Status
Available
Call number
Publication
Riverdale, NY : Baen Pub. Enterprises, 2000.
Description
Fiction. Science Fiction. HTML: Andre Norton weaves another spellbinding science fiction tale that takes place in multiple layers of time and during different periods of history. If it is possible to conquer space, then perhaps one can also conquer time. To test this theory Ross Murdock finds him¬self transplanted to the North Pole to participate in a top secret project. It is suspected that Russian scientists have discovered how to transport themselves back to prehistoric times in order to learn long forgotten secrets. A convicted criminal in his own time period, Ross becomes a volunteer in the government program that hopes to beat the Russians to the discovery of these scientific secrets. Can time travel be artificially created? Can people from different time periods be brought forward from the past through the use of technology? Perhaps the real question is, can they return.… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member bragan
Andre Norton was a very prolific writer, and I read a lot of her novels in my youth, but I hadn't revisited her in many years. This volume consists of the first two books in her Time Traders series, SF adventure stories written in the 1950s. I'm fairly sure I'd read both of them before, but I
The first installment is The Time Traders, in which it's the 21st century, time travel has recently been invented, and the Russians have been showing up with some surprisingly advanced pieces of technology. Which, since you can't time travel into your own future, they must somehow have been getting from the past. So US time agents have been sent back to various periods, trying to figure out what the Russians have found, and when.
It's a good premise (if rather dated in its cold-war sensibilities), but I felt the story really never lived up to it. The problem is that even if you're happy to accept time travel as a concept (which I am), the plot is still full of details that are utterly unconvincing. It could still have been interesting if the societies of prehistoric Britain that the time agents infiltrate for their mission had been really brought to life, but they're not. There are complexities there that are hinted at a little, but they're never delved into. So even though it's readable enough and there are some not-bad action scenes, this one just never held my attention all that well.
In second novel, Galactic Derelict, the time agents find a crashed spaceship in the past, and, after being brought forward into the present, it takes off with them on it. I enjoyed this one a lot more than the first one. Once you get past the beginning, in which a completely random guy is brought in on a secret mission and told all about it just because he happens to stumble across it, this installment doesn't have the same plot difficulties and implausibilities the first one did. Maybe because it doesn't really have all that much of a plot, but I was mostly okay with that. Also, the alien planets that our protagonists end up on really aren't fleshed out any better than the bronze-age civilization of the first novel, but in this case it feels like more of a feature then a bug, as we're supposed to only be getting little glimpses of places that are intended to be mysterious. Not that any of it was super-exciting, but there was something at least a little pleasantly nostalgic about revisiting this kind of old-fashioned story I used to enjoy as a kid.
Although it may be old-fashioned in a slightly less pleasant way, too. Because the POV character in this one is an Apache. The way he's written is actually really well-meaning and pretty good for the 1950s, I guess. Norton is clearly actively trying to de-exoticize the guy for readers who are mostly familiar with Native Americans from 50s TV Westerns, while still honoring his heritage. But what was good for the 1950s is still not exactly up to 21st century standards of sensitivity and cluefulness when writing about other cultures, especially when you also factor in some unrelated comments about "civilized" vs "primitive" people. I found it didn't bother me enough that I couldn't shrug it off easily, but then, Native American stereotypes aren't personal for me, so other readers' mileage may vary.
Rating: I'm going to give it a perhaps overly generous 3/5, mostly on the strength of Galactic Derelict and the nostalgic appeal it had for my inner 12-year old.
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didn't remember much of anything about them, and I thought it would be interesting to see what I thought of them now.The first installment is The Time Traders, in which it's the 21st century, time travel has recently been invented, and the Russians have been showing up with some surprisingly advanced pieces of technology. Which, since you can't time travel into your own future, they must somehow have been getting from the past. So US time agents have been sent back to various periods, trying to figure out what the Russians have found, and when.
It's a good premise (if rather dated in its cold-war sensibilities), but I felt the story really never lived up to it. The problem is that even if you're happy to accept time travel as a concept (which I am), the plot is still full of details that are utterly unconvincing. It could still have been interesting if the societies of prehistoric Britain that the time agents infiltrate for their mission had been really brought to life, but they're not. There are complexities there that are hinted at a little, but they're never delved into. So even though it's readable enough and there are some not-bad action scenes, this one just never held my attention all that well.
