberg shows a great empathy for his "little people," for their miserable plight in an environment over which they have zero control; as in Dick's "The Simulacra," top figures at the head of the government are revealed to be (very slight spoiler ahead) fictitious constructs, and even mechanical in nature; as in so many Dick novels, recreational drug use has become not only legal, but encouraged (Norm is a devotee of the "sniffer palaces," where he inhales a hallucinogenic gas in order to escape from his troubles).
"The Time Hoppers" is also a trove of ideas that Silverberg would develop more fully in his later work: Peter Kloofman, the 132-year-old Class One governmental head, who has stayed alive only via multiple organ transplants, is but a warm-up for the Genghis II Mao IV Khan character in 1976's "Shadrach in the Furnace"; the problems of extreme overpopulation would be dealt with more fully in 1971's "The World Inside"; the idea of thrusting political prisoners into the past, only briefly touched on here, would find a fuller expression in that same year's novella "Hawksbill Station" (which first appeared in the August '67 "Galaxy" magazine), and via an even grander exposition in the 1970 "Hawksbill Station" novel. Silverberg makes his Earth of some five centuries hence a colorful one, adding such sci-fi touches as those stat devices, earwatches, quickboats (think: airborne buses), spray-on garments for women, the inevitable visiscreens, some truly ingenious bugging devices...and a listing of some of the atrocious crimes of the future. We are also made privy to a bizarre religious rite that Quellen is forced to attend by his galpal Judith: "social regurgitation." Without going into the yucky details, let's just say that this manner of communion would probably prove a big hit with modern-day bulimics!
"The Time Hoppers" is complexly plotted and moves at a breathless pace. It is filled with well-drawn secondary characters, and--as is the case with all great sci-fi--practically every page boasts some interesting idea, unexpected plot development, or imaginative detail. Silverberg, in this book, even manages to conflate the centuries-old legends of the Princess Caraboo and Kaspar Hauser (possible time travelers?). Quellen makes for a sympathetic and likable lead character, and the reader will cheer at his ultimate fate as the story wraps up marvelously. Finally, a time travel novel that didn't leave this reader with an aching head, despite the many paradoxes brought up. (Perhaps I will not be so leery when I dive into Silverberg's 1969 time travel novel "Up the Line"!) "The Time Hoppers" is an almost perfect novel; I could discern only one flub by the author, and that involves a hopper going back in time from 2490 to the year 2051, and reflecting that he had gone back 449 years; that should be 439 years, of course. But this mistake can easily be forgiven, as the hopper later ponders the fun he'll have thinking of 2490 with his fellow émigrés, and thus gets to deliver the novel's single most memorable line: "We’ll reminisce about the future."
(By the way, this review originally appeared on the FanLit website, an excellent destination for all fans of Robert Silverberg. )
October 24, 2020
Robert Silverberg's novel originated with a short story entitled "Hopper" which he had published a few years previously. In it, a 25th century bureaucrat named Quellen is tasked with finding the person who has been sending people from the underemployed population back into the past for work. In the space of a few pages the reader learns about Quellen's claustrophobia, his secret home on an African reserve, his workplace environment, and how the pressures upon him result in a dramatic, if understandable, decision.
For the novel, Silverberg expands upon his world in a number of respects. In it we are introduced to his sister and brother-in-law, both of whom are trapped in the misery of an aimless, overcrowded world. We also learn more about the government of this world, one that is focused more on self-preservation than on improving matters. We also discover how time travel became part of human history, and how this influences the search for its perpetrator. All of this exploits further the possibilities of the premise in Silverberg's story, yet in the end it is all developed to little purpose. Rather than taking the original story in different directions or elaborating on its ending, Silverberg concludes it in the exact same place as his original work. Nearly all of his additions to the story serve little purpose other than to pad out the background and fill the covers of a novel . While Silverberg's talent for recycling is commendable, it's use here results in a book that doesn't add much to the original story and ultimately feels like a waste of his talent.
For the novel, Silverberg expands upon his world in a number of respects. In it we are introduced to his sister and brother-in-law, both of whom are trapped in the misery of an aimless, overcrowded world. We also learn more about the government of this world, one that is focused more on self-preservation than on improving matters. We also discover how time travel became part of human history, and how this influences the search for its perpetrator. All of this exploits further the possibilities of the premise in Silverberg's story, yet in the end it is all developed to little purpose. Rather than taking the original story in different directions or elaborating on its ending, Silverberg concludes it in the exact same place as his original work. Nearly all of his additions to the story serve little purpose other than to pad out the background and fill the covers of a novel . While Silverberg's talent for recycling is commendable, it's use here results in a book that doesn't add much to the original story and ultimately feels like a waste of his talent.
May 19, 2014
Inconsequential and light - I enjoyed it, but will barely remember it in a few weeks.
In a world plagued by overpopulation, you need a high career rating to have one room to yourself. And empty space? Reserved for the highest levels of government. Except for Quellen, Secretariat of Crime, who has committed one himself - a secret hideaway in Africa.
For others, the only way to escape the crushing numbers of other people, unemployment, and despair, is offered by Lanoy. A one-way trip in time, to a kinder, gentler, less crowded yesterday - the period between 1979 and 2051. You can live out your life in quiet and peace. (The appearance of large numbers of time-refugees in these time periods is part of the historical records.)
