Time and Again

This book has two themes run together, one of which works better than the other.

The first theme is about Asher Sutton and what he found on the seventh planet of 61 Cygni. This is classic, magnificent sense-of-wonder sf, told in Simak's unhurried, thoughtful prose.

The second theme is about the world Sutton came from: a far-future society of humans and their android servants, treated as inferiors although they're the same in almost every respect as humans made in the traditional way.

I don't believe in this future society, so for me the book's second theme agonizes pointlessly over a non-issue. The Android Problem was a preoccupation of sf writers around the middle of the twentieth century, but I think it's been out of fashion for decades by now, and it has the quaintness you sometimes find when writers in the past imagine the future and get it wrong.

Thus, this novel is in part a great classic, but it also has elements that don't really stand the test of time. Simak was of my grandparents' generation, approximately; and by now I'm old enough to be a grandfather myself.