DINOSAUR BEACH

My copy of Dinosaur Beach arrived today via eBay. I ordered this book because:

it is about time travel (to be compared with Wells and Anderson);

it has an evocative title;

I have known of it as a title for years without having read it;

it might count as an sf "classic."

A Classic is a work that, like The Time Machine, is always in print in multiple editions, that can be picked off the shelf in a large bookshop or, failing that, ordered and whose title is generally recognized even by those who have never read it whereas a "classic" is a work that is remembered by some, regarded as influential, sells well secondhand and is occasionally reissued. 

Beaches have a role in time travel stories:

Wells' Time Traveller encounters giant crabs on a beach in a remote future;

Wells' outer narrator wonders whether the Time Traveller is:

"...wandering...by the lonely saline seas of the Triassic Age."

-HG Wells, The Time Machine (London, 1973), EPILOGUE, p. 101;

significant meetings occur on two beaches in Poul Anderson's "Star of the Sea" and on another at the end of his The Shield Of Time.

The cover illustration shows a man with a gun and a dinosaur as on Anderson's Past Times.

There are six quotations of extravagant praise. On the front cover:

"UNRIVALLED NOT ONLY IN ITS CLASS, BUT IN A CLASS BY ITSELF."

-GORDON R. DICKSON.

One of the four on the back cover:

"Laumer has a gift for time travel. The technology in this novel is fascinating."

-Riverside Quarterly.

We are used to reading rave reviews on book covers and probably disregard them.

So far, I have read only 7 of the 44 short chapters and will persevere to the end. However -

In some sf - or is it mainly in a particular period of sf? - we find that we are reading not just a novel but, more specifically, an action novel in which characters point guns and shoot at each other. This happens in Dinosaur Beach well in advance of any indication that some of the characters are time travellers. (We know that Poul Anderson liked his action scenes but usually these were subordinate to other aspects of a story.)

"...the big board in Ops that showed the minute-by-minute status of the Timesweep effort up and down the ages."

-Keith Laumer, Dinosaur Beach (Baen Books, New York, 1986), 5, p. 31.

Can an effort that is being made up and down the ages have a minute-by-minute status?

"...maybe at this moment a relief team in crisp field-tan was assembling to jump out to the rescue." (6, p. 34)

A relief team at a station in a different time is assembling at this moment?

There is some more complicated text that it would be more difficult to unravel. I do not think that any of that extravagant praise is appropriate.

"...an intriguing introduction for newcomers."

-Monterey Herald.

No. Start with Wells and Anderson.

Addendum, later the same evening: In Dinosaur Beach, I have read to the beginning of Chapter 26 on p. 116. The novel ends with a one-page Chapter 44 on p. 204. I do not want to read any more. The text is uninteresting, unenjoyable and incoherent. Changes that have to be happening in two different temporal dimensions are described as if they can be experienced along a single timeline:

"'...the deterioration began. The chronodegradation...the memory lapses, and the contradictions. We sensed life unravelling around us.'" (25, p. 111)

Having finished John Grisham and wanting to read something enjoyable for the rest of this evening, I will revert to Stieg Larsson. (Grisham introduces a minor character, Zander, clearly based on Larsson's Lisbeth Salander.) Back to Anderson tomorrow.