Customer Reviews

Destiny Times Three

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(0)

 

 

Today, it is almost considered an insult for SF writers to not be able to kill at least a small mammal by using their 800 or 900 pages books as a weapon. So, Destiny Times Three is a refreshing and interesting dive in the lean, fat-free world (actually 3 worlds) of Fritz Leiber. And bizarre as it may sound, I believe that this is an underdeveloped novel which could have been much better had it been twice or three times its size.

A Probability Machine falls into the wrong hands and begins churning out alternative universes. A Bad Guys and a Good Guys Universe start interacting with each other and this is where the story starts. There is suspense, there is 1945 gloom, there is 1945 hope, there are bizarre amateur gods, there is a third Universe that deserved 200 pages on its own and there is subtronic physics (which sounds pretty cool even today). On the downside there is a notable and inexplicable lack of female characters.

I hope that one of today's greats would take this novel and rewrite it into a 500 page SF feast. I just cannot start to imagine what Ian M. Banks would do with the Probability Machine. But since Ian M. Banks has much better things to do than read my reviews, I wholeheartedly propose to anyone who comes across Destiny Times Three to read it. 4 stars for Mr Leiber's 3 worlds.