Canopy of Time

This is easily one of the best sci-fi novel, or just book, that I have ever read. This book is old and I had to obtain my copy via eBay, but it was worth it. The eight interconnected stories come to a surprising conclusion, and overall is very thought-provoking. I liked how each chapter focused on a different part in human history. While I do feel that this book could have used some more detail (the book is fairly slim compared to other books such as say, Dune) it is still a wonderful and thought-provoking read, with some juicy nugget of philosophy or thought in each section. My favorites were the 'Mutant' and the 'Ultimate' Millennia chapters.

A series of short stories, each dealing with a specific era in the human development and future histoy. Alldis is known in his intelligent and philosofic works and this one is not only keeping those high standarts , but stands out as a wonderfull, imaginative story of our race , millions of years into the future. super recommended. enjoy.

I read this book as a teenager, and then many other times. It's a story of mankind spanning millions of years. This book is one-of-a-kind, for the gigantic scale on which is projected, the bold imagination, the long silences between flashes of history that let yor mind fascinated for the untold but imagined. And there is a subtle sadness for those million lives, their joys and despairs... but always life flourishes in unexpected ways. Reading this book is like looking at the sky in a clear night and wondering at the immense universe.

An excellent Aldiss book. It annnotates the history of mankind as told by its replacement. Telling the tale like a geologist would - using million, billion, thousand, and hundred year increments - Aldiss shows how man is the perfect seedling for populating the universe as well as the ultimate vehicle for its self-destruction. Man ruins the Earth, leaves Earth for the stars, tackles the problems of time travel through an intergrated form of speech-like alchemy, rediscovers a still populated Earth but does not belive it to be the Earth of myth, renames Earth as there are already hundreds of planets in the universe laying claim to that distinction, unifies the universe, institutes galactic warfare as a necessary economical device, and destroys the universe in a truely unique battle against man's successor. Time is the constant, and Aldiss makes us aware that we are just a silly soap opera for the infinate to enjoy for but a minute or two.