Millennium is a 1983 science fiction novel by John Varley, featuring a civilization from a far-future Earth using time travel to rescue passengers from airplanes destined to crash. The Earth is heavily polluted in the far future, and humanity's gene pool irreparably damaged; the doomed passengers were being rescued to serve as colonists who would rebuild civilization on a fresh planet once enough had been collected.
The time travellers can only take people destined to die in airplane crashes because otherwise they would be changing the past, which is an enormous problem. Therefore, they sneak onto the planes, remove the living but soon-to-die passengers, and replace them with convincing corpses they have manufactured in the future.
The novel deals with several of the raids, their inevitable discovery in the present day, and the fallout that results from changes to the present day reverberating into the future.
The novel was based on Varley's short story "Air Raid."
A movie, Millennium, was based on this book.
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