The Technicolor Time Machine

Rating:
Summary: hilarious and truthful
Review: Technicolor Time Machine is not only classic 60's Harry Harrison (fast,perfect characters,bizarre plots)but an acerbic and dead on send up of both the movie business and the scientific community. Washed up producers,ivory tower physicists,buxom starlets and Vikings--all at cross purposes and all perfectly drawn. Please read!

Rating:
Summary: A funny tale of time travel paradox.
Review: This is a genuinely funny time travel paradox story, that really makes you think. It very cleverly introduces and explains the idea of time travel paradox, in a way that even a novice to science fiction could understand, and that a veteran will also learn from. Harrison does this by having plain ordinary people (well, if you can call a desperate movie mogul and a film director plain and ordinary), as the central character. The inevitable nutty scientist, who invents the time machine, has to explain it to them in a way that an impatient non-technical mogul can grasp, and if he can get it, anyone can!

The story is that Climactic Studios is going broke. They need one great epic movie to get them out of trouble. But the banks are breathing down their necks, and they are only days away from bankruptcy. Here's where a time machine comes in very handy! (In a lovely touch, referring back to the unwieldy names early science fiction used to find for things, the nutty scientist calls the machine a "Vraemetron", after the Lithuanian - I think -for time. No nice flowery name, oh no! It's a "vraemetron"!).

What follows is a really funny story of vain Hollywood types, going back in time to shoot a Viking Saga. There they meet the Viking hero, Thorfinn Karsefni, who turns out to be a bit of a slob, and cares for nothing except for booze, food and women (fits in quite well with the Hollywood types then). Barney, the director and hero of the book, travels back and forth in time, desperately trying to avoid bumping into himself, and leaving cryptic clues for people just for the fun of it. The storyline is easy to follow, yet complex enough to keep it interesting. The paradoxes are well explained, yet keep throwing up new problems to be solved. The characters are all well developed, and I really got to like them. When the book finally finished, I actually missed them! Afterwards, it made me want to research all about Vikings, which I did! Just think of the hours of pleasure you can give your friends explaining everything you just learned!

This is a great book - funny, accessible, and intellectually stimulating. Not too long, it's ideal for a train or plane ride, or maybe a nice relaxing evening in front of the fire. Just great.