Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} The Lincoln Hunters by Wilson Tucker The Lincoln Hunters. Field agent for Time Researchers in the 26th century, Ben Steward combines his skills as historian, anthropologist, and actor to blend into the era he is investigating. When Steward is sent to pre-Civil War America, he learns that something has gone wrong. He'll have to make a second trip-- which could prove fatal. Read More. Field agent for Time Researchers in the 26th century, Ben Steward combines his skills as historian, anthropologist, and actor to blend into the era he is investigating. When Steward is sent to pre-Civil War America, he learns that something has gone wrong. He'll have to make a second trip-- which could prove fatal. Read Less. ISBN 13: 9780671721084. Sent back in time to record a speech by Abraham Lincoln, Ben Steward learns that he has been transported twice--on two consecutive days--and that his double still exists in the same time zone. Reprint. NYT. "synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title. Wilson Tucker (1914-2006) Arthur Wilson 'Bob' Tucker was born in Illinois in 1914. Like many of his contemporaries, he entered science fiction as a fan - something he maintained alongside his professional writing; his fanzine Le Zombie ran from 1938 to 1975, thus coinciding with almost the entirety of his published work. He won one Hugo and two retro Hugos for his fan writing and a retrospective John W. Campbell Memorial Award for best novel. He was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2003. The Joy of Mere Words. Wilson Tucker’s short 1958 novel The Lincoln Hunters is set in 2578. Society has emerged from a fractured past which has seen revolution and the replacement of democracy in the United States with an autocratic emperor. Life expectancy has been extended to as much as 200 years, but there is rationing, and anybody who is unemployed is forcibly conscripted for what is essentially slave labour. In the upheavals preceding this new stability much of the historical record was lost and only a hazy knowledge of the past exists. The plot concerns a Cleveland-based corporation, Time Researchers, which has a monopoly on time travel into the past and uses the technology to send individuals, known as Characters – hired for their ability to blend in – on trips to research events for wealthy clients and if required retrieve artefacts. The novel opens with Amos Peabody, curator of a museum that relies on the retrieval of lost material from the past, commissioning Time Researchers to go back 700 years to recover a lost speech Abraham Lincoln gave on 19 May 1856 in Bloomington, Illinois. This was the beginning of the Republican Party, but the speech was not transcribed. Peabody particularly requests that the mission be led by Benjamin Steward, an experienced time traveller. Many of the Characters regard the people in the periods they are sent to as no more than the dead they will become, but Ben has a keen sense of history, enjoys it, and appreciates the freshness and potential of the different times he visits. He is aware of the faults of the mid-nineteenth century, but conscious that there is more scope for personal initiative than there is in his own time. Unfortunately he had been involved in a disastrous expedition to ancient Rome when a colleague had been hacked to death, and a further black mark in his file could curtail his employment with the organisation. The 1850s should be a routine assignment, but things go wrong from the start when the engineers manage to send Ben, on his solo reconnaissance, to a day later than the target date. He is disturbed to find a piece of recording wire lying in rubbish, and meet a man who already knows him and displays hostility. Something bad appears to have occurred, but he cannot determine what. Returning to his own time, he selects three Characters to accompany him on the mission, but one, Bloch, is an unreliable alcoholic under a great deal of stress. His brother had become unemployed and been forced into a government labour scheme, the irony being that he is effectively a slave in the 26th century, while Ben and company are attending a meeting which will be debating slavery and its abolition in the 19th. The main expedition goes to the right day and a recording of Lincoln’s speech is secured, but Bloch has disappeared and Ben needs to track him down, with the clock ticking to the point when Ben will arrive on his recce. That is critical because of the problem of what would happen if the same person met him- or herself: could they co-exist or would they cancel each other out and vanish. The theory is they would both cease to be, but when he inevitably overstays, only the Ben who has just arrived for the reconnaissance shot is extinguished (the implications, would the company have sent the main mission when Ben failed to return from his first trip for instance, or even how anything described