Past Master

Past Master by RA Lafferty, 191 pages

In the 26th century, the golden world of Astrobe is in crisis - but a strange sort of crisis which no one seems to understand.  Ever increasing numbers of citizens are abandoning well-regulated lives of luxury and ease in the glittering cities for brief, miserable lives of toil and tears in the slums of Cathead.  To save their utopia, the secret clique which imagines it really rules Astrobe turns to the man who wrote the book on utopia, sending a renegade pilot back in time to bring forward St Thomas More to be the next World President, the new King, the Past Master.

Lafferty writes with a New Wave style that throws off ideas liberally, but rarely stops to examine them or fit them into a consistent framework.  Here as elsewhere, this produces a certain sense of disorientation, a sort of fictional culture shock which, in this case, fits the plot, but may not be to the liking of all readers.  Despite being a short science fiction novel, Past Master is an epic story, and surprisingly deep.