A Son of the Rock

Fontana, 1980

Since his recent death I thought I’€™d take a look at some of Bayley’€™s work which I never got round to at the time.

In this one time travel has been discovered and is possible through the substratum (which members of the Time Service call the strat) between the 6 nodes which advance through historical time. As a result there are three kinds of time; nodal time, historical time and orthogonal time.

Chronopolis is the capital of the Chronotic Empire where travel to times between the nodes is strictly forbidden and requires a device known as an orthophase to stabilise the wearer’€™s presence between nodes. However members of the royal family can make such travel with impunity. (One such scion has ventured internodally to meet, seduce and bring back his future self to live with him. With characteristic wit Bayley names this identical pair Narcis₁ and Narcis₂.)

The Empire is heavily dominated by a church founded by the discoverer of time travel and relies for advice on an enigmatic machine oracle wherein previous Emperors’ memories are stored and which is called the Imperator. Could this possibly be where Douglas Adams got the idea for his Deep Thought?

There is also a war with the Hegemony, a culture at the furthest node. Their use of a time distorter device causes ripple effects through the Empire’€™s domains, wiping out entire histories and leaving no memory of them. The activities of an heretical sect, the Traumatics, feature strongly. Temporal paradoxes abound.

Oh, and the strat is a dangerous place, exposure leading to mental disturbance, and may harbour a devil of sorts.

This all utterly bonkers, of course, but it is a measure of Bayley’€™s ability that it does make a kind of sense when you’€™re reading it.

Unfortunately, this story is twenty years old and it shows. The characterisation is minimal. The book verges on being sexist since there are only three female characters (one of whom is a corpse, another is peripheral at best and the third seems to be there primarily for members of the Traumatics to abuse her and to provide a punchline at the end.) Many of the names are ridiculous. Mond Aton? Inpris Sorce? Absol Humbardt? San Hevatar?

It was however a pleasure to read an adult SF book that didn’€™t require a weightlifter’€™s muscles to do so.

191 pages of small print. That’s the way to do it.