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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