#125. NO ENEMY BUT TIME By Michael Bishop

Published : 1982
Pages : 365
Overall Mark : 8/10

Joshua Kampa is torn between two worlds – the early Pleistocene Africa of his dreams and the twentieth-century reality of his waking life. These worlds are transposed when a government experiment sends him over a million years back in time. Here, John builds a new life as part of a tribe of protohumans. But before long he reaches a temporal crossroads where he must decide whether the past or the future will be his present.

MICHAEL BISHOP (1945-)
Michael Bishop’s A Funeral For The Eyes Of Fire, brought comparisons with Ursula Le Guin and James Tiptree, Jr and was followed by a number of critically acclaimed works including Transfigurations, Ancient Of Days and No Enemy But Time, for which he won the Nebula Award for Best Novel. Michael Bishop lives in Georgia, where he is writer-in-residence at LaGrange College.

VERDICT
Although the setup of this book starts off a little confusing, it soon reels us in to a world of the past where our time travelling hero is living and making a life for himself. The strange characters are at first hard to get to grips with but, through the eyes of the protagonist, we soon learn to like them and worry for their safety and hope that their lives will turn out okay. The relationship Kampa builds with these prehistoric people is touching and real and makes for an intriguing read that all SF fans will enjoy.