Millennium (novel)

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Millennium
Cover of first hardcover edition
Author	John Varley
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre(s)	Science fiction novel
Publisher	Berkley Books
Publication date	1983
Media type	Print (Hardcover & Paperback)
Pages	215 pp
ISBN	ISBN 0-425-06250-3

Millennium is a 1983 science fiction novel by John Varley. It was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1984.

[edit] Plot introduction

Millennium features a civilization that has dubbed itself "The Last Age". Due to millennia of warfare of every type (nineteen nuclear wars alone), the Earth has been heavily polluted and humanity's gene pool irreparably damaged. They have thus embarked on a desperate plan; time travel into the past, collect healthy humans, and send them to an uncontaminated planet to rebuild civilization.

The time travelers can only take people that will have no further effect on the timeline - those who have vanished without a trace, or died without being observed - otherwise they would be changing the past, which risks a temporal paradox and perhaps even a catastrophic breakdown of the fabric of time. Though they collect everyone they can, they exert a great deal of effort on those destined to die in various disasters such as sinking ships and crashing airplanes. As such incidents leave no survivors to report interference and change the timeline, they can freely remove the living but soon-to-die victims, and replace them with convincing corpses they have manufactured in the future.

The novel deals with several of the raids, their inevitable discovery in the present day, and the fallout that results from changes to the present day reverberating into the future.

The story follows Louise Baltimore, who is in charge of the "snatch team" that goes back into the past to kidnap people who would otherwise die. Because of the massive pollution and the genetic damage she has sustained, she is missing one leg and must get advanced medical treatment daily. Her appearance is quite ugly due to skin damage and other problems, however, she wears a special "skin suit" which acts to make her look beautiful and gives her a functional artificial leg.

The team she leads uses a "time gate" to appear in the bathroom aboard an airplane in flight. Dressed to look like flight attendants, they begin to bluff the passengers into entering the bathroom where they are pushed into the gate, to arrive in the future. After large numbers of people disappear, the remaining passengers become suspicious. The future team then uses special weapons to stun them before throwing them through the gate.

During the removal of the passengers, they run into the unknown cause of the crash: a hijacker. Though the ensuing battle is entirely one-sided, one of the snatch team members loses their stun weapon in the scuffle. While she searches for it, the rest of the team finishes removing the passengers and the real flight attendants. The team then scatters pre-burnt body parts around the plane so they are found after the crash.

As the plane approaches the moment when it is destined to crash, the weapon can not be found. Louise reminds the team member that lost it that they must stay behind (a death sentence, as the airplane will crash) as that is the penalty for losing it. Nothing is supposed to remain behind that doesn't belong in that time period.

Upon returning to her present (our future) Louise is informed that the weapon that was left behind has caused a paradox and that it must be recovered to prevent a breakdown in the fabric of time.

The novel then continues with her efforts to go back in time to fix the paradox created.