In second novel, Galactic Derelict, the time agents find a crashed spaceship in the past, and, after being brought forward into the present, it takes off with them on it. I enjoyed this one a lot more than the first one. Once you get past the beginning, in which a completely random guy is brought in on a secret mission and told all about it just because he happens to stumble across it, this installment doesn't have the same plot difficulties and implausibilities the first one did. Maybe because it doesn't really have all that much of a plot, but I was mostly okay with that. Also, the alien planets that our protagonists end up on really aren't fleshed out any better than the bronze-age civilization of the first novel, but in this case it feels like more of a feature then a bug, as we're supposed to only be getting little glimpses of places that are intended to be mysterious. Not that any of it was super-exciting, but there was something at least a little pleasantly nostalgic about revisiting this kind of old-fashioned story I used to enjoy as a kid.
Although it may be old-fashioned in a slightly less pleasant way, too. Because the POV character in this one is an Apache. The way he's written is actually really well-meaning and pretty good for the 1950s, I guess. Norton is clearly actively trying to de-exoticize the guy for readers who are mostly familiar with Native Americans from 50s TV Westerns, while still honoring his heritage. But what was good for the 1950s is still not exactly up to 21st century standards of sensitivity and cluefulness when writing about other cultures, especially when you also factor in some unrelated comments about "civilized" vs "primitive" people. I found it didn't bother me enough that I couldn't shrug it off easily, but then, Native American stereotypes aren't personal for me, so other readers' mileage may vary.
Rating: I'm going to give it a perhaps overly generous 3/5, mostly on the strength of Galactic Derelict and the nostalgic appeal it had for my inner 12-year old.
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LibraryThing member leslie.98
5 April 2020: "The Time Traders" review
I enjoyed the fast paced action & the main character, Ross Murdock, a criminal loner who "volunteered" for Operation Retrograde as an alternative to the new penal 'treatment' (of a type left unspecified but which I assume was some sort of mind altering
I enjoyed the fast paced action & the main character, Ross Murdock, a criminal loner who "volunteered" for Operation Retrograde as an alternative to the new penal 'treatment' (of a type left unspecified but which I assume was some sort of mind altering
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treatment). However, certain aspects of the plot were dated - the U.S.'s 'greatest adversary' is (of course) Russia. And the science of the time travel is strictly left alone - no explanations about how this technology worked, not even vague ones. Show Less
LibraryThing member LisCarey
This book is an omnibus of Norton's first two Time Traders books, The Time Traders, and Galactic Derelict.
In The Time Traders, Ross Murdock, a young man and a minor criminal, who has taken some advantage of the services offered by the New York Public Library, is caught one more time. This time, he
He's not quite so sure when he's loaded into a very unusual aircraft, and taken to the arctic.
The artic isn't the final destination, though. He's going someplace else, once he gets some training. Well, a lot of training. Self-defense, including the use of bronze knives, boy and arrow, spears. Languages he's never heard of. Bronze Age people called the Beaker People. He's going to travel through time, looking for high tech the Russians have apparently found by traveling into the past. But how could Earth have had a civilization, so deep in the past that no trace of it has been found yet, that's so far ahead of 21st century Earth? (I will note here that what we do see of Norton's 21st century, concocted in the 1950s, doesn't in fact clash much with our 21st century.)
In Galactic Derelict, Ross is now an experienced time agent, and he's found the answers to some of the questions about where that ancient high tech came from. Yes, it came from alien ships that crashed on Earth--twelve to fifteen thousand years ago. They need to find at least one in American territory--and maybe they have. It's in the American west, and the evidence they have says that yes, it crashed at the time the Folsom people were hunting mammoths and giant sloths. Ross Murdock, his guide and partner from his trip to the Bronze Age, Gordon Ashe, are preparing to go back and look.
While they're preparing, Travis Fox, a young Apache man with an interest in archaeology and now working on his brother's ranch, accidentally wanders into their staging area. He's seen too much to just let go, but a quick check into his background reveals he might be a good recruit. Travis decides to take the chance, though he doesn't entirely believe what they're telling him.
