In this out-of-print novel from 1980, A.E. van Vogt constructed a very interesting collapsed universe with some thought-provoking background themes on authority and free will. In 1704 AD, a pirate named Fletcher finds himself mixed up with people from millennia in the future and an army of oddly religious robots. In a highly creative turn of cosmic events as created by van Vogt, Fletcher's deep atomic connection to the very life and death of the universe has caused time to collapse and events and people from different time periods to get mixed up with each other. van Vogt's conceptions of time and relativity are very intriguing for any reader with deep sci-fi thoughts, but the plotting of this novel is rather clumsy and difficult to follow, especially with van Vogt's use of skips in the time stream, which become more confusing than exciting. The idea of collapsing time could have been used for far deeper explorations and excitement concerning alternate histories and the potential dangers of time travel. Meanwhile, other than Fletcher the characters are shallow and poorly defined, while van Vogt's prose tends to get very wooden and ponderous when he starts exploring philosophical and cosmological themes. But this old book is still worth tracking down for fans of classic sci-fi, as van Vogt's basic story is a wonderful twist on tried-and-true concepts form the genre, with some rewarding exploration of deeper ideas. [~doomsdayer520~]
