Aug 5, 2026 · 9 min · 7 segments
During Robert Silverberg's well-known peak period from 1967 to 1976, he put his own spin on various familiar SF tropes, from psychic powers to robots. One that he returned to frequently was time…
Hawksbill Station imagines a scenario in which an authoritarian regime, the syndicalists, rises to power in the United States during the 1980s.
It abolishes the presidency, tightens its grip on power, and begins a campaign to smash the radical groups which oppose its rule.
While it does this, a brilliant mathematician, Edmund Hawkesbill, devises a set of equations which lay the groundwork for a time machine, albeit one which can only send people and objects back in time.
The regime uses this technology to exile its opponents in the primordial past, being too civilised to put men to death and too cowardly to let them remain alive and at large.
The novel comprises two narrative threads, which both centre on Jim Barrett, a political radical and sworn enemy of the syndicalists.
In one thread, Barrett is the ageing leader of the prisoners at Hawksbill Station, a coastal penal colony in the late Cambrian period, a silent, sterile place.
In this bleak era, no life has yet evolved on land, and the inmates share the world only with the strange and prolific species of the primordial ocean.
Nursing an injured foot, Barrett tries to help the other inmates to hold on to reality and some shred of hope.
The other narrative thread, which was added for the 1968 novel version, is set over a longer period, and details Barrett's life prior to his inevitable arrest and exile.
These episodes explore Barrett's development into a revolutionary, and his personal ties both to the rebellion and to the syndicalist regime it is pledged to overthrow.
Hawksbill Station imagines a scenario in which an authoritarian regime, the syndicalists, rises to power in the United States during the 1980s.
It abolishes the presidency, tightens its grip on power, and begins a campaign to smash the radical groups which oppose its rule.
While it does this, a brilliant mathematician, Edmund Hawkesbill, devises a set of equations which lay the groundwork for a time machine, albeit one which can only send people and objects back in time.
The regime uses this technology to exile its opponents in the primordial past, being too civilised to put men to death and too cowardly to let them remain alive and at large.
The novel comprises two narrative threads, which both centre on Jim Barrett, a political radical and sworn enemy of the syndicalists.
In one thread, Barrett is the ageing leader of the prisoners at Hawksbill Station, a coastal penal colony in the late Cambrian period, a silent, sterile place.
In this bleak era, no life has yet evolved on land, and the inmates share the world only with the strange and prolific species of the primordial ocean.
Nursing an injured foot, Barrett tries to help the other inmates to hold on to reality and some shred of hope.
The other narrative thread, which was added for the 1968 novel version, is set over a longer period, and details Barrett's life prior to his inevitable arrest and exile.
These episodes explore Barrett's development into a revolutionary, and his personal ties both to the rebellion and to the syndicalist regime it is pledged to overthrow.
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