They go back, encounter scary animals, successfully avoid actual contact with the Folsom people, and find the derelict ship they're looking for--except it's not a derelict. It's intact, but the crew are all dead, for no obvious reason. They don't have Russians to cope with here, and they set to work preparing to move the ship to the 21s century. A major volcanic eruption starts when they're just about ready--and the eruption and accompanying earthquake trigger the ship's engines, That happens at just about the same moment the time transfer is started. They may have made it to the 21st century, but they're also headed for whatever destination the dead pilot had logged into the ship's computer.
They're headed into hyperspace, and they don't know what their destination is. The involuntary crew is Ashe, Fox, Murdock, and a tech named Renfry, who has been working on figuring out the controls of the ship. He hasn't gotten far, and they have no idea where they'd be if they exited hyperspace before reaching their destination. They're in for quite an adventure, with no idea whether they'll be able to get home afterward. And while it seems unlikely that the civilization that made the ship they're on still exists, they can't know for sure.
I was a little worried when I started reading, because I remember these books with great fondness, and too many fondly remembered books from that era don't stand up well to rereading. I was surprised, relieved, delighted. At this point, Norton was still avoiding certain issues by not including women as major characters, but the ones we do meet, in the Bronze Age, are intelligent, strong, respected members of their tribes. That the USSR collapsed and then eventually Russia started getting aggressively expansionist with its neighbors, is almost a throwaway, and yet surprisingly accurate.
The characterization is good, and satisfying. I don't know if Native Americans would find Travis Fox and what he has to say about his own culture to be really satisfying, but it did at least feel respectful. Good plotting, good pacing, and thoroughly enjoyable.
Recommended.
I bought this book.
In The Time Traders, Ross Murdock, a young man and a minor criminal, who has taken some advantage of the services offered by the New York Public Library, is caught one more time. This time, he
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gets a judge with a reputation for harsh sentences. He has a little talk with a Major Kelgarries, and is offered a choice between "rehab," and ?joining the Major's project, which is not explained. "Rehab" isn't explained, either, but Murdock knows about it, and quickly decides that the unknown project is a better bet.He's not quite so sure when he's loaded into a very unusual aircraft, and taken to the arctic.
The artic isn't the final destination, though. He's going someplace else, once he gets some training. Well, a lot of training. Self-defense, including the use of bronze knives, boy and arrow, spears. Languages he's never heard of. Bronze Age people called the Beaker People. He's going to travel through time, looking for high tech the Russians have apparently found by traveling into the past. But how could Earth have had a civilization, so deep in the past that no trace of it has been found yet, that's so far ahead of 21st century Earth? (I will note here that what we do see of Norton's 21st century, concocted in the 1950s, doesn't in fact clash much with our 21st century.)
In Galactic Derelict, Ross is now an experienced time agent, and he's found the answers to some of the questions about where that ancient high tech came from. Yes, it came from alien ships that crashed on Earth--twelve to fifteen thousand years ago. They need to find at least one in American territory--and maybe they have. It's in the American west, and the evidence they have says that yes, it crashed at the time the Folsom people were hunting mammoths and giant sloths. Ross Murdock, his guide and partner from his trip to the Bronze Age, Gordon Ashe, are preparing to go back and look.
While they're preparing, Travis Fox, a young Apache man with an interest in archaeology and now working on his brother's ranch, accidentally wanders into their staging area. He's seen too much to just let go, but a quick check into his background reveals he might be a good recruit. Travis decides to take the chance, though he doesn't entirely believe what they're telling him.
They go back, encounter scary animals, successfully avoid actual contact with the Folsom people, and find the derelict ship they're looking for--except it's not a derelict. It's intact, but the crew are all dead, for no obvious reason. They don't have Russians to cope with here, and they set to work preparing to move the ship to the 21s century. A major volcanic eruption starts when they're just about ready--and the eruption and accompanying earthquake trigger the ship's engines, That happens at just about the same moment the time transfer is started. They may have made it to the 21st century, but they're also headed for whatever destination the dead pilot had logged into the ship's computer.
They're headed into hyperspace, and they don't know what their destination is. The involuntary crew is Ashe, Fox, Murdock, and a tech named Renfry, who has been working on figuring out the controls of the ship. He hasn't gotten far, and they have no idea where they'd be if they exited hyperspace before reaching their destination. They're in for quite an adventure, with no idea whether they'll be able to get home afterward. And while it seems unlikely that the civilization that made the ship they're on still exists, they can't know for sure.
