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A review by nwhyte
Cryptozoic! by Brian W. Aldiss
3.0
https://nwhyte.livejournal.com/3762027.html
Cryptozoic! aka An Age shows more of Aldiss's greatness as a writer than The Primal Urge, but doesn't quite come together as a novel. A couple of hundred years from now (in a setting which nonetheless feels like England in 1967), people have developed the technology of mental time-travel by use of a drug (called CSD, totally different from LSD of course). Our protagonist returns from an extended mental time trip to find that a fascist government has taken over, and he is sent on a meandering quest to eliminate a fellow time-traveller who is a threat to the government. It's the sort of story that Moorcock and Ballard were doing just that bit better at the time, but there are some Aldissian twists to it all the same (notably the protagonist's relationship with his father and his lover).
Cryptozoic! aka An Age shows more of Aldiss's greatness as a writer than The Primal Urge, but doesn't quite come together as a novel. A couple of hundred years from now (in a setting which nonetheless feels like England in 1967), people have developed the technology of mental time-travel by use of a drug (called CSD, totally different from LSD of course). Our protagonist returns from an extended mental time trip to find that a fascist government has taken over, and he is sent on a meandering quest to eliminate a fellow time-traveller who is a threat to the government. It's the sort of story that Moorcock and Ballard were doing just that bit better at the time, but there are some Aldissian twists to it all the same (notably the protagonist's relationship with his father and his lover).