after it could have taken place, are not considered by Tucker). The assumption, hitherto untested, that such an event would cancel out both versions gives the surviving Ben and Bloch, now deemed to be dead ‘back home’, an opportunity to shake the sterile world of 2578 from their very muddy boots, and make their way in the rather more exciting world of 1856; an unsurprising conclusion given the continual emphasis on Ben’s feeling of kinship with it. Tucker makes some oblique but telling points about his own society. Peabody’s initial walk to the Time Researchers’ building allows Tucker to paint a decadent future, but resonating with the twentieth century United States. Youngsters adopt outlandish fashions (as ancient Egyptian styles are trendy, women are virtually topless) and are unwilling to go anywhere except by car; a pedestrian is an eccentric. Like today, information has a monetary value and it is in Time Researchers’ interest to restrict it, as monopolies do; hence forays into the past, being client-driven, are unsystematic. There is a suggestion that we view the past through the lens of the present, and this is influenced ideologically to support the status quo : the emperor rules over a territory divided into city-states, and Time Researchers’ analysts assume this is how the early United States was organised, so rather than Bloomington, where the 1856 convention was held, being the city of Bloomington in the state of Illinois, it is thought of as the city state Bloomington-Illinois. The novel challenges a liberal view that progress will be gradual but unceasing. Because much of history has been lost, the imperial regime can claim it represents a novel approach to political problems, whereas actually it is a type that has been tried often before but which its subjects are not in a position to contrast with alternative forms of governance. A lengthy example of the possibilities for history to be manipulated by those in charge is given in the account of how Egyptian pharaoh Ramses II disastrously lost the Battle of Kadesh to the Hittite Muwatalli II but proclaimed a magnificent victory anyway. He inaugurated a ‘great lie’, to the extent that for thousands of years it was believed, until Time Researchers uncovered the truth of the scale of the Egyptian defeat. Spin in politics is nothing new, and will doubtless still be going on in 2578. The Lincoln Hunters is an enjoyable stab at a time-travel novel, but unsophisticated compared to, say, the mind-bending but logical multiple loops in The Time Traveler’s Wife . The Lincoln Hunters by Wilson Tucker. Wilson Tucker (1914-2006) is a name that many SF fans will have forgotten. The alleged originator of the term ‘space opera’ and the initiator of Tuckerization (whereby friends and family’s names are used as tribute in stories) it seems that these will perhaps be Tucker’s legacy to SF. In his day however he was seen as a recommended author. His output was not as stellar as say, Asimov or Heinlein, but his tales were good, solid, well- researched and much-liked. The Lincoln Hunters is one of those worth resurrecting. The tale itself is now seen as rather mundane perhaps, but at the time of its original publication it must have been a great entertainment. It is essentially a time travel tale. In the rather sterile future of 2578, the company Time Researchers sends people (called ‘Characters’) back in time to record or transcribe famous events for home museums. On this occasion Benjamin Steward is sent as part of a team to audio-record President Lincoln’s so-called ‘Lost Speech’ of May 19, 1856 in Bloomington, Illinois. This was a speech about slavery that, according to history, was so impassioned that the reporters there forgot to write it down. (Alternatively, it has been suggested that the speech was conveniently lost afterwards due to its controversial content.) Steward’s arrival is a little problematical – his time-travelling ‘bullet’ is deposited in a creek, the day of his arrival is the day after the speech has been made – and so things are clearly not off to a good start. Things appear more awry when Steward meets someone who thinks they have met him the day before. This is Owen Lovejoy, one of Lincoln’s fellow speakers and anti-slavery speaker. Steward is noticed by Lincoln and speaks to him. However, interacting with them may have unintended issues for Steward and his team. Much of the latter part of the book is spent trying to deal with the complication that Steward has been sent back to the same place twice and so risks meeting himself in that most-loved of time travel elements, the paradox. Precautions are made to ensure the two don’t meet because if they do it means death. There’s a nicely authentic Western feel to the world of the 1850’s. Set in Tucker’s hometown of Bloomington, it does feel that the setting is genuinely reliable. Tucker doesn’t skimp on the downside either. Bloomington is ‘incredibly dirty’, like …’all the