I was a little worried when I started reading, because I remember these books with great fondness, and too many fondly remembered books from that era don't stand up well to rereading. I was surprised, relieved, delighted. At this point, Norton was still avoiding certain issues by not including women as major characters, but the ones we do meet, in the Bronze Age, are intelligent, strong, respected members of their tribes. That the USSR collapsed and then eventually Russia started getting aggressively expansionist with its neighbors, is almost a throwaway, and yet surprisingly accurate.
The characterization is good, and satisfying. I don't know if Native Americans would find Travis Fox and what he has to say about his own culture to be really satisfying, but it did at least feel respectful. Good plotting, good pacing, and thoroughly enjoyable.
Recommended.
I bought this book.
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LibraryThing member JBreedlove
A swashbuckling non-sensitive time travelling sci-fi from the 1950's. The characters were deeply delved into but the story had a lot of action and plot twists crammed into 220 pages. Scene transitions were quick. This story could have been written w many more pages. But I liked the ending w its
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pro-America Cold War tilt. I read this book 40 years ago in high school. It was really enjoyable. Show Less
LibraryThing member tcgardner
Not a bad book. The writing was a bit light, but ok all in all. Younger readers would enjoy.
I can recommend this book.
I can recommend this book.
LibraryThing member Mromano
A very slow read and one that I only read because it is on the 501 must reads. Do yourself a favor, substitute another work by a better science fiction author (Foundation by Asimov is one example) for this sluggish bore of a novel. The book starts out promising: American criminal is trained
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(although the training is left out which would have improved the work) to time travel in order to find out how the Russians who also can time travel are developing their technology. To do so, he must travel to the past, in this case, to pre-historic Britain where he must become a beakerman or trader with other tribes. Much of the novel is exposition on the tribes and history (Yawn!) and follows a very boring pattern: Ross, also called Murdock is alone, he is captured, he reunites with his team, he is again alone, gets captured, reunites, etc.etc.etc. I literally had to power through at small doses at day to reach the ending of this god awful novel. Better time travel works are out there: Time Machine, Lest Darkness Falls, Conn. Yankee in King Arthur's court. Skip this one. Show Less
LibraryThing member jjmcgaffey
One good story with an annoying protagonist, one rather pointless story with an interesting protagonist. Overall - good, not wonderful, but I will no doubt reread the next time this series starts bugging me for a read. More detailed reviews on the individual stories.
LibraryThing member Jarandel
Cold War impacted shall we say, still enjoyable though I may have liked more development around the sequences lived in the past, rather than them just being colorful background to confrontations between the various groups that don't belong there.
But most SFF books were just generally thinner back
But most SFF books were just generally thinner back
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then than now I guess. Show Less
LibraryThing member AndreeaDaia
THE TIME TRADERS
Reading Notes:
*** Very YA novel, but thoroughly enjoyable. I wish I read this book when I was 10-12. :)
*** I gave 4 stars to this novel but given the shelving (YA) I might very well have given it 5 stars.
*** We don't know anything about Ross's history and why he is so much against
*** However, overall Ross is a very, very interesting built character. He is, in a very general sense, an innocent child and that innocence is what saves him several times. He is not omnipotent (which you'd expect from this kind of book) but humble in his lack of knowledge.
*** There is a very interesting section in which Ross's two "personalities" (or lives) the one from the present and the one from the past are split. For several days, he believes that he is a trader from the Bronze Age. However during the narration of this section he is still referred as Ross and not his Bronze-Age name, which I thought was a mistake.
There is a lesson in each book:
*** The development of a hero should be gradual, or at least s/he shouldn't always be omnipotent. S/he needs some weaknesses or else s/he becomes unrealistic. Lots of present books (especially the fantasy ones) have omnipotent heroes, but they always bothered me.
What is the "time travel"/"change is time"/"discussion of time" used for?
As a simple mean for furthering the plot and/or putting the characters in an interesting situation.
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GALACTIC DERELICT
Reading Notes:
Reading Notes:
*** Very YA novel, but thoroughly enjoyable. I wish I read this book when I was 10-12. :)
*** I gave 4 stars to this novel but given the shelving (YA) I might very well have given it 5 stars.
*** We don't know anything about Ross's history and why he is so much against
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authority of any kind. Given that the revolt against authority is what brings the best in him, I found that this was a serious lack. *** However, overall Ross is a very, very interesting built character. He is, in a very general sense, an innocent child and that innocence is what saves him several times. He is not omnipotent (which you'd expect from this kind of book) but humble in his lack of knowledge.
