Cover for Poul Anderson’s 1974 novel “Fire Time”

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I wish I could say I liked Poul Anderson’s 1974 novel Fire Time. It was being offered from Amazon at a pretty low price and wasn’t available at my local public library. I’d read and liked other books by Anderson. I figured what the heck?

The novel begins with several prisoners being transported to a judge’s private residence on Earth. They had been charged with what seemed to be war crimes, and the judge, who was elderly and infirm, was the only one willing to hear their side of the story. The book proceeds from this point as testimony which could either be really good or really bad.

I couldn’t get past the sort of “muddiness” of the narrative. I tried, but as much as I wanted, the story didn’t pull me in. I never lost myself in this world. It’s a world describing a difficult orbit around three different starts sometimes resulting in “Fire Time,” a catastrophic heating up of the planet’s northern hemisphere that collapses civilization.

You’d think that would be enough.

I suppose that makes the story superficially similar to Asimov’s and Silverberg’s Nightfall, except I liked Nightfall.

I think Anderson tried to describe too much with too little actual material. Of course what do I know since the book was nominated for a Hugo in 1975 for best novel? On the other hand, what were the people who nominated “Fire Time” thinking nearly fifty years ago. This is one book I wish I could take back to the library.