Millennium

I don't much like reading books about time travel. Mostly it just makes me dizzy, I don't deal well with paradoxes. There are a few exceptions, like Lest Darkness Fall (Pyramid SF, F-817) and Time and Again. Millennium is another that has taken up permanent occupancy on my bookshelves, and I've been puzzling over why. I think it's because the premise for time travel in this novel is practical. The novel's present is robbing/mining/harvesting/exploiting the past to save the future, to ensure the survival of humankind. It wasn't a bolt of lightning (Lest Darkness Fall), it wasn't a self-induced hypnotic state (Time and Again), no, this time the narrative creates a time travel machine specifically for this task and none other. The motivation is great on a character level, too. Louise and the rest of her Snatch Team are sacrificing their own lives for the sake of the rest of the human race, and FAA investigator Bill Smith's job and personal curiosity, as well as his love for Louise, pushes him inevitably toward solving this mystery. One of the best robot characters ever created in SF, too, and a Chapter 2 shout-out to Robert A. Heinlein. Nothing not to love here. In fact, time to reread it again... Millennium, isn't bad, either. Varley is also the author of what I think is one of the best sf short stories ever, "In the Hall of the Martian Kings," collected in Persistance of Vision.

It's not normal practice for me to watch a film prior to reading the book it's based on, but when I do, watching the film can lead me to some very good books. Such was the case with Millennium by John Varley. I had seen the film with Kris Kristofferson and Cheryl Ladd a number of times but had been frustrated in my efforts to obtain a copy of "Air Raid", the original short story the film was credited as being based on, until one day when the book almost literally fell into my lap.I gotta tell you, Millennium was one of those books I could not put down. From the first page, I found myself absolutely enraptured by the characters of both Louise Baltimore and Bill Smith. Varley's Smith is actually very close to the character that Kris Kristofferson portrayed in the movie, but his Louise Baltimore is a very tough, take-charge kind of gal that's unlike the one played by Cheryl Ladd in the film. That Louise always seemed to be looking to her personal robot, Sherman, for advice, whereas the Louise of Varley's book might have depended on Sherman for emotional support at times, but generally kept her own counsel and scoffed at the very notion that Sherman's ideas could be taken seriously in a critical mission such as the one she was running to Smith's time in order to get her lost "stunner". The funny thing was, in the end it was the Big Computer who was running everything, and not Louise or Bill or even Sherman.I am currently on my 6th copy of this excellent time-travel novel (the other 5 have worn out due to repeated readings), and I hope that all of you who are sci-fi enthusiasts will take the time to pick up a copy and read it, if you haven't read it already. It's a definite page-turner.

I became a hard-core sci-fi fan in the 1950s. Since then, my reading has become more discriminating. This book meets my much higher standards for a good read for several reasons. First, I liked the character of Louise Baltimore. Second, I liked Varley's telling of this tale through alternating points-of-view in alternating chapters. I liked the plot, and finally I liked the last chapter, where a final character emerges to tie it all together by revealing the things not seen in the characters povs.

Not to complain, but I found that all the stuff Varley wrote before I discovered him (in Titan) is ever so much better than the stuff SINCE I discovered him. This book is dynamite and a great read. It was a fair movie (with some laughable sfx) but the book delivers.John, if you're out there...go back to Gaea. Get back on the airplane. Go to Jupiter and kick those mysterious thingies butts! Quit messing with reporters and faux-shakesperean actors.

Millennium is one of my "keepers" and the one I lend out to get my friends hooked on science fiction. This is the kind of book tou take to the beach in the morning and end up going home only because it's getting too dark to read. The two person; 1st person viewpoints (burnedout, middle-aged NTSB crash investigator/Type A-personnality girl from the umpteen century)is a neat way to tell a story and makes this a fast and enjoyable read.