yet another scifi question

May 16, 2005 12:47 PM

since this seems to be "remember a sci-fi book from your childhood" week, i thought i'd pose my own. the story is your basic time-travel adventure, between "today" (read:1950s) and ancient Byzantium. it involved time traveling under the moniker of "shunting" and involved some steamy sex scenes that certainly were fun when i was 13 and reading it. any help?
posted by yonation to Society & Culture (6 answers total)

It really sounds to me like you're combining several different stories by Robert Silverberg. In his stories Ringing the Changes and Tower of Glass, he describes a technology called "shunting," but it's not time travel--it's a way for people to exchange consciousnesses. And he has a collection of stories called Sailing to Byzantium, which, as the name indicates, includes people travelling (but not time-travelling) to a reconstructed Byzantium, but not in present-day: in the far future (although a man from the 1980s is the protagonist).
posted by cerebus19 at 1:00 PM on May 16, 2005

A couple more possibilities: Lest Darkness Fall, a classic by L. Sprague DeCamp; and There Will Be Time, by Poul Anderson.

There are really only so many sci-fi novels dealing with Byzantium.
posted by cerebus19 at 1:41 PM on May 16, 2005

Best answer: It's "Down the Line", by Robert Silverberg.
posted by interrobang at 2:05 PM on May 16, 2005

Best answer: ...I mean "Up the Line". Sorry.
posted by interrobang at 2:07 PM on May 16, 2005

Response by poster: thanks interrobang -- that is it!
posted by yonation at 2:16 PM on May 16, 2005

Odinstream, yours is A Tale of Time City by Diana Wynne Jones, I believe.
posted by redfoxtail at 2:34 PM on May 16, 2005