Island in the Sea of Time
by S. M. Stirling · first published 1998
43% recommend57% neutral
It's spring on Nantucket and everything is perfectly normal, until a sudden storm blankets the entire island. When the weather clears, the island's inhabitants find that they are no longer in the late twentieth century...but have been transported instead to the Bronze Age! Now they must learn to survive with suspicious, warlike peoples they can barely understand and deal with impending disaster, in the shape of a would-be conqueror from their own time.
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…takes place in a world in which Canada emerged as a major world power, but for the life of me I can't rememeber the title. - the 1632 series (Eric Flint)... see also S. M. Stirling's Nantucket series ("Island in the Sea of Time", et al.), and H. Beam Piper's novel Kalvan of Otherwhen Non-fiction: - An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (Hume) - the surviving words and works of Epicurus, and Diogenes the Cynic - Freakonomics…
on “Ask YC: favorite books” ↗This is so interesting because one of my favorite books is Island in the Sea of Time by S. M. Stirling. It's an alternative history sci-fi book where the author proposes that greeks are sending envoys to britain in 1250bc for trade. To be precise, Iberian greek colonies are sending…
on “Tin Found in Israel from 3k Years Ago Comes from Cornwall” ↗…else has any other recommendations in same genre of time travel and re-booting up civilisation it be great to hear! The island of Nantucket goes back to the Bronze Age. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Island_in_the_Sea_of_Time
on “1632 by Eric Flint (2000)” ↗Island in the Sea of Time was published in 1998, and spawned a sub-genre. Speaking of Stirling, his series The Domination is in the same class as Ender's Game and Dune, at least, for world-building, and the first one was published…
on “Has sci-fi run out of steam?” ↗I liked Island in the Sea of Time, which is supposedly set on the other side of the same "Emberverse." But I got really tired of the other novels in that universe after a while (both the Nantucket and the Dies the Fire branches). Which…
on “Entitlement issues (2009)” ↗…dangerous and their adventures any less epic. ;-) BTW, tracked down the Japanese-island-chain-in-Isekai as well: https://www.novelupdates.com/series/nihonkoku-shoukan/ "Basically, the Japanese version of Island in the Sea of Time. For clarity: The summoned area of Japan are the four disputed Kuril Islands, Japan Home Islands, and Ryuku Islands"
on “The terrifyingly prescient ‘Serial Experiments Lain,’ 20 years later (2018)” ↗…slaves being prevented from learning to read. Forced illiteracy in this context was a tool of oppression. [1] I think in one of S.M. Sterling’s fictional books (On the Ocean of Eternity?? Part of the Island in the Sea of Time series, anyway) there’s a great exchange with a Babylonian scribe who laughs at the simplistic alphabet of the American, condescendingly remarking that child could learn that, to which the guy replied,…
on “Cantonese Font with Pronunciation” ↗