It was a quick read, and definitely not deep - people have only the most surface of motivations. Compared to The Stochastic Man, this one just doesn't hold up.
And as for gender? People may rag on Robert A. Heinlein for writing hypersexual women who share many characteristics, but at least they're allowed to be competent when they're not (and while!) enjoying sex. In Silverberg, or the two books I've read so far, women have one of two roles: frumpy, angry housewife or beautiful but crazy cult member. (Here it's the Cult of Social Regurgitation, and you don't want to know more than that.)
Both are writing in the sixties - Heinlein may have issues, but give me his women any day.
In a world plagued by overpopulation, you need a high career rating to have one room to yourself. And empty space? Reserved for the highest levels of government. Except for Quellen, Secretariat of Crime, who has committed one himself - a secret hideaway in Africa.
For others, the only way to escape the crushing numbers of other people, unemployment, and despair, is offered by Lanoy. A one-way trip in time, to a kinder, gentler, less crowded yesterday - the period between 1979 and 2051. You can live out your life in quiet and peace. (The appearance of large numbers of time-refugees in these time periods is part of the historical records.)
It was a quick read, and definitely not deep - people have only the most surface of motivations. Compared to The Stochastic Man, this one just doesn't hold up.
And as for gender? People may rag on Robert A. Heinlein for writing hypersexual women who share many characteristics, but at least they're allowed to be competent when they're not (and while!) enjoying sex. In Silverberg, or the two books I've read so far, women have one of two roles: frumpy, angry housewife or beautiful but crazy cult member. (Here it's the Cult of Social Regurgitation, and you don't want to know more than that.)
Both are writing in the sixties - Heinlein may have issues, but give me his women any day.
July 30, 2017
The overcrowded 25th century has to deal with the implications of its citizens hopping back to the past to live a simpler, less crowded life. What are the implications of interfering? Mid-range Silverberg, which means it is strong on character and interesting ideas without being fully successful
August 19, 2023
A classic travel of time travel and policing to avoid paradoxes. The department of crime knows that people have been hopping back in time for many years but all the hoppers left before a certain date. As that date approaches they are trying to figure out why the flow stopped without inadvertently creating a paradox.
Pretty standard chicken and egg time travel story but it did have a interesting ending that kind of explained the lack of paradoxes.
Pretty standard chicken and egg time travel story but it did have a interesting ending that kind of explained the lack of paradoxes.
January 29, 2019
Une bonne petite série B.
May 26, 2014
‘The first sign of invasion from the future came about the year 1979, when several men in strange costumes appeared in the district of Appalachia then known as Manhattan. Records show they appeared with increasing in frequency throughout the decade, and when interrogated all ultimately admitted that they had come from the future. The pressure of repeated evidence eventually forced the people of the Twentieth Century to accept the disturbing conclusion that they were in truth being subjected to a peaceful but annoying invasion by time-travellers�
Blurb from the Belmont Tower Books 1967 paperback edition
We should establish from the outset that this is not one of Silverberg’s best works although it is interesting from a cultural and historical viewpoint.
Quellen is an investigator in a future some four hundred years hence. This is a world plagued by overpopulation, controlled by machines and one in which there is a rigid class system. Quellen is Class 7 and allowed a room of his own. People such as his sister Hedraine and her husband Norm Pomrath have to live in one room with their children. From the start we know that Quellen is involved in illegal activities since he has illicitly set up a getaway home in Africa to which he ‘stats� whenever he has free time.
People are now disappearing into the past. Historical records show that a large number of people started appearing in 1979, originating from Quellen’s time period.
Quellen has been given the task of tracking down the organisers and seizing the time device. The High Government wish to control it in order to shunt some of the excess billions of humans into the remote past.
Not long after this Quellen is stopped on his way to the food dispensary by a man who gives him a slip of paper that reads ‘Out of work? see Lanoy�
His brother-in-law, Norm Pomrath, has been given a slip also. Hedraine, his wife, has been told by a neighbour that her husband had also been given the slip of paper and had now disappeared, allegedly sent into the past.
There’s something oddly Dickian about this novel; the names of the characters, the absurd nature of the religion where celebrants have to chew and swallow a form of dough before regurgitating it into a bowl for the next person to eat.
Then there’s Lanoy himself. It is never explained where Lanoy got his time machine or where he learned to use it, much like the underground organisations in Dick novels which logistically could not exist or survive, but are there to perform a function within the novel.
There is also a certain level of sexism implicit within the text. The leaders of society are all men. There are only three women in the novel and one of them is a minor character, Pomrath’s neighbour whose husband has ‘hopped� into the past. The other two are Quellen’s sister and Julia, Quellen’s mistress. The social norm in this odd future society is that men should go out to work and women should stay home and have babies. Norm Pomrath is desperate for work but it doesn’t seem as if the idea of his wife finding a job is something that’s crossed anyone’s mind at all.
Did the author intend this as a surreal mirror of American values and attitudes of the time?
As in other Silverberg novels there is a kind of Shakespearean inevitability to things, although here he has not really worked out the causes and effects elegantly enough or given the characters space to breathe and evolve.
