Rural US portal space travel scifi: Aliens need a portal on earth, to pass through, and they select Enoch as station keeper. Bonus: As long as he’s in the station, he doesn’t age. This goes well for over a hundred years (Enoch starts out fighting for Abe Lincoln). But in more modern times, the book being written in 1963, the CIA and other parties start being suspicious.
The book is mostly a commentary on the cold war, because everything had to be, back then. It does well, though, and sneaks up on you a bit. I enjoyed this – the pace is slow, but for such a short book, that’s charming and it’s neat to see old scifi. This one has aged very well. Exploring both Enoch’s life and greater conflicts under the lense of humanity on the one hand and ethics on the other gets interesting really fast. As a bonus, the aliens aren’t humanoid or boring and the protagonist isn’t a total cliché either.