*** There is a very interesting section in which Ross's two "personalities" (or lives) the one from the present and the one from the past are split. For several days, he believes that he is a trader from the Bronze Age. However during the narration of this section he is still referred as Ross and not his Bronze-Age name, which I thought was a mistake.
There is a lesson in each book:
*** The development of a hero should be gradual, or at least s/he shouldn't always be omnipotent. S/he needs some weaknesses or else s/he becomes unrealistic. Lots of present books (especially the fantasy ones) have omnipotent heroes, but they always bothered me.
What is the "time travel"/"change is time"/"discussion of time" used for?
As a simple mean for furthering the plot and/or putting the characters in an interesting situation.
********************************************************
GALACTIC DERELICT
Reading Notes:
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LibraryThing member Guide2
Couldn't finish this one. Second star is mostly for the subject and because it was written long ago. Way too many plot holes.
LibraryThing member Shijuro
A riveting historical wilderness adventure with science fiction accents.
This mix is not for everyone I guess but for me it was firing on all cylinders and it was hard to put down (especially during the last few chapters). Andre Norton was a master storyteller.
I picked up this and the next two
This mix is not for everyone I guess but for me it was firing on all cylinders and it was hard to put down (especially during the last few chapters). Andre Norton was a master storyteller.
I picked up this and the next two
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sequels as original Ace paperbacks, and if the second volume is even half as good as this one I’ll have to chase down the rest somehow. Show Less
LibraryThing member bespen
Andre Norton was a prolific mid-century science fiction and fantasy author who is listed in Gary Gygax’s Appendix N, but despite her popularity I was entirely unfamiliar with her work. To rectify that, I picked up the 2000 Baen omnibus edition titled The Time Traders that contains the orignal
I am glad that I got the omnibus edition, as I found the original The Time Traders only okay, while Galactic Derelict had a better structure and execution. To me, The Time Traders felt like a somewhat generic adventure novel of the era, with a protagonist from the wrong side of the law getting into a series of fantastical adventures involving time travel and secret government projects. The plot structure felt almost episodic, as Ross Murdock, a rebellious young man given a chance to escape prison by volunteering for a dangerous but critical mission, repeatedly gets into a jam, and then gets back out again through some combination of luck and grit.
What interest there is in the novel comes from the anthropological descriptions of the Bell Beaker and Axe Cultures that populate the past world Ross is transported to. Part of the enduring appeal of this branch of the literature of fantastic adventures is that many authors managed to usefully instruct the reader in some interesting topic while writing a story that otherwise resembles a Western. What is now called hard sci-fi has contracted down to mostly physics and engineering, but as Norton here shows us, anthropology and archaeology are fit subjects for this kind of fiction/non-fiction hybrid.
Since Norton wrote The Time Traders, the biggest addition to the field has been the ability to use ancient DNA to trace the movements of people through the world. Norton’s description of the invasion of the Battle Axe culture among the hunter-gatherers of southern Scandinavia matches up pretty well with what the DNA tells us: the Battle Axe Culture newcomers killed almost everyone who was already living there. There was a period in the mid-twentieth century when archaeologists liked to claim this wasn’t so, but the adventure novelists ended up having a better idea of what life was like then than some scientists.
The 2000 Baen edition of The Time Traders was edited by Norton to replace references to “the Soviets” with “the Russians” and to update some references to spaceflight, as she felt that intervening events had moved beyond the initial setting. However, the very premise of the book is about the most Cold War thing ever: a grand secret project of vast expense run by scientists and adventurers racing to gain any advantage possible over an ideological enemy. Just changing the name of the enemy and moving the book forward a few decades doesn’t change the geopolitical context.
Galactic Derelict follows directly on the events of The Time Traders, but introduces us to a new protagonist, Travis Fox, an Apache working as a ranch hand in Arizona. I am of course a sucker for any book that uses Arizona as a setting, but Travis is an interesting character, a bright man who is proud of his heritage, but feeling trapped in the modern world which dismisses him and his ancestors.