Blurb from the Belmont Tower Books 1967 paperback edition
We should establish from the outset that this is not one of Silverberg’s best works although it is interesting from a cultural and historical viewpoint.
Quellen is an investigator in a future some four hundred years hence. This is a world plagued by overpopulation, controlled by machines and one in which there is a rigid class system. Quellen is Class 7 and allowed a room of his own. People such as his sister Hedraine and her husband Norm Pomrath have to live in one room with their children. From the start we know that Quellen is involved in illegal activities since he has illicitly set up a getaway home in Africa to which he ‘stats� whenever he has free time.
People are now disappearing into the past. Historical records show that a large number of people started appearing in 1979, originating from Quellen’s time period.
Quellen has been given the task of tracking down the organisers and seizing the time device. The High Government wish to control it in order to shunt some of the excess billions of humans into the remote past.
Not long after this Quellen is stopped on his way to the food dispensary by a man who gives him a slip of paper that reads ‘Out of work? see Lanoy�
His brother-in-law, Norm Pomrath, has been given a slip also. Hedraine, his wife, has been told by a neighbour that her husband had also been given the slip of paper and had now disappeared, allegedly sent into the past.
There’s something oddly Dickian about this novel; the names of the characters, the absurd nature of the religion where celebrants have to chew and swallow a form of dough before regurgitating it into a bowl for the next person to eat.
Then there’s Lanoy himself. It is never explained where Lanoy got his time machine or where he learned to use it, much like the underground organisations in Dick novels which logistically could not exist or survive, but are there to perform a function within the novel.
There is also a certain level of sexism implicit within the text. The leaders of society are all men. There are only three women in the novel and one of them is a minor character, Pomrath’s neighbour whose husband has ‘hopped� into the past. The other two are Quellen’s sister and Julia, Quellen’s mistress. The social norm in this odd future society is that men should go out to work and women should stay home and have babies. Norm Pomrath is desperate for work but it doesn’t seem as if the idea of his wife finding a job is something that’s crossed anyone’s mind at all.
Did the author intend this as a surreal mirror of American values and attitudes of the time?
As in other Silverberg novels there is a kind of Shakespearean inevitability to things, although here he has not really worked out the causes and effects elegantly enough or given the characters space to breathe and evolve.
May 17, 2023
The future is massively overpopulated and disappearing citizens shouldn’t be a problem, except maybe it is. Future weirdos popping into the past also shouldn’t be a real problem except their documentation is known to the future so they’re unwilling to change their today by changing yesterday. Interesting stuff.
May 1, 2019
The other day, while I was deep in finishing up Russ' How to Suppress Women's Writing, I desperately needed to get out of the house. And so I was going to go read at Poison Girl, have some mocktails, be surrounded by people in the Houston night while it was still unmuggied. My shelf of Unpulped reads still numbers over seventy, at least, but I wanted a book that would be likely to hold my attention, a writer who was at least decent.
And so: Robert Silverberg! I've read a number of his books over the years, though I'd be hard pressed to name any title except Lord Valentine's Castle, a book I can remember nothing about. I figured The Time Hoppers, even though it had a bland name, would at least be interesting enough to pull me forward, word by word.
I didn't think at the time that my subconscious may have been having fun with me, since Silverberg plays a role in How to Suppress Women's Writing since he famously stated that James Tiptree, Jr. (then anonymous, the name a pseudonym) could be nothing but a man, Tiptree's writing was so obviously masculine. Here he is, in his own words:
"Inflamed by Tiptree’s obstinate insistence on personal obscurity, science-fictionists have indulged themselves in the wildest sort of speculation about him. His real name, it is often said, is something other than Tiptree, though no one knows what it might be. (That “Tiptree� is a pseudonym is plausible enough, but I rather hope it isn’t so. I like the name and want it to belong by birthright to the man who uses it on these stories.) It has been suggested that Tiptree is female, a theory that I find absurd, for there is to me something ineluctably masculine about Tiptree’s writing. I don’t think the novels of Jane Austen could have been written by a man nor the stories of Ernest Hemingway by a woman, and in the same way I believe the author of the James Tiptree stories is male."
You can find the whole of his introduction online. It's worth a read, if only to see that Silverberg isn't a hack. He knows his way around words. He's a good editor (praised by Russ in her book, even as she highlights his sexism-induced blindness). And I was right, in that his writing was engaging, good enough to keep me straining through dim light to make out words on non-acid-free paper browning with age.
The Time Hoppers was first published in 1967 (the paperback I have is the 1968 reprint) and, as usual with these old pulp novels, the cover blurb is a lie. This novel is not "A paradox-filled novel of crackling suspense and breathtaking adventure" unless your idea of breathtaking adventure is a cranky accountant doing his best to avoid a mountain of work. That's the general mood we're talking about here.
I'm being only the tiniest bit disingenuous. Our main character is Quellen, a future cop (future lead detective?) responsible for rooting out crime in the over-crowded, heavily-monitored society of the 25th century. And though he does his best to hang out in his illegal second home in Africa, shirking work altogether, he is tasked with unmasking the ringleader of the time hopper business, a criminal enterprise sending people fed up with their time back to one where they, hopefully, won't be as fed up.
