Chronospace
Review
by : Li
Rapkin
Written
by : Allen
Steele
|
In 25
words or less: Chronospace is a time-travel/UFO story told
mainly from the point of view of scientists.
Fortunately,
it isn't loaded down with technical jargon or people standing
around and explaining how the time machine works-any more
than a normal, everyday conversation on a bus discusses the
history and applications of the internal combustion engine.
Like many people with a liberal arts background, I don't really
CARE how the damn thing works-I just want a good story…and
Steele delivers.
I'm not
giving anything away by telling you that the premise is that
UFOs are actually ships used by time travelers from the future.
Chronospace is one of the few time-travel books I've read
that gracefully evades the problem of which verb tenses apply
to things that have happened in the future and will happen
in the past. He has also solved the problem of how to deal
with paradoxes created by time travel by having the characters
more confused than the readers. By the time the story reached
the point when the time travelers are interacting with themselves,
I not only understood EXACTLY what was going on, I had an
incredible appreciation for the way the beginning of the book
was written. I also thoroughly enjoyed the paradox timeline
created by the time travelers, enough that I hope he returns
to this timeline in a future novel. Steele also worked fellow
SF writer Greg Benford into the story; I hope Benford gets
as much of a kick out of it as I did.
I highly
recommend this novel, especially to UFO "enthusiasts"; Steele
debunks the entire concept of the alien UFO as part of the
plot. He not only takes aim at, but scores a direct hit on,
psychics and people who take Whitely Streiber seriously. Not
that there aren't some weird things going on in the story…
|
