A scientist is murdered during an experiment in time travel…and finds himself in the body of a man several decades in the future. He then begins a series of deaths, and awakenings, into the future; until he returns to his past. Maine wrote this book in 1955 and manages to capture a bit of 21st Century zeitgeist. It's not a very exciting story...but a very thought-provoking one. ( )

This is the story of a man who is traveling through time, in larger and larger jumps.

In 20th Century England, Hugh Macklin is part of a group of scientists working on time travel using atomic power. His marriage to his wife, Lydia, is not going well. One day, during what was supposed to be a low-power test of the system, something goes very wrong. Macklin suddenly finds himself on the Moon, in the body of an asteroid miner named Eddie Rayner. He is also 80 years in the future. Rayner's wife, Valerie, bears a very strong resemblance to Lydia.

After weeks of psychological tests and evaluations back on Earth, everyone is convinced that Rayner is nuts. Just before being committed to an institution, Macklin/Rayner leaps out of a skyscraper window. Next thing he knows, Macklin is in a technocratic human society on Venus, 400 years in the future. In the body of a man named Ernst Tehn, Louana, his wife, also looks a lot like Lydia. Earth is a radioactive wasteland. While on Venus, he inhabits the bodies of three different people (not all at the same time).

Another jump takes Macklin to a triple star system somewhere in the galaxy, and several thousand years in the future. He is part of an early warning system against alien attack. He is now Kane 447, and his wife, Thoa 802, also bears a strong resemblance to Lydia. This society knows about timeliners, and consider him guilty of murdering Kane 447. They are very considerate about it, but they plan to give him a drug that will bring back the "real" Kane, and kill Macklin, once and for all. Is Macklin condemned to make larger and larger jumps into the future, looking for a society with the technology to send him home?

I enjoyed reading this book. Based on a radio play, it's a quick read, and it also has things to say about future humanity. If a copy can be found, it's worth reading. ( )

Unlike most time travel stories, in this book the arrow of time is into the future rather than the past. The story starts with the death of the main character who then reappears at some future time, reconnecting with the love of his life in his original incarnation. He experiences different adventures in each life while attempting to unravel the mystery surrounding his first death. ( )