Travis stumbles on the workings of the secret project in the desert, but Ross and crew find him a congenial soul and recruit him instead of imprisoning him. This is possible because even in the Cold War, not every project was run like the Manhattan or Apollo projects, grand testaments to the power of the Gantt chart and the form in triplicate. The time travel project is run like China Lake in the 1950s, small, informal, and efficient. They vet Travis in a day, checking to make sure he isn’t a Russian plant. From that point, the structure of the novel is much the same as the first, but it flows better in my opinion.
There are another four novels in the Ross Murdock series, and using the series rating methodology in my post What authors like versus what readers like, I see the star ratings going up after the first book, matching my assessment of book 2 and suggesting that books 3-6 would be as enjoyable as book 2.
Overall, this was a fun 1950s style adventure novel, and if you’ve never tried such a thing and are curious, make sure you get the omnibus with the first two novels in it, as the second one is a better example of the style, and Amazon has it for free. I’m going to check out some more of Norton’s work after this.
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1958 novel The Time Traders and its sequel Galactic Derelict. I am glad that I got the omnibus edition, as I found the original The Time Traders only okay, while Galactic Derelict had a better structure and execution. To me, The Time Traders felt like a somewhat generic adventure novel of the era, with a protagonist from the wrong side of the law getting into a series of fantastical adventures involving time travel and secret government projects. The plot structure felt almost episodic, as Ross Murdock, a rebellious young man given a chance to escape prison by volunteering for a dangerous but critical mission, repeatedly gets into a jam, and then gets back out again through some combination of luck and grit.
What interest there is in the novel comes from the anthropological descriptions of the Bell Beaker and Axe Cultures that populate the past world Ross is transported to. Part of the enduring appeal of this branch of the literature of fantastic adventures is that many authors managed to usefully instruct the reader in some interesting topic while writing a story that otherwise resembles a Western. What is now called hard sci-fi has contracted down to mostly physics and engineering, but as Norton here shows us, anthropology and archaeology are fit subjects for this kind of fiction/non-fiction hybrid.
Since Norton wrote The Time Traders, the biggest addition to the field has been the ability to use ancient DNA to trace the movements of people through the world. Norton’s description of the invasion of the Battle Axe culture among the hunter-gatherers of southern Scandinavia matches up pretty well with what the DNA tells us: the Battle Axe Culture newcomers killed almost everyone who was already living there. There was a period in the mid-twentieth century when archaeologists liked to claim this wasn’t so, but the adventure novelists ended up having a better idea of what life was like then than some scientists.
The 2000 Baen edition of The Time Traders was edited by Norton to replace references to “the Soviets” with “the Russians” and to update some references to spaceflight, as she felt that intervening events had moved beyond the initial setting. However, the very premise of the book is about the most Cold War thing ever: a grand secret project of vast expense run by scientists and adventurers racing to gain any advantage possible over an ideological enemy. Just changing the name of the enemy and moving the book forward a few decades doesn’t change the geopolitical context.
Galactic Derelict follows directly on the events of The Time Traders, but introduces us to a new protagonist, Travis Fox, an Apache working as a ranch hand in Arizona. I am of course a sucker for any book that uses Arizona as a setting, but Travis is an interesting character, a bright man who is proud of his heritage, but feeling trapped in the modern world which dismisses him and his ancestors.
Travis stumbles on the workings of the secret project in the desert, but Ross and crew find him a congenial soul and recruit him instead of imprisoning him. This is possible because even in the Cold War, not every project was run like the Manhattan or Apollo projects, grand testaments to the power of the Gantt chart and the form in triplicate. The time travel project is run like China Lake in the 1950s, small, informal, and efficient. They vet Travis in a day, checking to make sure he isn’t a Russian plant. From that point, the structure of the novel is much the same as the first, but it flows better in my opinion.
There are another four novels in the Ross Murdock series, and using the series rating methodology in my post What authors like versus what readers like, I see the star ratings going up after the first book, matching my assessment of book 2 and suggesting that books 3-6 would be as enjoyable as book 2.
Overall, this was a fun 1950s style adventure novel, and if you’ve never tried such a thing and are curious, make sure you get the omnibus with the first two novels in it, as the second one is a better example of the style, and Amazon has it for free. I’m going to check out some more of Norton’s work after this.
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LibraryThing member MHThaung
I picked up this book because 1. I've never read anything by the author before and 2. I was curious to see what a time travel SF book first published in 1958 would be like.