[And they have a reason to be fed up. Because the world is so crowded, most people are forced to live together in one-room apartments with no privacy whatsoever, and no choice of who you live with unless you're married. The vast majority have no job and live off of the government dole. The air is polluted, oxygen is rationed, and what natural areas there are near cities are so polluted they're poisonous to the touch. The cities are gigantic, New York (now Appalachia) taking up the entire East Coast. Life is a misery, and everyone hates each other, and if you stay in a relationship it is only out of fear of being alone/trapped with someone else you like less.]
The problem Quellen has is that these time hoppers have been enshrined already in history, the government knowing since 1970 that people have been jumping back through time. And if that's true, if that's in the record, if it's ALREADY HAPPENED, then how do you stop it in the present. Or, more to the point, if you stop people from time hopping in the present, then will that change the past and thereby change the present, erasing the world you know and replacing it with another (all without you or anyone else having knowledge of the change). The novel isn't paradox-filled. This is the only paradox, and it's never tested. Instead, it powers the central mood of the novel, which is fatalism. People only escape their fate by traveling to the past or by having their partner time hop on them (because it's mostly men who hop, leaving their wives and children to muddle on without them).
This novel is dark. No one is likeable. However, nearly everyone is given an inner life which makes them relatable. Combined with the hellish future they live in, it is strangely easy to care about (however briefly) even Kloofman, the single leader of the world who is described almost in Dalek-like terms, unable to move on his own, all of his organs having been replaced multiple times, and so far removed from the people he governs he doesn't really see them as people anymore. And his main reason for wanting to stop the time hoppers is so that he can use the time travel mechanism himself to get rid of dissidents, but he's also the most afraid of changing the past (and so those whose hops have been recorded in the past must still be allowed to hop).
So, a good read. A good novel? Sure. I mean, it's enjoyable, it's well-constructed, it's easy to read, it's Silverberg.
But especially after reading Russ, the ways Silverberg is affected by sexism and how he fails to even think about examining his own biases (not to mention those of the world). I mean, this novel takes place five hundred years in the future and he presents working-class male/female relationships as caricatures worthy of The Honeymooners. Women don't seem to have jobs except as wives and child-rearers. Men are office drones who go to "sniff palaces" in order to escape the drudge of daily life. Bureaucrats are mainly concerned with passing responsibility to someone else.
It's not just that this future world is miserable, because Silverberg's book posits that life is miserable. That civilization is miserable. That hell, of course, is other people. And, if we're not careful, we can be those other people to ourselves.
And so: Robert Silverberg! I've read a number of his books over the years, though I'd be hard pressed to name any title except Lord Valentine's Castle, a book I can remember nothing about. I figured The Time Hoppers, even though it had a bland name, would at least be interesting enough to pull me forward, word by word.
I didn't think at the time that my subconscious may have been having fun with me, since Silverberg plays a role in How to Suppress Women's Writing since he famously stated that James Tiptree, Jr. (then anonymous, the name a pseudonym) could be nothing but a man, Tiptree's writing was so obviously masculine. Here he is, in his own words:
"Inflamed by Tiptree’s obstinate insistence on personal obscurity, science-fictionists have indulged themselves in the wildest sort of speculation about him. His real name, it is often said, is something other than Tiptree, though no one knows what it might be. (That “Tiptree� is a pseudonym is plausible enough, but I rather hope it isn’t so. I like the name and want it to belong by birthright to the man who uses it on these stories.) It has been suggested that Tiptree is female, a theory that I find absurd, for there is to me something ineluctably masculine about Tiptree’s writing. I don’t think the novels of Jane Austen could have been written by a man nor the stories of Ernest Hemingway by a woman, and in the same way I believe the author of the James Tiptree stories is male."
You can find the whole of his introduction online. It's worth a read, if only to see that Silverberg isn't a hack. He knows his way around words. He's a good editor (praised by Russ in her book, even as she highlights his sexism-induced blindness). And I was right, in that his writing was engaging, good enough to keep me straining through dim light to make out words on non-acid-free paper browning with age.
The Time Hoppers was first published in 1967 (the paperback I have is the 1968 reprint) and, as usual with these old pulp novels, the cover blurb is a lie. This novel is not "A paradox-filled novel of crackling suspense and breathtaking adventure" unless your idea of breathtaking adventure is a cranky accountant doing his best to avoid a mountain of work. That's the general mood we're talking about here.
I'm being only the tiniest bit disingenuous. Our main character is Quellen, a future cop (future lead detective?) responsible for rooting out crime in the over-crowded, heavily-monitored society of the 25th century. And though he does his best to hang out in his illegal second home in Africa, shirking work altogether, he is tasked with unmasking the ringleader of the time hopper business, a criminal enterprise sending people fed up with their time back to one where they, hopefully, won't be as fed up.
[And they have a reason to be fed up. Because the world is so crowded, most people are forced to live together in one-room apartments with no privacy whatsoever, and no choice of who you live with unless you're married. The vast majority have no job and live off of the government dole. The air is polluted, oxygen is rationed, and what natural areas there are near cities are so polluted they're poisonous to the touch. The cities are gigantic, New York (now Appalachia) taking up the entire East Coast. Life is a misery, and everyone hates each other, and if you stay in a relationship it is only out of fear of being alone/trapped with someone else you like less.]
