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"..one
of the best treatments of time paradoxes in sf."
-
David Pringle
It couldn't
be true - but it was.
The ancient
ruins that dotted Earth's landscape seemed to be disobeying the laws of
time, become less and less decrepit as the years went by.
Everyone
had his own theory, but it was only when scientists perfected their time
machines that the awful truth dawned. The ruins were getting younger every
day, and the builders came not from the past but from Earth's own future,
from a society occupying the same planet yet moving in time in the opposite
direction, their present lying in the Earth's future, their future in
Earth's past.
The two worlds
were hurtling towards each other in time at a terrifying speed. Soon,
unless something drastic was done, the two would collide and both would
be annihilated in a horrific and extraordinary cosmic accident...
"Toying
with the time theories of J.W. Dunne, this novel, a merciless thriller,
is the most original exploration of chrono-paradox in modern SF. Cliches
are ground to dust by the dynamic -- overworked effects such as looped
causality find no refuge here. The basis of the plot, that two separate
"presents" are moving toward each other from different times
and that the meeting of realities will be disastrous, is presented with
a detachment which adds to the menace." -
Rhys Hughes
"Bayley's
first real corker. A complex, clogged book exceptionally rich with ideas."
- Andy Robertson, Interzone
"This
novel was written under contract to Donald A. Wollheim, who was taken
by its central theme: that of two time systems moving in opposite directions
and about to collide with one another. To make the idea plausible it was
necessary to adopt a view of existence in which time is not intrinsic
but is a localised phenomenon. This is readily comprehensible to anyone
familiar with modern scientific conceptions, in which time is often reduced
to a fourth spatial coordinate (a ploy criticised by Professor Milic Capek
in The Philosophical Impact of Contemporary Physics). Among those who
one way or another have tried to abolish the uniqueness of the present
moment is J.W. Dunne, whose 'regressive time' is discussed in the novel.
I have never read his most popular book An Experiment With Time, but I
have tried to tackle The Serial Universe in which he attempted to give
his arguments a mathematical treatment and to apply them to questions
in physics. What Dunne really did was to show how slippery a subject time
is. I know of only one man who has claimed to understand it: St Augustine,
who after wrestling with the mystery all his life, said words to the effect,
'I know what it is now. But if you ask me to explain it, I can't.'"
- Barrington Bayley
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