The Year of the quiet Sun

Time travel ranks as the most difficult of science fiction genres. Though there are numerous stories featuring characters voyaging into the past to change history or venturing into the future to see what will become of humanity, most break down on various points of logic. As a result, in spite of

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the numerous novels, short stories, movies, and television series which incorporate time travel into the plot, there are only a few in which it is done well enough to deserve to be remembered.

Wilson Tucker’s novel ranks among the few in this category. In it, a demographer and biblical scholar is recruited to join a government team surveying the future. As they do so, they witness a deteriorating world torn apart by racial and political strife thanks to weak and egotistical leaders. Here Tucker establishes time travel using a series of consistent rules that work very effectively, allowing him to focus on the plot and characters. These are the true strengths of the novel, for while the future he extrapolates seems a dated product of its times thanks to the luxury of hindsight, it is just the background for a poignant inquiry into the fate of society as seen through the lives of five very different people. This results in a thoughtful tale that is a must-read for any fan of science fiction, one that demonstrates how best to tell a time travel story that works.

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My reactions upon reading this book in 1990 -- with a huge spoiler.

This is one of those minor sf classics that has not aged well. (It did win the John W. Campbell Memorial Award.).

I’m sure that, in 1970, a future of race war and conflict with China leading to apocalypse seemed imminently

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plausible. It seems very ... quaint now, a charmingly naive nightmare of childhood.

To be sure, the novel does have some points of interest: the tone is lonely and bleak, the time travel mechanism is rather novel, Tucker’s contention that the Book of Revelations is an example of Hebrew ‘biblical fiction”, the poignant last encounter between Brian Chaney and Kathryn van Hise (though their romance and the triangle of them and Arthur Saltus is rather dopey and hackneyed).

The book is almost worth reading for an oblique refernce to Ronald Reagan. He is described as that “actor” who lost in a landslide presidential election in 1980 -- the year Reagan won in a landslide.

However, this book commits a monumental literary sin, a colossal cheap shot ending. We find out that our protagonist, Brian Chaney, is black just like the “Ramjets” who, in collusion with China, brought America down. Now the white folk who survived are terrified of him. To withhold, purely for literary shock, an obvious fact which is not concealed for any logical reason and would have been evident if this story were, for instance, a movie, is a massive, unconvincing contrivance.

I think I know why he did it. Given a tale of racial war, Tucker probably wants us to question are values of race. Here is a character treated well all throughout the book by the other characters. He is intelligent, smart, not sexually perverted. At the end, others of the future see him as a monster. It still doesn’t work though.

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[Minor Spoilers]

Year of the Quiet Sun by Wilson Tucker is a sci fi adventure that unfortunately didn’t really get going until page 75 or so! The characterization was slow and yet created an intriguing narrator, Brian Chaney, an archeologist of sorts who is controversial (yeah, a controversial

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archeologist, go figure) who is brought in as part of a special team to travel through time.

Plots & Characters:

Except for Brian and Kathryn (one of the people in charge of this time travel project), it’s hard to care for the rest. We don’t really know much about the rest of the team except in a superficial way. And the political scene is vague as well. We spend pages on the Congressional Record and other statistics. Sigh.

Many pages are spent meeting his military buds on the team, the lovely Kathryn and how corrupt the government is, its current secrets and what’s going on in the Asian war theater. Apparently Tucker is predicting what if Vietnam continued and how the president and Congress are heading towards corruption.

That’s fine, I mean authors have used science fiction as a back drop for their own theories be they political or whatever. I was not expecting a race war to occur somewhere in Chicago! The men go forward in time two years and see things are getting bad: riots, a takeover of Chicago by the poor and desperate, and a president who cares more about re-election and has a major ego problem.

Bottom Line:

The ending was disappointing. I was expecting Brian to come through but that did not really happen. There were a few surprises regarding Brian that helped save it for me. But would it not have been cool to have him return to the present, stop the riots and the insane government and save the day?

Oh well!

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Good story, interesting revelation towards the end.

Brian Chaney, a Dead Sea Scrolls scholar and think-tank thinker, finds himself volunteered, along with two other men plucked from military ranks, for a government-funded mission to test a Time Displacement Vehicle. Their first field study is an order from the president to go ahead two years to

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discover whether he wins re-election (yoicks), and, well, they find so much more than that.
Ooof, this one was surprisingly good. And disturbingly relevant. There are a couple of really good twists sprinkled in for good measure, too. Definitely recommended.

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Failed to grab me. Seemed caught up in Futurist visions of the time.