Hawksbill Station by Robert Silverberg (1967)
"Hawksbill Station" (1967) is a lovely prose novella by Robert Silverberg. It creates an entire world-rationale and then reverses it, all in about fifty pages.
Plot: Rulers in the early 2020s get rid of their incorrigible political agitators by sending them on a one-way trip to 1 Billion B.C.
....There were no harmful physiological effects to time-travel, but it could be a jolt to the consciousness. The last moments before the Hammer descended were very much like the final moments beneath the guillotine.
The departing prisoner took his last look at the world of rocket transport and artificial organs, at the world in which he had lived and loved and agitated for a political cause, and then he was rammed into the inconceivably remote past on a one-way journey. It was a gloomy business, and it was not very surprising that the newcomers arrived in a state of emotional shock.
Barrett elbowed his way through the crowd. Automatically, the others made way for him. He reached the lip o…
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