No Enemy but Time, by Michael Bishop

For me, science fiction needs to evoke a convincing reality, even though it may describe improbable situations on worlds completely removed from our own.  One of the great accomplishments of No Enemy but Time, by Michael Bishop (1982), is that its account of a young man who travels 2.5 million years in time back to the African past is convincing.  The normality of what Bishop describes, in language that is neither hyperbolic or understated and that evokes a convincing reality set in the Pleistocene world with early pre-human and human species, impressed this reader.  Certain elements in the novel may stretch one’s credibility: the main character Joshua Kampa, whom we follow from his infancy to middle age, is a “spirit dreamer,” an extremely rare kind of person who can dream back and forward in time.  Joshua’s dream visions are of Pleistocene Africa.  The U. S. military has already learned about the existence of spirit dreamers and is trying to exploit them for, one presumes, use in warfare. The military develops technology that uses Joshua’s dreaming ability to transport him back to the Pleistocene past, where he studies the behavior of prehistoric hominids. Bishops account of Joshua’s experiences in the Pleistocene are vivid and interesting.  Mainly they are about his life with a small group of hominids, and his close relationship to one of them in particular.

The novel moves back and forth in time from Joshua’s life growing up in the United States to his experiences in Pleistocene Africa. This is an effective narrative strategy, especially given that the nature of time is one of its concerns: the interrelatedness of past and present. The novel is also about the nature of human identity, the importance of human speech, and the point at which pre-humans became human.

My one complaint with the novel is that its final chapters provided an unsatisfying resolution—they don’t measure up to the Pleistocene sections. The depictions of the fictional African country of Zarakal border on being satirical, and Joshua’s interactions with and attitudes towards the hominids with whom he lives sometimes seem patronizing or colonial (if that is the right word). Bishop apparently means the fact that Joshua is African by birth to be significant, as he returns to his ancestral birthplace in the distant African past.  However, since all races are descended from African hominids, his African identity is not essential to the success of the novel.

No Enemy but Time won the 1982 Nebula Award for Best Novel, one of the leading recognitions for science fiction.