2023 read #42: End of an Era by Robert J. Sawyer.*

End of an Era by Robert J. Sawyer*

248 pages

Published 1994 (revised edition published 2001)

Read April 25

Rating: 1.5 out of 5

* Denotes a reread.

The first problem with this book is its aggressively casual "I'm just a regular guy" narration. Early on, in fact, our narrator Brandon literally tells us "I'm just a regular guy," and then immediately goes on to describe his dislike of and hostility toward Klicks, his fellow time-traveler: "Not that it matters, but I'm white and he's black." Yikes. The “1990s white author tries to write ‘realistic’ race relations” vibes only get worse from there. I won’t quote any of it.

So, I read the original 1994 version of this novel (I think) sometime in my teens. I recall that I disliked it because (spoilers) it abandons its let’s-go-to-the-Cretaceous plot hook and mutates into an alien encounter book. I didn’t remember any of the awkward suburban drama that infests the opening chapters. Turns out Klicks is dating Brandon’s ex-wife back in the Holocene, which seems like the sort of interpersonal problem that should have taken one or both of these men off the first human time-travel mission (but just the sort of dramatic grist for the kind of airport thriller this book wanted to be). May the best man win, Brandon thinks snarkily; that clichéd heterosexual pissing contest energy suffuses Era (along with that casually recursive “our white narrator is subconsciously racist because that’s realistic” racism).

And then, earlier than you’d ever expect, we get aliens. Specifically, psionic blue slime from Mars. At least you get to see some good dinosaur action beforehand, right? Well, not really. It’s all macho bickering and outdated infodumping and meaningless technobabble, and then boom, blue slime Martians by page 56. And on top of everything, we get an alternate timeline with neither time-travel nor a divorce for our Brandon. And we learn that Cretaceous gravity is somehow different. And the aliens control all the dinosaurs. And the Martians destroyed the former planet in the asteroid belt. And viruses and cancer are the modern descendants of the blue slime aliens…

This book goes batshit with remarkable speed, without giving us really any moment to enjoy the Cretaceous for what it is. (We do get a few perfunctory scenes of Klicks and Brandy studying dinosaurs in the field, but they come right after the big Martian reveal and feel implausibly shoehorned in.) It goes full Love in the Time of Dinosaurs without the honesty to let you know that’s where it’s headed. I won’t say that it’s worse than Love in the Time of Dinosaurs, necessarily, but at least that book told you exactly what it was on the cover.

I have to say, Era was so much worse than I remembered. Not my kind of thing whatsoever.