ciaraldi@rochester.UUCP (Mike Ciaraldi) (12/03/83)
From: Mike Ciaraldi <ciaraldi>
I just read MILLENNIUM by John Varley, and liked it.
You may have read his short story "Air Raid" which was reprinted
in his anthology The Persistence of Vision.
Millennium is basically a novel based on the same ideas as the story,
with the original story, extensively rewritten, taking up
one or more chapters.
Basic plot (non spoiler):
Far in the future, the human race is on its last legs. The environment is
so polluted, and the gene pool so riddled with defective genes, that
humanity will be dying out any day.
So, they send agents back in time to the scenes of disasters (e.g.
airline crashes with NO SURVIVORS) to kidnap all the people who would
have died and replace them with carefully-constructed corpses,
appropriately mutilated. The kidnapees are brought to the future
and put into suspended animation, so that they can eventually
populate a new planet and continue humanity. This all works because
the agents are careful to avoid paradoxes. When one of them leaves
a ray gun behind, the heroine has to go back and pick it up, and
cover any other traces.
Neat touches include running through the same scenes twice, as
perceived by the heroine and by the hero, who is a twentieth-century
plane crash investigator. They are experiencing their meetings
in different orders subjectively.
There are a series of twist endings, too.
Varley acknowledges some of the great time travel stories of the
past by using their names ("All You Zombies", "The Time Machine", etc.)
as chapter titles. He also mentions that the book title was used
previously by Ben Bova (KINSMAN is the prequel to Bova's MILLENNIUM).
One final thing interesting is that the book is copyright by
MGM/UA Home Entertainment, rather than Varley himself.
Does this mean they'll be making a movie of it?
Mike Ciaraldi
ciaraldi@rochester