Time, Like an Ever-Rolling Stream: A Sequel to the Ragged World

After the critical and popular success of The Ragged World, Judith Moffett returns to the future with this moving tale of the Hefn occupation of Earth and how it affects the planet's native humans - two in particular: Pam Pruitt, a talented young woman from Kentucky, and Liam O'Hara, whose unique friendship with the Hefn Humphrey saved his life.
The two teens journey to a special place in remote Kentucky, Hurt Hollow, where the painter Orrin Hubbell and his wife, Hannah, found a way to live in peace with the planet during the twentieth century.
The prospects of living peacefully seem distant for Pam and Liam, both of whom must find peace with themselves as well as with the Hefn Directive. The marvelous events that befall them en route to Kentucky and in the Hollow itself beautifully depict the subtle ways in which the world shapes them, and the stunning ways in which they change the world.
Time, Like an Ever-Rolling Stream is a remarkable, many-splendored novel by a writer adept at portraying the events of the future and the frailties of the heart.

Early in the 21st century, the Hefn--an alien race who are the slaves of the unseen Gafr--have taken over Earth in order to save it. Prohibiting pollution, they have also forbidden humans to procreate until the population stabilizes. (Moffett set all this up in The Ragged World .) Here, a Hefn named Humphrey has formed the Bureau of Temporal Physics, where nine teenage math prodigies work on Hefn time-travel apparatus; two of them, Liam O'Hara and Pam Pruitt, are the focus of this double-layered story. Pam, at age 26, has written about her life at 14 and has sent a copy of the manuscript to Liam, whose comments appear at the end of each chapter. The chronicle tells of Pam and Liam's vacation from the BTP as teenagers to Hurt Hollow, a back-to-nature farm in Indiana whose residents live off the land without any modern conveniences. Human hostility toward the "benign dictators" comes to a head in a dramatic confrontation involving Humphrey, Liam and Pam and a fundamentalist preacher who believes the Hefn are the Antichrist. Intriguing for its then-and-now structure, this is also an engrossing character study of two teenagers.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Moffett's sequel to the Ragged World (1991): a near-future saga of furry alien overlords demanding ecological retrenchment; judging by the evidence here, she's dug in for a long series, since none of the outstanding issues are settled or even given much of a workout. Instead, the story focuses on the alien Hefn's Bureau of Temporal Physics, set up to teach a handful of human mathematical whizzes how to use time-gates (by peering into the past, the Hefn hope to discover where humans fell off the ecological tracks) and, in particular, on two teenagers, Liam O'Hara and Pam Pruitt, both misfits, both repressing sexual awareness, and both very fond of Humphrey, the Hefn in charge of the project. During a vacation, Liam and Pam visit the Hollow, a famous homestead by the Kentucky river that Pam has known and loved since childhood. The Hollow's present guardian, Jesse, is bitten by a snake and hospitalized, leaving Pam and Liam in charge; Liam invites Humphrey to join them. But, nearby, a rabble-rousing, anti-Hefn preacher is stirring up the locals, already bitterly resentful of the Hefn's bans on high technology and human reproduction. Eventually, the preacher and his henchmen attack, intending to skin Humphrey alive, but a tornado (by coincidence?) kills them and helps convert the preacher into a Hefn advocate. Ecologically correct, with lots of well-handled teenage angst and convincing down-home detail; but--though the foreground is fine--the background remains nebulous, and readers curious about the Big Picture will find little but frustration here. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

A woman's voyage into her past via a series of diary entries, letters to a distant friend, and a novel-in-manuscript (which includes end-of-chapter comments from the distant friend) provides a focus for Moffett's latest exploration of the near future. This sequel to The Ragged World: A Novel of the Hefn on Earth ( LJ 2/15/91) continues the tale of a benevolent invasion of Earth by the Hefn, a race of gnome-like aliens. Moffett's combination of harsh realism with visionary zeal addresses contemporary issues and personal struggles with compassion and insight. This novel belongs in most libraries.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.