The problem Quellen has is that these time hoppers have been enshrined already in history, the government knowing since 1970 that people have been jumping back through time. And if that's true, if that's in the record, if it's ALREADY HAPPENED, then how do you stop it in the present. Or, more to the point, if you stop people from time hopping in the present, then will that change the past and thereby change the present, erasing the world you know and replacing it with another (all without you or anyone else having knowledge of the change). The novel isn't paradox-filled. This is the only paradox, and it's never tested. Instead, it powers the central mood of the novel, which is fatalism. People only escape their fate by traveling to the past or by having their partner time hop on them (because it's mostly men who hop, leaving their wives and children to muddle on without them).
This novel is dark. No one is likeable. However, nearly everyone is given an inner life which makes them relatable. Combined with the hellish future they live in, it is strangely easy to care about (however briefly) even Kloofman, the single leader of the world who is described almost in Dalek-like terms, unable to move on his own, all of his organs having been replaced multiple times, and so far removed from the people he governs he doesn't really see them as people anymore. And his main reason for wanting to stop the time hoppers is so that he can use the time travel mechanism himself to get rid of dissidents, but he's also the most afraid of changing the past (and so those whose hops have been recorded in the past must still be allowed to hop).
So, a good read. A good novel? Sure. I mean, it's enjoyable, it's well-constructed, it's easy to read, it's Silverberg.
But especially after reading Russ, the ways Silverberg is affected by sexism and how he fails to even think about examining his own biases (not to mention those of the world). I mean, this novel takes place five hundred years in the future and he presents working-class male/female relationships as caricatures worthy of The Honeymooners. Women don't seem to have jobs except as wives and child-rearers. Men are office drones who go to "sniff palaces" in order to escape the drudge of daily life. Bureaucrats are mainly concerned with passing responsibility to someone else.
It's not just that this future world is miserable, because Silverberg's book posits that life is miserable. That civilization is miserable. That hell, of course, is other people. And, if we're not careful, we can be those other people to ourselves.
March 21, 2020
Robert Silverberg is not well known and yet he is one of the greatest authors of SF. I discovered him through his work: "the World Inside", a story that takes place in the same framework as that of the time hoppers (25th century, overpopulated earth, confined habitations etc...) and that I nevertheless appreciated in spite of some indigestions. But here we are following a central character named Quellen, a kind of Blade Runner who works for the government police. By the way, the society is subdivided into classes, the most important and imposing of which is the 1st. I liked the author's way of painting this distant future, high buildings, strats, abusive confinements because of overpopulation and especially a totalitarian government: the World is ruled and governed by 2 beings (or maybe only one?)
The theme here is about space-time travel and its influence on the historical trend. Although the characters are fascinating, the book is a little bit disappointing. We follow the adventures of this Quellen and his patrol, whose goal is to stop these journeys to earlier ages at all costs, especially because planetary leaders feel threatened and see in this time machine a particular danger.
Knowing beforehand that the S-F category essentially tries to convey a certain message. It was difficult for me to understand the author's point, despite his sublime way of describing this nauseating future.
The theme here is about space-time travel and its influence on the historical trend. Although the characters are fascinating, the book is a little bit disappointing. We follow the adventures of this Quellen and his patrol, whose goal is to stop these journeys to earlier ages at all costs, especially because planetary leaders feel threatened and see in this time machine a particular danger.
Knowing beforehand that the S-F category essentially tries to convey a certain message. It was difficult for me to understand the author's point, despite his sublime way of describing this nauseating future.
January 13, 2019
In the overpopulated world of the 25th century, Crime-Sec Quellen struggles for space, oxygen, and a higher class rating; at least he is a Class Seven, with his own personal apartment. He's being blackmailed by his one of his underlings for having a secret villa in Africa on Class Two land, and hands over 1/3 of his paycheck as the price of silence.
His perpetually unemployed brother-in-law, Norm Pomrath, is a Class Fourteen; he lives in a one-room apartment with his wife and children, toilet, non-water shower, food, and beds in that same room. He has only worked twenty-five weeks in his entire life, gets by through sniffing hallucinogenic drugs, and is being driven insane by the crushing overpopulation, lack of space, lack of dignity, lack of a job, and having basically no reason to live.
But someone is taking men like Pomrath and sending them on a one-way time trip to the greener pastures of the past. It is Quellen's job to find the man sending the time-hoppers, but he is forbidden from stopping any of them from jumping because of impact it might have on the time-line.
His perpetually unemployed brother-in-law, Norm Pomrath, is a Class Fourteen; he lives in a one-room apartment with his wife and children, toilet, non-water shower, food, and beds in that same room. He has only worked twenty-five weeks in his entire life, gets by through sniffing hallucinogenic drugs, and is being driven insane by the crushing overpopulation, lack of space, lack of dignity, lack of a job, and having basically no reason to live.
But someone is taking men like Pomrath and sending them on a one-way time trip to the greener pastures of the past. It is Quellen's job to find the man sending the time-hoppers, but he is forbidden from stopping any of them from jumping because of impact it might have on the time-line.
