Book Identification Help!

[andrewducker]

It starts with an assassin, who (IIRC) has no memories before a certain point. It ends with a battle of wits on a solar mining platform slowly descending towards the sun and certain death. There's bits of talk about circular theories of society, a bit of time travel, and the main character learns to use his sense in reverse (projecting images from his eyes, for instance).

Anyone ID this? The name is on the tip of my tongue, but I can't quite place it.

Comments

[drplokta]

Sounds rather like The Golden Age by John C Wright, which has several (but not all) of those elements.

[andrewducker]

Sadly not - Golden Age does have the solar platform bit, but it's not the book I'm looking for, which dates from the 70s (at least, if not earlier).

I keep getting "Charles" as the first name of the author, but I'm not actually sure. TBH, if anyone would get it I figured it would be you :->

[andrewducker]

Got it!

I remembered the alternate title (Flight Into Yesterday).

It's "The Paradox Men" by Charles Harness.

[pisica.livejournal.com]

If no one gets it you can try whatwasthatbook.

[fjm.livejournal.com]

Possibly Asimov's The Currents of Space (1952)

[andrewducker]

Nope, not an Asimov. I'm not convinced this author even wrote more than one book,

[the-gardener.livejournal.com]

He wrote a number of other novels -- a list is here -- but none of them had the same impact as The Paradox Men. (The only other novel on the list that I know I've read, because I have a copy of it, is The Ring of Ritornel, and I can't recall a thing about it.)

[andrewducker]

Got it!

I remembered the alternate title (Flight Into Yesterday).

It's "The Paradox Men" by Charles Harness.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

The odd part is that it's clearly not Brin's Sundiver, but the description fits in a number of ways

[andrewducker]

There are only so many ideas to go round :->

[sterlingspider.livejournal.com]

You seem to have gotten it, but I was reminded of a Stanislaw Lem Book, I can't remember the name offhand (Fiasco maybe?), but its probably worth reading all of them to figure it out for yourself anyway :)