Project Mastodon

Project Mastodon is a classic Clifford D. Simak time-travel story of prehistoric opportunity, modern ambition, and the dangerous business of turning the past into property. When a private time-travel discovery opens a route back to the age of mammoths and mastodons, the possibility is not merely scientific. It becomes commercial, political, and deeply human: a chance to found a new enterprise outside the limits of ordinary history, but also a temptation to exploit a world that has not yet become the present.

Simak brings his characteristic intelligence and dry Midwestern practicality to a premise that could easily have become simple adventure. The result is a compact science fiction novelette about invention, capitalism, wilderness, extinct life, and the uneasy consequences of access to deep time. For readers of Golden Age science fiction, classic time travel, prehistoric adventure, vintage magazine SF, and Clifford D. Simak's thoughtful speculative fiction, Project Mastodon remains a sharp and engaging example of mid-century science fiction at its most efficient. Explore other exciting Positronic Books devoted to classic science fiction, fantasy, and mystery.