House of Bones

By: Robert Silverberg

Narrated by: Jared Doreck

"House of Bones" is a unique time-travel story that imbues a deep sense of satisfaction on nearly every level. It is a modest tale, recounting the unfortunate fate of the world's first and perhaps last time traveler. After a misguided test run, he's become trapped 20,000 years in the past. Unequipped for survival, his future is uncertain. What's worse, he's surrounded by people so primitive they don't even have a written language. So primitive they take in his unworthy and skill-less self and accept him into their society. This glimpse of what life might have been like for Cro-Magnon man in the late Pleistocene epoch shows us precisely why we can't judge a society by its lack of tool based technology.

Silverberg skillfully extrapolates a fascinating working culture out of what little modern archaeologists and paleoanthropologists know of these people - our ancestors - and creates in the process something to think about when using words like "primitive". "House of Bones" is a sort of mirror image of Isaac Asimov's "The Ugly Little Boy".

©1988 Agberg, LTD (P)2005 AudioText

Critic reviews

"A top-shelf reading by a dynamic reader, a dynamite story and an elegant production combine to make pure aural delight!" ( sffaudio.com)

THE SECRET LANGUAGE

THIS COULD BE ONE HELL OF A PARTY TOWN
I once mentioned that Silverberg should write historical fiction, since he uses history so much in his science fiction. This is pretty close, Jean Auel would be proud. I love Auel, but don't remember any tribes that built houses out of Mammoth bones. Silverberg does a great job of putting the reader in a prehistoric tribe. It is light hearted and a feel good type story, by the Grand Master of Science Fiction.
Narrator and production are good. I like the added music in places. It was not so much that it detracted, but was enough to set the mood.