July 26, 2012
An enjoyable but ultimately unmemorable time-travel romp that is a fun read for the morning commute. Brought me back to a time when an SF novel was a fraction of the size of many current tomes, and could be read in one sitting. Definitely dated,from a time when dystopian overpopulation novels were popular. Not on the level of Harrison's Make Room, Make Room, but reminds this reader of a particular moment in Philip K Dick's Counter-Clock World-- the Communal Regurgitation sequence was certainly unexpected.
August 21, 2019
I should re-read it, the magical thinking and desire to escape to an earlier, less complicated era is like a disease for the over 50s in 2019, witness Brexit and Trump.
September 18, 2024
Since about June, I've been exploring science fiction novels from the late '50s through to the end of the '60s. I chose 12 books, all less than 200 pages and I've managed to read and enjoy 7 so far. by , originally published in 1967 has been my favorite thus far.
The story is set in Appalachia (it takes up most of the eastern seaboard) in the year 2490. The Story follows Quellen, a level 7 (the population is rated from 1 (the elite and there seems to be only one of those left) down to the lowest levels, the Prolets. So Quellen is fairly high and works for CrimeSec. Quellen is bored with his life, the over-crowding, his work and somehow has managed to cheat the system and acquired himself a property in Africa where he can hide out in peace and solitude. (He travels there by some sort of transfer beam)
Quellen is being blackmailed by one of his staff, a level 8, Brogg, to keep his African hideaway quiet. Brogg is satisfied with a monthly payment as it allows him to satisfy his curiosity of the ancient Romans. CrimeSec is tasked with hunting down the organization that does Time Hopping. People from 2490 are traveling into the past (As Capt. Janeway would say; don't even get me started on temporal paradoxes) Quellen discovers that one citizen is going to hop in two weeks and he passes it up the chain. He worries that if they arrest Mortenson it might impact the future (er, the present... see what I mean about paradoxes!) but he wants the upper levels to make the decision.
As well, Quellen's brother-in-law, Norman Pomrath, is frustrated because he can't get a job. He's taking drugs and gets an offer to time hop. His wife, Quellen's sister, asks Quellen to try and stop him.
So we've got various investigations to try and find who is running the Time hopping business and we've got CrimeSec people trying to work things out to their own advantage. I'm probably simplifying this a bit but it's all very fascinating and a neat concept. The future is interesting, the characters are well-defined for a relatively short story and it's all resolved very nicely. I enjoyed this very much. Neat. (4.5 stars)
The story is set in Appalachia (it takes up most of the eastern seaboard) in the year 2490. The Story follows Quellen, a level 7 (the population is rated from 1 (the elite and there seems to be only one of those left) down to the lowest levels, the Prolets. So Quellen is fairly high and works for CrimeSec. Quellen is bored with his life, the over-crowding, his work and somehow has managed to cheat the system and acquired himself a property in Africa where he can hide out in peace and solitude. (He travels there by some sort of transfer beam)
Quellen is being blackmailed by one of his staff, a level 8, Brogg, to keep his African hideaway quiet. Brogg is satisfied with a monthly payment as it allows him to satisfy his curiosity of the ancient Romans. CrimeSec is tasked with hunting down the organization that does Time Hopping. People from 2490 are traveling into the past (As Capt. Janeway would say; don't even get me started on temporal paradoxes) Quellen discovers that one citizen is going to hop in two weeks and he passes it up the chain. He worries that if they arrest Mortenson it might impact the future (er, the present... see what I mean about paradoxes!) but he wants the upper levels to make the decision.
As well, Quellen's brother-in-law, Norman Pomrath, is frustrated because he can't get a job. He's taking drugs and gets an offer to time hop. His wife, Quellen's sister, asks Quellen to try and stop him.
So we've got various investigations to try and find who is running the Time hopping business and we've got CrimeSec people trying to work things out to their own advantage. I'm probably simplifying this a bit but it's all very fascinating and a neat concept. The future is interesting, the characters are well-defined for a relatively short story and it's all resolved very nicely. I enjoyed this very much. Neat. (4.5 stars)
February 20, 2022
Scorrevole.
La prima opera che leggo di Silverberg, e mi riservo la possibilità di aver iniziato da quella sbagliata.
"Quellen, guarda il passato", titolo molto più evocativo dell'originale "The time hoppers", è un romanzo ambientato in un lontano futuro (ancora più lontano negli anni in cui era stato scritto) dove il mondo è dominato da un governo dispotico, l'umanità è divisa in classi e il lavoro è sempre meno. Una serie di persone sta iniziando a sparire, andando secoli nel passato con viaggi nel tempo clandestini e divenendo coloro che sono passati alla storia come "saltatori".
Il nostro protagonista, Joseph Quellen, è un funzionario statale chiamato a indagare e a risolvere la situazione, evitando di cambiare la storia nel farlo.
Al netto della mia incapacità di riassumere, questa idea sulla carta è indubbiamente interessante. Non lo è nell'opera, perché non è approfondita.
Non è neanche trattata superficialmente, però. Semplicemente, "Quellen, guarda il passato" racconta una storia: una storia che inizia, prosegue e si conclude.
Non fa grandi errori, ma non tratta neanche grandi argomenti e non esplora l'universo che costruisce.
Questo non significa che la lettura sia spiacevole, tutt'altro.
Io, personalmente, ho letto le sue 180 pagine in due giorni. E le avrei lette in uno solo, non avessi iniziato a sera tarda e mi fossi addormentato sul divano.
