1972 Locus Poll Award nominee, best SF novel
IN THE BEGINNING...
there was no Brooklyn, no St. Louis, no Shakespeare, no moon, no hunger, no death...
IN THE BEGINNING... there were no real men, no real women, nothing but dispassionately passionate ambisexuals of the lowest and highest order...
IN THE BEGINNING...
the heavens, the seas and the Earth belonged to more intelligent species than a man called Clay could ever have dreamed possible in his own time.
But his own time as a man had passed, and now his time as the son of man had come!
Clay is a man from the 20th Century who is somehow caught up in a time-flux and transported into a distant future. The earth and the life on it have changed beyond recognition. Even the human race has evolved into many different forms, now coexisting on the planet. The seemingly omnipotent Skimmers, the tyrannosaur-like Eaters, the sedentary Awaiters, the squid-like Breathers, the Interceders, the Destroyers—all of these are "Sons of Man". Befriended and besexed by the Skimmers, Clay goes on a journey which takes him around the future earth and into the depths of his own soul. He is human, but what does that mean?
Robert Silverberg is an American author, best known for writing science fiction. He is a multiple winner of both the Hugo and Nebula Awards.
Silverberg received a Nebula award in 1986 for his novella Sailing to Byzantium, which takes its name from Yeats' poem; a Hugo in 1990 for Enter a Soldier. Later: Enter Another; and in 2004 he was named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction Writers of America.
([Source][1])
[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Silverberg
