No Enemy But Time by Michael Bishop

Hello, Stranger.

Let's talk about Michael Bishop's No Enemy But Time.

The Short of It

Plot: If you think hard enough, you get to the past! 

Page Count: 397

Award: 1982 Nebula

Worth a read: This is one of the worst books I've ever read.
Primary Driver: (Plot, World, or Character)
Bechdel Test: Fail(?)
Technobabble: Moderate.
Review: Look, he uses his chance to go back in time to have sex with proto-humans. And yes, the pacing is awful, but at least the prose is terrible. I have nothing positive to say about this one, except that I've never seen the word "beshat" in a book. This is one of the very few I've encountered with an African American man as the lead - and holy guacamole is it an insulting portrayal.

The Medium and Long of It, Because This Book Is Terrible

Spoilers, but, who cares?

Among chimpanzees the females develop cumbersome sexual swellings to signal their readiness to mate (“pink ladies,” Jane Goodall once called the possessors of these fragrant passion flowers), but habiline women, naked under their long and scanty hair, were fortunate in never having to flaunt such gaudy carnal corsages.

In fact, she stood outside the more or less formal pair-bonding relationships structuring the habiline band. Undoubtedly she had had paramours among the males. Alfie had almost certainly plucked from her the fresh gardenia of her maidenhood, for his chieftaincy of the Minids gave him carnal access to almost every female who had attained menarche. Those exempt from his lust included Dilsey (probably his mother) and, among the younger women, both Miss Jane and Odetta (perhaps his sisters). But if Helen had coupled with Alfie or any of the other hunters, she had apparently never conceived. Her breasts were high and small, her loins lithe and undisfigured.

Helen was a human being in my sight, and our love was not bestial but sublime. I insist upon this point because there are so many people whose prejudices force them to deny what to me was self-evident from the moment of our first coupling.

Perhaps I'm being unfair. One of the core mechanics - time travel via mental projection - is interesting enough. Sometimes a spark of wit shows through in the writing, with a clever turn of phrase: 

Couples coupled when coupling called.

These are immediately undermined by longer passages that demonstrate that the writing is not half so clever as Bishop believes it to be. He wrote the above line and thought to himself, "Well, alliteration is funny!" and decided to beat the living hell out of the horse... two sentences later.

Anyone with eyes would eventually learn that Minid males pressed their suits from behind and that, in order to facilitate disengagement should a dinothere come dithering along or a porcupine prickling past, partners often remained upright.

By a similar token, there are often extended descriptions, odd adjectives, or just unnecessary sentences. The text reeks of Unnecessary Thesaurus Intervention, or UTI. It's fine, I'll rethink that initialism later. Let's just examine this sentence:

“Did you truly love Helen, Mr. Kampa, or was your dalliance with her a matter of rut and propinquity?”

No characters speak consistently with this vocabulary; we just get hit with SAT vocab at random. Why then, should all these writing choices by lumped together? Because they are demonstrative of a passive editor. These are the things that should be reigned in, kept in check. Add in the character development (minimal) and the use of explicitly stating motives instead of showing their impacts: 

Owing to her father’s belief that her intellectual capacity and her independent frame of mind destined her for a calling higher than waiting tables, she had few duties at the Mekong Restaurant.

I was going to call it off here, but I really hated this one. Immediately following the above, there's a little bit of humor - a parenthetical note that the restaurant was a gas station. It's a good bit. Naturally, Bishop does it again two sentences later. Everyone knows that the best way to tell a joke is to tell it two to five times in a row.

Have I mentioned that this book is also boring? It's plain oatmeal, weak tea, unflavored gelatin. It's a bread sandwich. 

That's all I've got to say about this one.

Just kidding, it's encore time! I had to read this sentence, and now you do to.

Then I unrolled the condom’s milky second skin over the instrument of our impending union and turned to face my bride.

Stranger.

I don't even know. This one really kicked me right in the enthusiasm.

I cannot, in good conscience, tell you to read a book.

Maybe just... play a video game or something.