Time-slip science fiction from 1960. Four children see a time machine appear when they're on holiday in a remote part of Cornwall, climb inside, and get taken thre hundred years into the future.

The future setting is a mixture of interesting, weird and silly. Population has massively increased, so there are huge cities with residential blocks alternating with vertical farms, and much of the sea has been turned into reclaimed land. (Energy sources for the vertical farms - all lit by artificial light - are not discussed.) Flying cars work on the hovercraft principle - fine until you want to turn a corner. English is an archaic language and hardly anyone speaks it. My favourite: in London, some historic buildings still exist, such as St Paul's, which is still there in the atrium of the London University building!

But then it gets weirder. A lot of decisions are made using the "Brain", a large computer (though, it is stressed, not an AI). Although the children are trying to hide their views from the Brain, it doesn't occur to them that using a translation computer to communicate with their new friends might let the Brain know what's happening. And computers (the illustration shows a computer of the 1950s or '60s) still provide all their output on paper, even though video conferencing is universal for human interactions.

Such mixed world-building might not have been a problem if there had been a strong plot or strong characters, but unfortunately this book has neither. The four children - two brits, two Americans; two boys, two girls - seem to have no distinguishing characteristics at all. Even their manner of speech is much the same, with few Americanisms to distinguish the American characters. The villain, a professor of archaic languages (who therefore conveniently speaks fluent English) has a little more character, but even when the children discuss her motivations, she doesn't seem to have any depth. (For 1960, I suppose it was fairly progressive to have a female professor at all!).

As for the plot, it is very simple, and the few complexities don't fit very well: for example, the people who follow the kids on their escape back to Cornwall and the time machine, and disable their flying car, just leave them there. What was their motive? Were they working for the villain? If so, was she acting outside the law? Why didn't she just have the kids arrested and returned to her?

Towards the end we get an episode in the Bronze Age, when they are accidentally sent to 1960BC instead of home. We get some stereotypical warfare between stone-age and bronze-age cultures, with a lot of strange views (except that at least the stone-age people have mud huts, not caves!)

All in all, it is not surprising that this book has fallen into obscurity. For release.

At the emergency call point in car park zone B1