No Enemy But Time - Michael Bishop - Easton Press - Ellen Farley Artwork - Science Fiction

When no enemy but time won the nebula award in 1982, the vote for science fiction writers of American confirmed what everybody had known for years: Michael Bishop was one of the most skillful writers working in the field. The novel was focused around the child of a casual encounter between a black American soldier and a mute Spanish prostitute. Given the way to a group of American girls near a US airbase and raised by one of their families John Monegal finds there is no place for himself in his own period. He dreams intensely about the ancient Pleistocene until he meets up with a scientist who is a time travel project, and enables him at last to find a home identical to his dreams. The novel combines traditional science fiction seem time travel with literary intentions. It must've seemed to science fiction writers who voted at the nebula the kind of work for which the award was established Bishop was one of the inheritors of the literary tradition established by HG Wells and nurtured by such successors as John W Campbell. The introduction to no enemy of top but time was specially commissioned by the Easton press from Pamela Sargent herself a success in bringing literary skills to the traditional science fiction topics.