Semplicemente, c'è un motivo se "La fine dell'Eternità " di Asimov è considerato uno, se non il più grande romanzo sul viaggio nel tempo, mentre questo no.
La prima opera che leggo di Silverberg, e mi riservo la possibilità di aver iniziato da quella sbagliata.
"Quellen, guarda il passato", titolo molto più evocativo dell'originale "The time hoppers", è un romanzo ambientato in un lontano futuro (ancora più lontano negli anni in cui era stato scritto) dove il mondo è dominato da un governo dispotico, l'umanità è divisa in classi e il lavoro è sempre meno. Una serie di persone sta iniziando a sparire, andando secoli nel passato con viaggi nel tempo clandestini e divenendo coloro che sono passati alla storia come "saltatori".
Il nostro protagonista, Joseph Quellen, è un funzionario statale chiamato a indagare e a risolvere la situazione, evitando di cambiare la storia nel farlo.
Al netto della mia incapacità di riassumere, questa idea sulla carta è indubbiamente interessante. Non lo è nell'opera, perché non è approfondita.
Non è neanche trattata superficialmente, però. Semplicemente, "Quellen, guarda il passato" racconta una storia: una storia che inizia, prosegue e si conclude.
Non fa grandi errori, ma non tratta neanche grandi argomenti e non esplora l'universo che costruisce.
Questo non significa che la lettura sia spiacevole, tutt'altro.
Io, personalmente, ho letto le sue 180 pagine in due giorni. E le avrei lette in uno solo, non avessi iniziato a sera tarda e mi fossi addormentato sul divano.
Semplicemente, c'è un motivo se "La fine dell'Eternità " di Asimov è considerato uno, se non il più grande romanzo sul viaggio nel tempo, mentre questo no.
November 21, 2023
I picked up this book randomly at a used bookstore. The premise seemed interesting and I wanted to see how an author in the 60s predicted the future.
I am giving this 3 stars because it wasn’t terrible but could have been so much better. I was 5 pages from the end still not knowing where this was going and it ended so abruptly.
New characters and their points of view sprung up more than halfway through the book like he was writing in a stream of consciousness and many characters never came back or got a conclusion.
What happened to Helaine and the kids? Norm’s scheme? Brogg with the Romans? Kloofman and Lanoy? I can use my imagination, sure, but I ended the book feeling no sense of completion.
Great job Quellen going back to somewhere in precolonial America and I’m happy an indigenous man welcomed him I guess. How neat would it have been if he or Norm gave a name that we know affected the future as they alluded to SO MANY TIMES! There was so much discussion of how going into the past could affect the future but that notion could have been played with more.
I enjoyed parts of it, but it just felt like an incomplete and not fully fleshed out book. Maybe it’s the early days of science fiction and this is just what they could come up with, but I had more hope for this one!
Still an interesting read and it’s pretty short so I’d still recommend it for sci-fi literary history.
I am giving this 3 stars because it wasn’t terrible but could have been so much better. I was 5 pages from the end still not knowing where this was going and it ended so abruptly.
New characters and their points of view sprung up more than halfway through the book like he was writing in a stream of consciousness and many characters never came back or got a conclusion.
What happened to Helaine and the kids? Norm’s scheme? Brogg with the Romans? Kloofman and Lanoy? I can use my imagination, sure, but I ended the book feeling no sense of completion.
Great job Quellen going back to somewhere in precolonial America and I’m happy an indigenous man welcomed him I guess. How neat would it have been if he or Norm gave a name that we know affected the future as they alluded to SO MANY TIMES! There was so much discussion of how going into the past could affect the future but that notion could have been played with more.
I enjoyed parts of it, but it just felt like an incomplete and not fully fleshed out book. Maybe it’s the early days of science fiction and this is just what they could come up with, but I had more hope for this one!
Still an interesting read and it’s pretty short so I’d still recommend it for sci-fi literary history.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 23, 2020
Ever seen those videos where people claimed that time-travellers exist because some are found in pictures or in old videos? Well, in The Time Hoppers by Robert Silverberg, those people are called ‘Hoppers�. They travelled back in time and was documented.
A man called Joe (what a great name) Quellen is a bureaucrat living as a person in the higher classes of the classist society; he is assigned to investigate these Hoppers. Because the world they live today (which is the 25th century) is so bad what with the one world government, people want to go back in time as it gives them a better quality of life. Everyone wants that, but to be honest, thinking about it to our 21st century, would you like to travel back in time (when it’s possible) or your life is as good as it is now that you don’t want to go back?
A man called Joe (what a great name) Quellen is a bureaucrat living as a person in the higher classes of the classist society; he is assigned to investigate these Hoppers. Because the world they live today (which is the 25th century) is so bad what with the one world government, people want to go back in time as it gives them a better quality of life. Everyone wants that, but to be honest, thinking about it to our 21st century, would you like to travel back in time (when it’s possible) or your life is as good as it is now that you don’t want to go back?
June 4, 2020
Full review:
"For me Robert Silverberg has finally lost his aura. I knew it would happen eventually if I delved into his lesser read 60s works � but I’d been impressed recently with a string of his best (Thorns, Downward to the Earth, The World Inside) which created the aforementioned aura. I believe in the demystification of an author (for nebulous reasons) however painful the reader’s experience might be � at least The Time Hoppers (1967) clocks in at a mere 182 pages.
