Far into the future, Hartstein’s graduation present from his grandparents is a wonderful trip into the past. In the world of George Alec Effinger’s The Bird of Time, time travel is a lucrative tourist industry, with one smallish issue: two percent never come back. This cover-up is the work of something called The Agency, which conveniently hasn’t told Hartstein that there’s a war going on on the other side. Have a nice holiday, Hartstein, and come back…er…soon? Whenever? At all?

The Bird of Time is one of seventeen great works by the award-winning Effinger.  You may see all of them, including his great “Budayeen” series (When Gravity Fails, A Fire in the Sun, The Exile Kiss and Budayeen Nights), on his author page.

The subtitle for George Alec Effinger’s Those Gentle Voices is “A Promethean Romance of the Spaceways,” That’s a lot of concept to pack into a single subtitle, so maybe we should elaborate.

“Because it’s there…” That was why Earth men climbed Mt. Everest and why, in 2017, they set out for the distant star, Wolf 359. In 1988, they had learned that intelligent inhabitants from a planet orbiting Wolf 359 had been signaling Earth. That fact was reason enough to dispatch a manned probe to explore and investigate. But perhaps there was another reason for the journey. A reason too incredible for Earth people ever to imagine. A reason they might never understand even when they land on the planet they call Jennings’ World.

Author George Alec Effinger was a true master of satirical Science Fiction. Before his death in 2002, he gained the highest esteem amongst his peers for his pitch-perfect stylistic mimicry and his great insight into the human condition. Despite a life filled with chronic illness, Effinger was a prolific novelist and short story writer, earning multiple Nebula and Hugo Award nominations. You can see more than a dozen of them on his author page.