John Varley. Millennium. (1983) One of the best time-travel stories I’ve read. The frame is simple enough: In the far future, humans have adapted to the Earth they polluted, but those adaptations enable survival barely long enough to reproduce. Homo sapiens is dying out.
A Gate provides access to the past. It’s used to gather as many genetically strong humans as possible in order to send them off to a distant planet to start over and recreate human civilisation. The team grabs people who are about to die, thus preventing any disturbance of the time stream.
During a snatch of people from a plane about to crash, a stunner is left behind. It’s up to team leader Louise Baltimore to recover it. But Bill Smith, a smart investigator of plane crashes, notices something’s not quite right. Complications ensue.
Varley is an excellent narrator of the work of investigating plane crashes, and has invented plausible logistics of time travel and the reasons for the Project. His characterisation is good enough that we care for the people. Smith and Baltimore, the two main narrators, are both damaged by life and circumstances, which makes their decisions and hence the results more believable.
Recommended. ***