To be honest, I struggled to finish it, despite there being only around 150 pages. It read like a series of encounters where
I didn't develop any interest in the characters, or any sympathy for them. Challenges felt like they were glossed over... "Somehow, despite all the difficulties facing him, he succeeded in doing the thing." Not exactly satisfying.
And usually I'm happy to go along for the ride and accept handwaving away of magic and technological powers. But the idea that opposing Earth powers had both developed time travel *and were using it to look for super-weapon technology*—as if time travel is easier than making WMD—just felt weird.
Time Traders came in a bundle with its sequel, but I suspect I won't be moving on to that.
To be honest, I struggled to finish it, despite there being only around 150 pages. It read like a series of encounters where
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main character Murdock lands in various scrapes and gets out of them again, often by means of coincidence or through a sudden surge of determination/inspiration/realisation. Events happened, and Murdock was more or less carried along with them.I didn't develop any interest in the characters, or any sympathy for them. Challenges felt like they were glossed over... "Somehow, despite all the difficulties facing him, he succeeded in doing the thing." Not exactly satisfying.
And usually I'm happy to go along for the ride and accept handwaving away of magic and technological powers. But the idea that opposing Earth powers had both developed time travel *and were using it to look for super-weapon technology*—as if time travel is easier than making WMD—just felt weird.
Time Traders came in a bundle with its sequel, but I suspect I won't be moving on to that.
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LibraryThing member GlenRH
This is a very well written journey story. As the main character travels from location and time to another, he has experiences and slowly learns about being part of something bigger than himself. It is exciting enough to keep you reading, even though it is vintage sci-fi, it isn't t0o out of
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keeping with the today of 2017. You will enjoy it if you love adventure set in a technological environment. The tech is a device that just moves the story along as it should in any good sci-fi. The "Reds" as the bad guys dates it, but just insert anything else in its place and the story still works. Show Less
LibraryThing member amberwitch
The kind of story that really shows it age. Not a particularly good read, at least it is fast, and make no pretension about intellectualism or art. Very much on the pulpy side. If you want to read classic science fiction, save yourself for Ray Bradbury. The plot has holes you could drive a truck
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through, bad worldbuilding, the characters are less than two dimensional, and I did not care one bit for the story or the characters. Show Less
LibraryThing member leslie.98
This Kindle omnibus (available free courtesy of Baen ebooks) contains the first 2 novels of the Ross Murdoch series - "The Time Traders" and "Galactic Derelict".
"The Time Traders" (1958) -187 pgs; finished 4/5/20; 3.5*
I enjoyed the fast paced action & the main character, Ross Murdock, a criminal
"Galactic Derelict" (1959) -192 pgs; finished 4/9/20; 4*
While Ross Murdoch is present in this 2nd book, the focus is shifted to a new character, Travis Fox, an Apache who stumbles upon Murdoch & Ashe setting up a secret site in the desert. Fox has a background in archeology (as does Ashe, we learn) and, more importantly, an ability to sense the difference between artifacts and recently made imitations, no matter how well done.
This second book does have a certain amount of time travel, but most of the plot involves instead an unexpectedtrip into outer space when the ship of the "Baldy"'s they are investigating suddenly activates its automatic pilot. A fun and fast read. I look forward to the rest of the series!
"The Time Traders" (1958) -187 pgs; finished 4/5/20; 3.5*
I enjoyed the fast paced action & the main character, Ross Murdock, a criminal
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loner who "volunteered" for Operation Retrograde as an alternative to the new penal 'treatment' (of a type left unspecified but which I assume was some sort of mind altering treatment). However, certain aspects of the plot were dated - the U.S.'s 'greatest adversary' is (of course) Russia. And the science of the time travel is strictly left alone - no explanations about how this technology worked, not even vague ones."Galactic Derelict" (1959) -192 pgs; finished 4/9/20; 4*
While Ross Murdoch is present in this 2nd book, the focus is shifted to a new character, Travis Fox, an Apache who stumbles upon Murdoch & Ashe setting up a secret site in the desert. Fox has a background in archeology (as does Ashe, we learn) and, more importantly, an ability to sense the difference between artifacts and recently made imitations, no matter how well done.
This second book does have a certain amount of time travel, but most of the plot involves instead an unexpected
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Language
Original publication date
2000
Physical description
400 p.; 24 inches
ISBN
0671319523 / 9780671319526