ScientificationScientification
Reviewed by Yves Barbero
Ten years after his death in 1984, Joan Simpson Burns, the daughter of the great paleontologist, George Gaylord Simpson, discovered her father's unpublished short novel and decided to do the world a favor by having it published. She did. Simpson's novel is a terrific read on many levels. He, of course, was one of the great dinosaur experts of his generation. But just as important as being accurate, he brought that spark that elevates a novel to literature. It is revealing of his inner emotions.
Stephen Jay Gould, in his afterword said, "... as good as anything Sartre, or any of the French existentialist writers, ever composed on the ineluctability of being alone and responsible for one's action." The plot is relatively straight-forward. A Twenty-second Century man, Sam Magruder, is thrust back 80 million years to live among the dinosaurs of America's Southwest. Knowing that he can never return, since he is an expert in time physics, he manages to leave some stone tablets in a swamp. They are recovered in the 22nd Century.
Simpson's rich descriptions of the Cretaceous landscape, its life, as well as the inner landscape of Magruder's mind is what makes the novella (it is a very short work that can be read in one or two sittings) really work. Coupled with Clarke's introduction (Simpson, according to his daughter, who edited the book, loved Clarke's science fiction): useful for those who are not familiar with the fabric of time travel tales, and Gould's afterword (Gould was a student of Simpson's): very helpful to those of us who lack background in paleontological debates, the book is a full evening's pleasure.
It is engaging despite the fact that science fiction aficionados might not find it quite "genre." But, in this case, if Simpson had attempted to fit it into the science fiction genre, it would probably not have been as rich as it clearly is. I think it compares favorably with those tiny, but rich works, that appear from time to time. Works like Flatland by Edwin A. Abbott, and the better known War of the Worlds and The Time Machine by H. G. Wells. Perhaps we should use Simpson's own term, "scientifiction" to describe it.
[Yves Barbero is the author of The CTZ Paradigm (Doubleday, 1975). He has a keen interest in both science fiction and science policy.]
A version of this review appeared in Creation/Evolution 16(1), Issue 38 (Summer, 1996).
© Copyright 1996 by The National Center for Science Education.
Used with Permission
Yves Barbero
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