Unlike Tucker’s earlier Gilgamesh book, The Time Masters, this one really does have a time machine.
A loose-knit but fanatical political party is driving for control of the nation. This
November they may have it. Meanshile one or more equally fanatical parties are seeking a
practical time machine.
Full of fire and energy and force; it was logic; it was pathos; it was enthusiasm; it was
justice, equity, truth and right, the good set ablaze by the divine fires of a soul
maddened by the wrong; it was hard, heavy, knotty, gnarled, edged and heated, backed with
wrath.
For me, I see the tone of several later items, such as the TV show Seven Days, as descendants of Tucker’s novel—and we finally understand why the Terminator arrives at his destination naked.
She said: “It’s a matter of weight, Mr. Chaney. The machine must propel itself and
you into the future, which is an operation requiring a tremendous amount of electrical
energy. The engineers have advised us that total weight is a critical matter, that
nothing but the passenger must be put forward or returned. They insist upon minimum
weight.”
“Naked? All the way naked?”