“Dinosaur Beach” by Keith Laumer

 Fun little time travel book — 4 stars

I stumbled across “Dinosaur Beach” by happenstance, and decided to give it a chance. It’s a quick read from 1971 (my edition was only 151 pages), and worth your time.

The novel’s structure initially appears pretty chaotic: Ravel -- a Time Agent whose job involves repairing a time line fractured by earlier chrononauts -- completes an assignment in 1936 while falling for a “native” girl named Lisa. But before that romance can get very far, Ravel is summoned back to headquarters in the prehistoric era, the headquarters known as “Dinosaur Beach.”

Then an attack on Dinosaur Beach sends him ricocheting through various temporal coordinates. During one of these unplanned jumps, he accidentally alters a past time line, resulting in the death of his younger self -- a paradox that further complicates the narrative.

Eventually, Ravel crosses paths with another time agent, a woman whose existence threatens his own. According to the laws of temporal physics, parallel time lines cannot coexist indefinitely -- one must be erased to stabilize the other. As they circle each other warily, neither can determine which of them belongs to the primary time line and which is the aberration destined for elimination.

As the pages turn, subtle clues emerge, hinting that these seemingly disconnected incidents share invisible threads. Meanwhile, Ravel’s identity -- both to the reader and to himself -- begins to fracture and reassemble like a jigsaw puzzle with missing pieces. The narrative builds through revelation after startling revelations that cascade into a finale that rewards the reader’s patience. 

“Dinosaur Beach” (in spite of its somewhat misleading title) makes for intellectual, and satisfying, science fiction. If you get a chance, check it out.