Chronospace [Hardcover]

Allen Steele (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 8, 2001

When the crew of a 24th century time ship interferes with the transatlantic voyage of the Hindenburg, the fiery wreck never occurs-but something much worse happens...

A rift in chronospace.

And the creation of an alternate world-line.

Now, the crew is lost somewhere in time-in a parallel universe that they themselves somehow created. Where the repercussions of their mistake will be felt by every single human being.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Two-time Hugo-winner Allen Steele wraps his time-traveling novel Chronospace around a pair of pretty interesting ideas: that UFOs are terrestrial in origin, but simply traveling to us from a different time; and that science fiction--and speculative nonfiction--can play a potent, and often unexpected, role in scientific progress.

One of Steele's two Hugos went to a 1997 novella published in Asimov's, "...Where Angels Fear to Tread," and that piece makes up the middle chapters of Chronospace, the story of operatives from the 24th-century Chronospace Research Centre who sneak into Nazi Germany and onto the Hindenburg in hopes of witnessing its fiery end firsthand. The only problem is, the famous zeppelin lands safely on that early summer evening in 1937, and the time travelers have to figure out what went wrong. Because, as they soon learn, their actions might have (have had? will have?) devastating consequences for the entire human race.

Steele has made good use of his already engaging novella, fleshing out what happened before, during, and after the original work, especially concerning present-day NASA scientist David Murphy, who--funny, that--has just been called to task by his superiors for writing a piece in Analog entitled "How to Travel Through Time (And Not Get Caught)." With well-researched detail concerning the Hindenburg and convincingly fabricated logistics surrounding wormhole-powered time travel, Chronospace further proves Steele's mastery of intelligent, readable hard SF. --Paul Hughes

From Publishers Weekly

Clearly written to please his fans and the editors of the science fiction magazines he frequently publishes in, this alternate-world novel by Steele (Oceanspace) panders (by excessive namedropping), without producing stellar results. In the 1998 of our world, David Zachary Murphy, a physicist with NASA who longs to be a professional writer of speculative fiction and see his name featured on SF magazine covers, writes a nonfiction article about the possibility that UFOs are time-travel machines. This story achieves every writer's dream it changes the future of the world. Especially the future for Franc and Lea, time travelers from the year 2314. When Franc and Lea go back to 1937 to observe the crash of the Hindenberg, their participation in the disaster somehow destroys their world and its time line. They are bounced into an alternate time line, in which Murphy and his postulations are a nexus. Franc and Lea's heavy-handed attempts to fix things (including impersonating one of Murphy's idols, real-life SF writer Gregory Benford) only make the situation worse. Meanwhile, mysterious "angels" are observing mankind, using their own extraterrestrial powers to try to stop the paradoxes caused by humanity's use of time travel before humans can infest the galaxy with their follies. Derivative and cloying, this isn't up to the level of Steele's short stories, which do grace the pages of many of the magazines he reverentially mentions throughout this novel.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Ace Hardcover; 1st edition (May 8, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0441008321
• ISBN-13: 978-0441008322
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #405,880 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Allen Steele is a science fiction writer with sixteen novels and five collections of short fiction to his credit. His works have received the Hugo, Locus, Seiun, and Science Fiction Weekly awards, and have been nominated for the Nebula, Sturgeon, and Sidewise Awards. His first published story, "Live from the Mars Hotel," was published in 1988, and his first novel, Orbital Decay, was published in 1989. His best-known work is the Coyote series -- Coyote, Coyote Rising, Coyote Frontier, Coyote Horizon, and Coyote Destiny -- and the associative novels set in the same universe: Spindrift, Galaxy Blues, and the forthcoming Hex. A graduate of New England College and the University of Missouri, he is a former journalist, and once spent a brief tenure as a Washington correspondent. He was born and raised in Nashville, Tennessee, and now lives in western Massachusetts with his wife and dogs.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Credible time travel adventure, August 11, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Chronospace (Hardcover)

I generally avoid stories with the physical time travel concepts and altering the past, but on occasion, an author can make me forget my hang-ups about the concepts. As promised by a friend, Chronospace was intelligently written, and I was able to let go and become immersed in an interestingly hypothetical, suspenseful stage of events. The concept of "aliens" being from the future is not entirely new, but perhaps equally plausible to being from distant galaxies light years away. In my opinion, conceptually this novel's premise cannot be entirely dismissed, and therein lies part of the pleasure of getting lost in this story. As I did initially, don't let the time travel sci-fi keep you from reading this one. This was well handled here. This was actually my first Steele novel, but certainly won't be my last!

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Satisfying read, but read every word, June 13, 2001

By 

Jeffrey J. Lyons (Pembroke, NH United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Chronospace (Hardcover)

I am pleased to be the first one to review the new book of fellow New Englander Allen Steele. I enjoy time travel stories immensly, especially those that make sense. This is a magnificent experiment in taking two parallel time streams and crashing them together in a creative, intriguing way. Steele has essentially expanded upon his award-winning short story "Where Angels Fear To Tread" and given it a new beginning and a new ending. It's not often that I read a book that has a cameo appearance...in this case it's the well reknowned writer/scientist Gregory Benford. And fans of sci-fi magazines will like the many references to Analog Science Fiction/Fact magazine. But you MUST read this book from cover to cover to get all of your answers. I was reading along for the first 100 or so pages and enjoying the story that was building. Then suddenly the main character, David Zack Murphy, seems to develop all new characteristics. At first I was shouting "What the...?" But it was resolved in the end in a splendid fashion. "Chronospace" is gripping and tough to put down. The only reason I didn't give it 5 stars is because Mr. Steele needs to scold his editor over a couple of missing words and at least one punctuation mistake. But if that's all I'm nit-picking about, that says a lot for the book and its story.

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Very, Very Disappointing, June 23, 2002

By 

Dr. Zoidberg (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Chronospace (Paperback)

Being a time-travel stories fanatic (just check out my previous reviews if you doubt that), I was really intrigued when I heard about Chronospace. In fact, I dedicated an entire day to just sit at home and read it (I haven't done this in years!). Imagine, UFOs are really not extraterrestrial vehicles but are actually time machines used by historians from the future who want to study the past. Sounds good, even if somewhat unoriginal, no? Well, the entire book was a mixture of good ideas, but the end product was bad. It's as if the author couldn't make up his mind what he wanted to write about. Time Travel, aliens, paradoxes: these all sound like good ingredients, but SOMEHOW Mr. Steele has managed to get it very, very wrong.
The plot: Franc Lu, a 24th century historian, is being sent back in time to view what happened on the Hindenburg: witness first hand the destruction and what caused it. But somehow, he makes some changes, causing history to diverge and a paradox to be created. A parallel storyline tells about David Zachary Murphy, a scientist working for NASA at the end of the 20th century. David came up with the (correct) theory that UFOs are really time machine. How do both these threads join together? Just barely, and not in an interesting way. Read the book if you want to find out.
To summarize: I DON'T recommend this book. There are far better time travel stories, which cover very similar ideas in a superior way. (check out Joshua Dann's books if you want a glimpse). The reason I'm not giving this book one star is because it did capture my attention for about a third of the book, I was still convinced it might turn out to be a decent one, until this hope shattered.