Midsummer Century Author:James Blish Some 25,000 years hence, the earth has become a tropical paradise, overrun by rainforest. Humanity has evolved—or devolved—into tribes of death-obsessed atavists capable of communicating with their ancestors by means of latent psychic powers. Too obsessed with the afterlife, they ignore the rise of their evolutionary adversaries, the... more » Birds—intelligent forms of today’s hawks and sparrows, whose primary goal is to eradicate their human competitors.
Due to a freak accident, modern-day astrophysicist John Martels slides down a radio-telescope into the 26th-mellenium mind of the immortal Qvant, an organic computer-brain of an Autarch from the previous age, surviving in an abandoned museum-temple as counselor and oracle to the tribesman. The Qvant is none too pleased by Martels’ intrusion, and the out-of-place Martels would prefer one mind per body. As the tension mounts between the two minds, Martels decides to try his hand at rallying the tribesmen against their Bird adversaries before it’s too late by seeking out a group of humans entrusted with guarding technology from the Qvant’s earlier time. This includes a relay computer that could enhance the Qvant’s abilities—but it could also have the technology for Martels, in a stolen tribesman body, to return back to his own time.« less