Mammoth (Varley)

Fun time-travel romp. The best part: Varley doesn’t even try to explain how the time machine works, which saves a lot of tedious handwaving. Instead, we get extended descriptions of how a very focused (not to say monomaniacal) multi-billionaire locates a frozen mammoth that he wants to clone. He ends up with rather more than that, namely a live juvenile mammoth named Fuzzy, plus some adults. That’s where the story really takes off. Were it not for an excess of bad language, this would be a great young adult book. As it is, this is a fun, if light, read even for non-SF fans.