Hawksbill Station

Hawksbill Station began life as a Nebula and Hugo nominated novella. Silverberg stretched the story by adding back story for the main character, Barret. In addition, he gives us a glimpse of Hawksbill, the inventor of the time machine that allows for a political prison a billion years in the past. The addition to the backstory gives us one of the more fleshed out characters that I have seen from Silverberg's early work. The book is still a spare story at fewer than two hundred pages and provides a pretty crisp and entertaining read. An audio version of the novella is available from the Escape Pod podcast and I enjoyed comparing both works.