When I was a kid, on a cruise with my parents – to Alaska, I think? – I made a practice of lurking in the cruise ship’s shitty little “library.”  Like you do.  And, in the course of combing it for anything that might plausibly be interesting, I found this book.

I remember a lot of details, or at least think I remember them.  I can’t tell how much of this I’m actually getting wrong.  I’ve been unable to find any leads on any of it, even in this miraculous age of Perfect Internet Knowledge, which is causing me to feel like maybe I’m crazy and just hallucinated the whole thing somehow. 

Anyway.  Point is, if any of this rings any kind of bell, please let me know, I’d be extremely grateful.

Treasure at the End of Time is a tiny pulpy paperback sci-fi book, published in (I believe) the ‘60s or ‘70s.

It’s…dreck, pure extruded genre-fiction product, and ridiculously hackneyed in a way that nothing today could possibly get away with.  The hero is a red-haired barbarian warrior from a jungle planet who fights with “twin ion-forged swords.”  The main villain is a mincing albino aristocrat. 

The main plot involves our hero and his party finding a way to time-travel to the final moments of the universe, so that they can retrieve the titular “treasure at the end of time,” which was put there by wise aliens.  It turns out, no lie, that all they find is a hologram explaining that the real treasure is friendship and bravery.

But right before that happens, while they’re actually time-traveling, there’s a two-page segment where you see the entire history of the universe speeding by in super-fast-forward.  I remember this as being weirdly and hauntingly beautiful, and very good at conveying a sense of “even the most glorious works of man last for no time at all in the face of eternity,” and being like 5000% better than anything else in the book. 

Is any of this real?  Anyone?  Help…