The Green Futures of Tycho

by William Sleator

• ISBN13: 9780765352385
• ISBN10: 0765352389
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-10-01
• Publisher: Starscape

Summary

When eleven-year-old Tycho discovers that the mysterious egg-shaped object he dug up in his garden is a time travel device, he can't resist using his newfound power. Soon he is jumping back and forth in time, mostly to play tricks on his bossy older brothers and sister. But every time he uses the device, he notices that things are different when he gets back-and the futures he visits are getting darker and scarier. Then Tycho comes face-to-face with the most terrible thing of all: his grown-up self. Can Tycho prevent the terrible future he sees from coming true?

Author Biography

For more than thirty years, William Sleator has thrilled readers with his inventive books. His House of Stairs was named one of the best novels of the twentieth century by the Young Adult Library Services Association. He divides his time between homes in Boston and rural Thailand.

Table of Contents

“My nine-year-old is passionate in his enjoyment of Sleator's books—and so am I.”—Orson Scott Card, best-selling author of Ender’s Game, on William Sleator

“Sleator’s expert blend of future and horror fiction is unusually stark, dark, and intriguing.”—School Library Journal on The Green Futures of Tycho

“The combination of logic and horror gives the telling a Poe-like quality.”—The Horn Book on The Green Futures of Tycho

Excerpts

Green Futures of Tycho

1

ONLY A BRONTOSAURUS SAW THE BEINGS drop the thing in the swamp. Once the brontosaurus's small, slow brain realized the beings were neither edible plants nor dangerous enemies, it forgot about them. And so it did not disturb the thing they left behind.

For several million years the thing sank down slowly into the swamp. Then an ocean came and covered everything, and the thing lay under the waves for another eighty million years or so. Later on an earthquake turned the ocean bottom into a mountain, and there the thing stayed for more uncounted years as the mountaintop grew round and old and small. Finally a glacier picked it up and carried it for thousands of miles, leaving it behind when the ice melted in the sun. And there the thing remained for many more centuries, quite close to the surface of the earth, miraculously undisturbed.

Until Tycho Tithonus decided to make a vegetable garden in the backyard. He dug the thing up with his first shovelful of earth.

Copyright © 1981 by William Sleator