The Dechronization of Sam Magruder

A Novel

George Gaylord Simpson; Edited by Joan Simpson Burns; Introduction by Arthur C. Clark; Afterward by Stephen Jay Gould

St. Martin's Griffin

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This lost novella by the century's most renowned paleontologist has been called the greatest time-travel story in more than one hundred years.

Vanishing from Earth on February 30, 2162, while working on a problem of quantum theory, research chronologist Sam Magruder is thrown back 80 million years in time. Endowed with the intelligence of a twenty-second-century man, Magruder struggles to survive, feeding on scrambled turtle eggs and diligently recording his observations on a stone-slab diary, even as menacing tyrannosaurus try to gnaw off his limbs.

Filled with magnificent descriptions of the dinosaurs as only Simpson himself could render them, The Dechronization of Sam Magruder is not only a classic time-travel tale but a philosophical work that astutely ponders the complexities of human existence and achievement.

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Praise for The Dechronization of Sam Magruder

"This novella brims with an intellectual vitality...The Dechronization of Sam Magruder is a small gem, and readers who prize elegance over bombast will be rewarded by seeking it out." --San Francisco Chronicle

"The late George Gaylord Simpson's short novel is an amazing little discovery." --Alan Cheuse, All Things Considered

"Excellent physical descriptions of dinosaurs and their various adaptations...[But][ amid the sauropods and hadrosaurs is a flesh-and-blood man, aching with total and irreversible loneliness." --Alan Lightman, The New York Times Book Review
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About the Author

George Gaylord Simpson; Edited by Joan Simpson Burns; Introduction by Arthur C. Clark; Afterward by Stephen Jay Gould

George Gaylord Simpson, widely regarded as the greatest vertebrate paleontologist of the twentieth century, was a professor at Harvard University. He died in 1984.

George Gaylord Simpson
Joan Simpson Burns

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Available Formats and Book Details

The Dechronization of Sam Magruder
A Novel
George Gaylord Simpson; Edited by Joan Simpson Burns; Introduction by Arthur C. Clark; Afterward by Stephen Jay Gould

Trade Paperback

Trade Paperback
St. Martin's Press
St. Martin's Griffin
April 1997
Trade Paperback
ISBN: 9780312155148
ISBN10: 031215514X
5 x 7 1/2 inches, 160 pages
$9.95
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St. Martin's Griffin

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