The Depths of Time (Bantam Spectra Book) [Paperback]

Roger Macbride Allen (Author)

Book Description

Series: Bantam Spectra Book | Publication Date: February 29, 2000

Time is of the essence when you're stranded in the future.

Humanity is running out of time....

The settled universe is filled with terraformed worlds linked by timeshafts--temporal wormholes in deep space. These timeshafts are the only way to travel the vast distances between the stars....

As passengers and crew are placed in cold sleep, their ships spend decades crossing the interstellar void--traveling the wormholes and arriving at their destinations just days after leaving home. The Chronologic Patrol is charged with guarding these timeshaft wormholes and preventing time paradoxes at all costs. But one critical mission ends in disaster, turning Anton Koffield, captain of the Upholder, into a dark legend....As ships carrying relief supplies to a crippled planet approach a timeshaft, they are mercilessly set upon by mysterious attackers--their crews are murdered, the sanctity of time itself is at risk. In response, Koffield is forced to do the unthinkable: He must stop the invasion by destroying the timeshaft. Marooned eighty years in the future, he lives as a cursed figure, the villain who killed a world.

And his odyssey through time has only just begun....



Time has passed; man has not discovered new naturally occurring planets capable of sustaining human life. Terraforming has allowed for some colonization across the galaxy, but the only method for moving supplies to and from these far-flung worlds is the use of timeshaft wormholes. To safeguard the planets and these portals, laws governing the "who, what, where, when, and why" of time travel routes are strictly enforced.

Suddenly, the Chronologic Patrol Ship Upholder--charged with enforcing these stringent precepts--is attacked at the Circum Central Timeshaft Wormhole in 5211 a.d. Unpro- voked and unprecedented, all rules are blasted away in that deadly encounter, and it will take heroic measures to restore balance to the galaxy. -->

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In an era when time travel is essential to interstellar transport, keeping the past from learning the future is the Chronologic Patrol's prime directive. Anton Koffield, captain of the Upholder, one of two Patrol ships protecting the Circum Central timeshaft wormhole, becomes the first person ever to act to preserve causality. Incomprehensible Intruders destroy Koffield's sister ship and cripple his own as they battle through the time shaft the wrong way, from "downtime" (the past) to "uptime." As a fleet of cargo ships heading toward a failing terraformed planet approaches Circum Central for safe passage, the Intruders return, and Koffield collapses the timeshaft to prevent them from returning to the past. The cargo ships are destroyed, the planet never receives its relief supplies and Koffield is stranded in the future with his crew, who have fingered him as the murderer of a world. Forced into isolation by the Patrol, which simultaneously hails him as a hero, Koffield stumbles upon proof that all of humanity's terraformed worlds are doomed to catastrophe. He must overcome his villainous status, pervasive guilt and a second time-stranding to convince others of the danger, even as he uncovers mysteries yet more profound, and a megalomaniac's master plan. With its well-rendered hero and supporting cast, Allen's (The Game of Worlds) latest resists slipping into melodrama. The thoroughly practical use of time travel coupled with visceral evocations of the logical complications of becoming lost in one's own future ground the novel scientifically and emotionally. Slyly, Allen wraps up his story with a maddeningly provocative ending that all but ensures a sequel and another meeting with the intriguing Koffield. (Mar.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Allen meets his usual high standard in this far-future combination of speculative hard science, social sf, and pure adventure. It employs the standard sf device of wormholes, but instead of permitting interstellar travel, these wormholes allow time travel. When Captain Koffield of the Chronologic Patrol ship Upholder discovers an outbreak of piracy and would-be wormhole hijackers, he seems to have no choice but to destroy the wormhole to the planet Solace. This isolates the planet; maroons Koffield 80 years in the future; brings him in conflict with terraforming scientists and the population of Solace, which he may have doomed in trying to save it; and generally puts the tale's whole cast up to their stern sheets in alligators. Allen handles this sort of thing as well as anyone in the business, producing a highly readable balance of characterization, graceful and sometimes witty prose, and thoroughly, intelligently developed ideas that don't slow the pacing. Roland Green

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 448 pages
• Publisher: Spectra (February 29, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0553378112
• ISBN-13: 978-0553378115
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 5.9 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (28 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,194,450 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

53 of 55 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Action-packed mindbending entertainment, February 29, 2000

By 

Lynn Harnett (Marathon, FL USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Depths of Time (Bantam Spectra Book) (Paperback)

Roger MacBride Allen's intriguing, fast-paced novel posits a far future in which the colonized galazy, filled with terraformed worlds, is linked by timeshafts. With their crew in cold sleep, interstellar ships travel for decades to enter temporal wormholes which put them at their destinations days after leaving. These timeshaft are vigilantly guarded against time paradoxes by the Chronologic Patrol and the first 80-page action-packed segment pits the Patrol against mysterious "Intruders" invading the wormhole, attacking the patrol and threatening the inviolate chronology of time.