The Time Hoppers takes place in an overpopulated [...]"
"For me Robert Silverberg has finally lost his aura. I knew it would happen eventually if I delved into his lesser read 60s works � but I’d been impressed recently with a string of his best (Thorns, Downward to the Earth, The World Inside) which created the aforementioned aura. I believe in the demystification of an author (for nebulous reasons) however painful the reader’s experience might be � at least The Time Hoppers (1967) clocks in at a mere 182 pages.
The Time Hoppers takes place in an overpopulated [...]"
February 22, 2021
On the plus side, it's a quick read that has some interesting ideas. My biggest complaint is that both the world and the characters are entirely joyless and unlikable. I have no problem with the idea of rigidly class-based dystopian future (seems like that's where we're headed), or characters that are miserable but likable. But there has to be some snippet or joy or likability or redemption or hope.
Maybe I was meant to relate to Quellen, to be cheering for him? If so, it didn't work for me. Throughout the book, I was curious about what was going to happen, but I didn't really care about it, because I didn't care much about any of the characters.
Maybe I was meant to relate to Quellen, to be cheering for him? If so, it didn't work for me. Throughout the book, I was curious about what was going to happen, but I didn't really care about it, because I didn't care much about any of the characters.
January 17, 2025
Crimesec Joe Quellen, an investigator with the police force in the 25th century, is tasked with tracking down an elusive criminal called Lanoy, who has invented a time travel machine. Supreme leader Kloofman is worried that the past may be changed and his status threatened, but also he wants control of the machine so that he can send criminals back into the distant past. As the police force closes in on Lanoy, Quellen begins to question his mission and consider how the situation might best benefit him. A great little classic SF story from 1967. Dated of course, but still fun and an interesting conclusion.
July 2, 2023
Holy crap. That is some bad writing. No wonder sci-fi has such a bad reputation. How did he become a Grand Master? It's not the technical aspects. It's the plot. They're trying to figure out how to stop the hoppers. Hoppers are people jumping back in time.And then Quellen gets the genius idea. Well, there's a record of the time hoppers from many years ago, and the people who hopped gave their name, so ... Wait a minute! The hopper's name is in the record and he hasn't jumped yet? I'll just go get him and then I can stop it from happening. What a fucking genius!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 13, 2017
In the 25th century, time travel has been a known phenomenon for centuries � ever since the late 20th century, when the first ‘time hoppers� began appearing. Refugees from a distant future, seeking a new life. But now the period from whence they came has arrived, and in a few months, according to historical record, they’re going to abruptly stop travelling back.
I picked up The Time Hoppers in a charity shop expecting some vintage pulp sci-fi, and I wasn’t disappointed. There’s nothing startlingly original about it, but there’s some interesting ideas and some pretty cool imagery.
The world of the 25th century � overcrowded, organised, wildly unequal � is very well sketched. Some of the most interesting passages are the discussions of what would happen if all actual, practical problems in the world � starvation, illness � were defeated, leaving in their place not a utopia but an endless, exhausting, tedium. What drives the hoppers isn’t desperation so much as boredom.
Unfortunately, the central time travel aspect of the book isn’t as strong or as interesting as I’d have liked. The Time Hoppers flirts with the potential consequences of interfering with a know hopper, but ultimately the reader knows this will never happen and that the recorded history of the novel will not be altered. The ending, in which all the central characters, one by one, turn hopper, feels fairly inevitable.
But I found it, in its own way, pleasantly and surprisingly uplifting. The final sequence, traveling back to pre-colonial Appalachia, is a touching and highly effective ending.
The Time Hoppers kept me entertained and gave me some interesting sci-fi ideas to mull over, at least for a couple of days. A good read.
I picked up The Time Hoppers in a charity shop expecting some vintage pulp sci-fi, and I wasn’t disappointed. There’s nothing startlingly original about it, but there’s some interesting ideas and some pretty cool imagery.
The world of the 25th century � overcrowded, organised, wildly unequal � is very well sketched. Some of the most interesting passages are the discussions of what would happen if all actual, practical problems in the world � starvation, illness � were defeated, leaving in their place not a utopia but an endless, exhausting, tedium. What drives the hoppers isn’t desperation so much as boredom.
Unfortunately, the central time travel aspect of the book isn’t as strong or as interesting as I’d have liked. The Time Hoppers flirts with the potential consequences of interfering with a know hopper, but ultimately the reader knows this will never happen and that the recorded history of the novel will not be altered. The ending, in which all the central characters, one by one, turn hopper, feels fairly inevitable.
But I found it, in its own way, pleasantly and surprisingly uplifting. The final sequence, traveling back to pre-colonial Appalachia, is a touching and highly effective ending.
The Time Hoppers kept me entertained and gave me some interesting sci-fi ideas to mull over, at least for a couple of days. A good read.
June 6, 2018
Solo due parole: Rigurgito sociale.
December 29, 2018
CW: sex, nudity
January 27, 2019
Interesting premise and playful, but not memorable.
May 17, 2019
ÄŒtivá, i když celkem pÅ™edvÃdatelná klasická sci-fi.
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