This book is set in Nova Scotia where Spider lived at the time he wrote it. (He now lives in BC but thankfully hasn't left Canada.) A beautiful woman named Rachel turns up at a commune after a strange blue light occurs on a dark and stormy night. She is from another civilization far in the future. Her mission: to collect data on the past of the human race. ( )

This is the work that finally did me in. I find it telling that two of the three blurbs on the back are from reviewers of earlier works. He has a feel for the pun like very few living authors do. He is indeed strongly reminiscent of Heinlein, but I do not consider that to be a compliment, necessarily. Up until "Stranger in a Strange Land" Heinlein was one of my favorite authors. After that, not so much.

It's a decent book, and probably better than 90% of what's out there, but it's not to my taste. So it goes. ( )

Quite simply one of my favorite books of all time. In going through my bookshelves today, I found I have three copies of the first edition, all of them well worn. I've probably re-read it once a year since it came out. This highly unusual time travel tale does an excellent job of conveying the difficulties of being a time traveler, and presents a very interesting set of characters. One of the things I like about Spider's books is the multi-faceted nature of his characters, for example, the lead character is very smart, clever about many things, and makes a brick dumb decision about another. The characters are a fascinating group of different people, with phobias, brilliance, and issues unique to each.

The book makes me laugh and weep in different parts, even reading it for the 20th time. How many books can drag that emotional response from you even once? The words "from what year?" will make me ROFL- go read that scene! The ending is anything but pat, rather it's delightful and sad. The technology works, makes extrapolative sense, which is critical, but often missed, to be science fiction, not science fantasy. ( )

Spider Robinson is one of the more unique science fiction writers out there, and this book is no disappointment. The time is 1973, and the place is the wilderness of Nova Scotia where a group of Americans has formed a commune free from the modern world. One day, however, they are paid a visit by Rachel, a beautiful woman from the future, on a one-way mission to collect data on the past of the human race. There is much more involved, and Robinson is adept at using the situation to illuminate the absurdities of the human race. There is a fairly graphic homosexual interlude that gave me the collywobbles, but it works within the context of the book. ( )