Fox B. Holden was born in 1923. He contributed quite a few stories to various SF pulps and then after 1956 he is never heard from again. And apart from the fact that he saw military service in World War 2 I can tell you nothing about him.
The Time Armada was published in 1953 and takes place in 1958. Sort of.
Doug Blair is a Congressman who used to be a scientist. He’s been tinkering with a device which he calls the Contraption although he’s convinced it will never work. It’s not quite a time machine. The idea behind it is to capture “tired light” - light reflected from Earth in the past. You can’t capture tired light unless you can travel faster than the speed of light but the Contraption is designed to circumvent that problem by going through the fabric of space-time instead of along it. The Contraption won’t allow time travel but it will allow us to see into the past. As an idea for a science fiction story this is quite good.
However when Doug switches the Contraption on something very unexpected occurs. Doug and his wife find themselves in a strange world. It seems like Earth but it’s obviously a very very different kind of society. The really disturbing thing is that they see a newspaper headline and realise that it’s still 1958. Also unsettling is the fact that Doug and his wife now look like different people.
In this strange society Doug is a very important man in the government. And the government is important. People worship the government. Literally worship it.
And then Doug discovers the most disturbing thing about this society. They have ended war, but at the cost of sacrificing children in vast numbers in ritualised war.
What Doug doesn’t know is that his two ten-year-old sons were also sent into this new society. They’re on Venus, about to be embroiled in horrific carnage.
Meanwhile back on the old Earth two people from the alternate Earth are now inhabiting the bodies of Doug and his wife. And they have plans for Earth. Horrifying plans.
What’s interesting about this novel is that it’s a political novel of sorts and it’s definitely a dystopian novel but despite being written at the height of hysteria over communism it isn’t about communism. This is a different sort of dystopia. It’s a mix of communism and fascism and technocracy and theocracy.
There’s plenty of action as well as Doug has to find a way to escape and to save his sons. He’ll also have to build a new Contraption.
This is truly a bizarre tale. It’s possibly a bit too bizarre for its own good but it has to be said that it’s highly original. It’s a totally different take on dystopian fiction. It grapples with concepts like alternate universes and body transfers and the nature of space-time as well as the nature of politics and economic theories. Like so many science fiction writers of his time Holden has an obsession with over-population. There’s also the fear of nuclear war. Plus it deals with issues of freedom versus social responsibility. It’s pretty ambitious for pulp fiction.
Some of the speculations about alternative ways of organising society don’t entirely make sense but Holden finds ways to circumvent these flaws. Society doesn’t have to be organised on lines that make sense, it’s merely necessary for people to believe that they make sense.
I’ve never read a story quite like this one and while it’s far-fetched it is fascinating. It’s recommended for its sheer quirkiness.
This novel is included in another of Armchair Fiction’s terrific series of two-novel paperback reprints, paired with Milton Lesser’s very entertaining Somewhere I’ll Find You.
There were an amazing number of time travel stories written in the pulp era, particularly in the 1950s. These include Rog Phillips' World of If.
A much earlier novel about seeing into the future (rather than the past) is John Buchan’s 1932 The Gap in the Curtain.
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