Finished Reading 2024: Hawksbill Station by Robert Silverberg 📚

This is maybe the fifth Silverberg novel I’ve read. The fourth? Not sure.

Anyway this was a good short novel about the inmates of a prison. Political prisoners sent 1 billion years into the past. The novel alternates between the current life of the protagonist (happening in the past), and his life prior to imprisonment during the 1980s-2000s.

The novel explores the state of mind of the inmates, many of whom are going crazy. It also follows the career of the protagonist as a political dissident, explores the evolution of his organization, and the development of the United States over the course of his life. The novel was written in 1967 – expanded from a short story Silverberg wrote some years before.

The science of time travel are not really discussed very much.

As with many novels of this era there are a couple of cringe-inducing moments. Not the worst I’ve ever read, and not bad enough to avoid the novel. Likewise there are no female characters of any real consequence, which is probably good as Silverberg is not known for writing female characters well. If you’ve read SF from before about 2000 you know what I’m talking about.

This isn’t the kind of SF that is really “delightful”. It’s not adventure. It is thoughtful.

A few things I enjoyed or found interesting…

  • The creation of time travel by an amoral scientist who partners with a possibly fascist government simply for the research money
  • The co-opting of time travel science by a possibly fascist government (we really only here one side of the story)
  • Classic SF exploration of the effect of technology on society

Of the Silverberg novels I’ve read, I’d say Downward to the Earth is better, but this one is a close second.