The Dechronization of Sam Magruder - George Gaylord Simpson

The Dechronization of Sam Magruder is one of the stranger works of fiction that has appeared in recent years. Its author, George Gaylord Simpson, was widely regarded as the greatest paleontologist of the twentieth century. He died in 1984, but the manuscript of this intriguing novella about a twenty-second-century scientist was not found by his daughter until ten years after his death.

Did Simpson want this time-travel story eventually to be published? Was Sam Magruder Simpson's alter-ego, the scientist of his imagination who was able to observe dinosaurs the way they really were?

No one will ever be sure of these answers, but what we do know is that Sam Magruder, a fortyish researcher chronologist, vanished on February 30, 2162, as he was working on a problem of quantum theory. Thrown back in time eighty million years to the prehistoric Jurassic era, Magruder, endowed with the intelligence of a modern man, discovers that he is the only human being in a valley filled with dinosaurs. Magruder, inventive and resourceful, keeps a stone-slab diary and struggles mightily to survive by feeding on lizards and scrambled turtle eggs, even as menacing tyrannosaurs try to gnaw off his limbs.

Filled with magnificent descriptions of dinosaurs the way they were just before the great floods, The Dechronization of Sam Magruder is not only a classic story told in the tradition of H.G. Well's The Time Machine, but a philosophical work that astutely examines the reality of modern existence against a backdrop of our prehistoric past.

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This is such a great little story! The bright pink cover is at odds with the storyline but don't let that put you off, I actually quite like it...it's 'quirky'. A very quick read and therein lies it's only flaw....it ended too soon. I hung on every word and would have liked to see many, many more of them.

The book was only ever intended as an amusement for the author, but by chance was it found after his death and published, and lucky for us that it was.

Short synopsis would be that an academic (Sam McGruder) from the far future (the year 2162), travels back in time to a place in prehistory where dinosaurs roamed, with no chance of ever getting back. Now, it's not JUST the story that hooks the reader, it's all the thought provoking ideas that the story presents too. What would 'I' do? How would 'I' cope? Would I cope?!

I wanted it to go on and on and on......

It's very short so any details I give are likely to be spoilers but suffice to say it's a great book and one not to be missed. From the moment you pick it up it will draw you in. Even if it's not your usual type of reading material, it's still worth the read.

Remember....don't let the pink cover put you off!