My rating: 2 of 5 stars"Cryptozoic" is probably the most psychedelic sci-fi book I have ever read. It is a mixed bag actually, Aldiss's writing style swinging wildly between the very crisply intellectual to the most juvenile.
Set in the 2090s, when humankind have figured out that time is actually more of mental construct than a physical one and time travel can actually be equated to mind travel. Mind-Travel becomes a rage, especially in the western world, where the economy is already fragile.
The chief protagonist, Ted Bush, is an artist who has a lot of mind travel experience. When he gets "back to the present" after a long mind travel stint, he realizes that the country (UK) is taken over by military totalitarian government headed by a General who is less than lenient on the mind-travel craze, which he holds responsible for the sad state of economy. Then Bush is arrest for chronic addiction to mind travel but that turns to be just a front. In fact, the army hires him to go back in time and hunt for another mind-travel "criminal" Silverstone - a person Bush thinks he knows. Silverstone turns out to be an "original" thinker with a striking new theory on time. A theory the government doesn't want the public to know.
At less than 200 pages, "Cryptozoic" is short but is often a difficult read. There are parts which are lucidly written but these are few and far between. Moreover, it is the "intellectual" parts of the books that miserably fail - Aldiss tries too hard to bring in whatever scientific theories he is familiar with to justify his mind-travel theory. It just doesn't work. It would have been better if there were chunks left for user to fill in on her own. There are several contradictions in the story that completely mar the reading experience. The last chapter somewhat tries to bring things to a logical conclusion but by then simple readers like me would have already lost interest in the plot.
Overall: still recommended for its unique take on time travel.
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