Battered and stranded 80 years in the future, the ship's captain, Anton Koffield, though decorated by his service for necessary action in destroying the wormhole rather than allow the violation of the past, is reviled as having doomed a newly terraformed world unable to receive their relief supplies. His career at an end, Koffield accepts a research offer and the next time we meet him he's a passenger waking from cold sleep (an unpleasant experience) on a merchant ship inexplicably marooned 127 more years into the future.

Mysteries pile upon mysteries and Allen feeds us just enough answers to keep it all suspenseful rather than hopelessly confusing. His exploration of the rigid rules necessary to allow the use of time as a travel convenience and the elaborate strategems required to terraform worlds in a galaxy sadly devoid of life-supporting planets are intriguing. He has invested his imagined universe with detailed technology and ecological problems, which naturally find parallels in our own world.

Koffield, a lonely, burdened, man, is a tough, principled old veteran with an appealingly vulnerable side and his young female pilot assistant is resourceful if inexperienced. While this is clearly the first of a series (Allen wrote the Star Wars Corellian Trilogy), the author does not infuriate the reader by leaving the whole story hanging - just a few sizable chunks. An entertaining and lively tale with lots of mind-bending ideas.

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars starts fast, runs out of gas, coasts, then... no resolution!, July 8, 2000

By 

Kyle Jones (Seattle, WA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Depths of Time (Bantam Spectra Book) (Paperback)

The most important thing I can tell you about this novel is that it doesn't end with any sort of resolution. After the initial confrontation that maroons the Koffield character, the author piles mystery upon mystery and main characters unravel almost none of it. They were _handed_ some answers at the end of the story in a most unsatisfactory fashion. I nearly hurled the book across the room in frustration. After reading the pitiful attempt at resolution, I was forced to conclude that the whole purpose of this book, all 400+ pages, was to set the reader up for the next book in the series. I don't mind a book being part of a series if each book in the series is worth reading on its own. After 200 pages I realized that the author had run out of story. This leaves the next 200 pages to bore you to tears.

The story started briskly, with a conflict at one of the wormholes. There was darned good action and suspense, and characters with believable motivations. The description of the wormhole transport system, particularly the confusing use of the terms "uptime" and "downtime" was the main flaw in this part of the story. Once I learned to ignore the terms and guess what was going on by context, I had no problem getting into the story.

But once Koffield is marooned in the future, the story just dies. Koffield is converted from a military captain to an academian, and academians other than Indiana Jones just don't make for exciting reading. Despite the misleading title and back cover, time travel plays almost no part in the story after the first (and most exciting) part of the novel. There is an interesting puzzle to be solved with regard to the attack on the wormhole but Koffield doesn't solve it and worse, makes no visible attempt in the novel to solve it. No one solves it. The main questions about the attack are largely left unanswered at story's end.

For some reason, the story turns to the problems of terraforming, of all things. This combined with Koffield's boring inactivity and the drawn out revelation of what little Koffield has discovered made the rest of the novel tiresome to read. I felt sorry for Koffield, but I never really liked him or cared what happened to him. What I really wanted from this story and what Allen failed to deliver was a resolution to the puzzle presented in the first part of the novel. The characters failed to make any progress toward solving that mystery and that made them all irrelevant to me.

What Allen did do well in this novel is develop an interesting space-faring society with its Chronological Police and its wormhole transport system and its attempts at terraforming barren worlds to make them habitable. The hard-sf elements of this novel are what save it from being a complete waste of time.

My advice to potential buyers: wait until Allen publishes all the books of this series, read the reviews of all of them and buy the books as a set if you're still interested. Allen has a long way to go to prove that this series is worth your time and money.

If you want to read a hard-sf novel where time travel is front and center, and where things get resolved at the end, try Timemaster by Robert L. Forward.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A book that makes you wish there was a sequel..., July 25, 2000

By 

J. Mercado "Jay" (Brooklyn, NY USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Depths of Time (Bantam Spectra Book) (Paperback)

I picked up this book because I saw that it was written by Roger MacBride Allen. I liked his writing in the Star Wars Universe so I figured I couldn't go wrong it picking up the book. Well, I was right but I should have waited for all the books to be out.

Like the previous reviewer said, "starts fast, runs out of gas, coasts, then... no resolution!" Allen reels you in the beginning but then kind of gets lost in the middle, in effect losing you as well. He then reels you back in, only to end the book abruptly with no resolution for the characters or the reader. Although this may seem like a bad thing, I personally think it was intentional. Since the book seems to be the first in a set or series.

That aside, I did enjoy the book. Depths of Time is enjoyable if you can overlook its cliffhanger ending. If you're a soap watcher then DOT's ending will be no surprise. Personally, I'm waiting to see what Allen has in store for us in the next book.