towns and cities of the ancient worlds were dirty beyond belief, when compared to the fastidious cleanliness of his own modern city-state’ (page 61.) Despite all the difficulties and hardships, Steward clearly revels in it. On the weak side for me, the rest of the team are a little odd. Being Characters with stage backgrounds, much of their speech is said as if on a stage, with quotes from Shakespeare, the Second Shakespeare or other staged lines. This is meant to be endearing but actually can be quite wearying over the stretch of a novel. The disappearance of Bobby Bloch in the 1850’s adds tension but really is a situation that shouldn’t have happened. (As an aside, in Tuckerization mode, could ‘Bobby Bloch’ be Robert Bloch, author of Psycho ?) As you might expect for a book over fifty years old, there were parts that have admittedly dated. Using wire for recording purposes was no doubt state of the art in the 1950’s and 60’s but now seems quaint. Having to explain what a President was is a little unnecessary, yet explained away as due to the disappearance of much of the older history. I did find quite interesting the point made as to why that history has disappeared and consequently what the future is like. Under the rule of the Emperor, the 26 th Century seems to be a cleaner, yet more restrictive lifestyle. There is a lengthy passage two thirds of the way in about the Battle of Kadesh, between Egyptian Rameses the Second and Hittite King Muwatallis, whereby Muwatallis won the battle yet whose victory was eradicated from history by the wily Rameses and his reporting coup. All evidence of the win was erased, destroyed and removed and replaced with Rameses’ version, ie: that he won. When asked the purpose of this tale, the Characters are told, “File it away…. And remember it some day when you have need of a big lie.” This perspective becomes more important at the end of the novel which actually is not what you expect. But it’s pretty obvious that this is overall a fun tale and one which read very quickly. Its influence on time travel stories ( The Time Tunnel TV series for example springs to mind) is no doubt important, if only for the little details that Tucker adds. Characters get detailed notes of speech idioms, authentic clothing, important history before being sent to wherever. I see clear connections between this and Connie Willis’s tales, for example. The Lincoln Hunters (1958) Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. The power of time travel to open up the past provides the starting point of Wilson Tucker’s novel. In the 26th century, a business specializing in time travel is hired to record a speech made by Abraham Lincoln in 1856. What seems like an ordinary assignment, though, is soon complicated by an error that sends the team leader, Benjamin Steward, to the morning after speech. Now risking a fatal paradox that may lead to his death, he travels back with his team to the day of the speech itself, where he faces complications that threaten to undermine his mission and may lead even to his death. Tucker’s novel is a short and engaging venture about the perils and complications of time travel. His premise of a history only half-remembered is an entertaining one and his characters, while somewhat dated, are interesting and sympathetic. While not as good as his later time-travel novel, , Wilson provides one of the better efforts at a time travel novel and an enjoyable adventure that entertains the reader. ( ) This 1958 time-travel story is about retrieving the text of Lincoln's 'lost speech' made in Bloomington, Illinois in 1856 at the beginning of his political career. It is told from the perspective of researchers from a distant future where much historical knowledge has been lost. The scene- setting is good, and the time paradox nature of the story, though it works specifically on contrived plot devices, is well carried through. The big problem for me was the central character, the time-travelling researcher, Benjamin Steward. Tucker makes a lot out of his (and his colleagues') acting skills which are required for them to blend into the background of whatever era they are visiting. However, Tucker makes this character speak in a mix of 1950s slang and cod-Shakespearean archaic English. The overall effect, for me at least, was to make him completely bogus, which is a shame. He displays admirable qualities of responsibility and leadership, but I just kept on getting irritated with him. In passing, I learnt some more American history, which was interesting when put into the perspective of current-day political arguments coming out of America. And Tucker's depiction of Future America, shown to us in odd snippets, had interesting resonances with our own time. But the story hardly involves Abraham Lincoln at all, and it employs two or three turns of plot along different tracks before we reach the conclusion. There are more worthwhile books to spend your time on. ( )