October the First Is Too Late
- by Fred Hoyle
- Novel
- Science Fiction, Music and Musicals
- Adults
- Definite Time Travel
- English
- October the First Is Too Late by Fred Hoyle (William Heinemann, 1966).
Dick, a composer, and his boyhood friend John, now an eminent scientist, find themselves in a patchwork world of different times from classical Greece to a far future that humanity barely survives.
My favorable impression is no doubt reflective of the time when I read it (the summer of 1970, nearly 13, while moving from Washington State to Alabama). Perhaps the fiction doesn’t hold up as well decades later up, but the issues of time that it brings up still interest me and it was my first exposure to the idea of a geographic timeslip. And, similar to Asimov, Hoyle served to cultivate my interest in the natural sciences.
My favorable impression is no doubt reflective of the time when I read it (the summer of 1970, nearly 13, while moving from Washington State to Alabama). Perhaps the fiction doesn’t hold up as well decades later up, but the issues of time that it brings up still interest me and it was my first exposure to the idea of a geographic timeslip. And, similar to Asimov, Hoyle served to cultivate my interest in the natural sciences.
—Michael Main
To the Reader: The “science” in this book is mostly scaffolding for the story, story-telling in the traditional sense. However, the discussions of the significance of time and the meaning of consciousness are intended to be quite serious, as also are the contents of chapter fourteen. —from Hoyle’s preface
Tags
(10)
- Time Periods
- Ancient History (3000 BC to AD 476: Bronze/Iron Ages): Classical Greece.
- Circa AD 1960 to 1969: John and Dick’s home time.
- Near Future, AD 2300 and Beyond: A US reversion to pre-industrial, a future Mexican society.
- Far Future: Russian glass landscape.
- Timeline Models
- Real-World Tags
- Ancient Greece
- World War I: France.
- Fictional Tags
- Post-Apocalyptic and Post-Holocaust Worlds: Russian glass landscape, the US reversion to pre-industrial.
- Groupings
Variants
(1)
- October the First Is Too Late by Fred Hoyle (William Heinemann, 1966).
Translations
(1)
- French.
Le premier octobre il sera trop tard by Fred Hoyle (Dunod, 1968).