Time Past [Mass Market Paperback]

Maxine McArthur (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 2002

Halley finds herself thrown back in time to 21st century Australia, where her only hope of returning home is to await first contact with the enigmatic aliens who have discovered time travel.

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 496 pages
• Publisher: Aspect (May 1, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0446609641
• ISBN-13: 978-0446609647
• Product Dimensions: 4.2 x 1.1 x 6.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,295,488 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars new style of space science fiction, July 6, 2002

By 

Celia Redmore "Celia Redmore" - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Time Past (Mass Market Paperback)

I haven't enjoyed a sci-fi novel so much since Neal Stephenson's Diamond Age -- not that Time Past is a derivative of anyone else's work. This is a new style of writing space science fiction that I haven't seen before.

The characters in Time Past speak and act like real people: they don't have the theatrical quality and stilted speech of many sci-fi characters, who have to 'explain' what the book reader can't see or hear. You don't get spoon fed each fact just as you need it, the way you do in television scripts. But this also isn't one of those books where you're left guessing at the end.

The best sci-fi novels have always offered a 'point' rather than just being robotized cops-and-robbers. Time Past considers the way we misreport history, making saints and villains out of more mundane folk and ascribing every event of their day to them, whether they were personally involved or not. It also questions how loyalty and authority work in groups and larger communities. And it considers the trade-off between today's needs and the needs of the future.

That's a lot of weight to put on a book that also maintains a taut storyline and a large cast of characters, humanoid and other. It says something for McArthur's ability to keep the flow of the narrative that I didn't find myself checking back every few pages to see who was who and what they'd done.

At the end of the book I found a short bio of Maxine McArthur. She's an Australian who's lived most of her adult life in Japan. Writing is her second career. Maybe it's having lived a rich life that has enabled her to write books that are both complex and intelligent, and explains her ease with intercultural (interspecies?) relationships.

4.0 out of 5 stars Australian SF Reader, July 31, 2007

By 

Blue Tyson "- Research Finished" (Legion clubhouse) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Time Past (Mass Market Paperback)

The fancy ship and propulsion system that Halley got a hold of in the first book has now left her around a hundred years in the past from where she started.

This makes her an illegal alien in the past, and doesn't solve the political and possible military problems on Jocasta station in her present.

4.0 out of 5 stars Tense, satisfying intrigue with a good protagonist, August 31, 2002

By 

David Brukman (USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Time Past (Mass Market Paperback)

A sequel to _Time Future_, this novel continues the adventure of Halley, the unwilling commander of space station Jocasta. Avoiding politics, Maria Halley experiments with Invidi space drive technology trying to break the powerful monopoly of the ancient races. Her illicit experiment plunge her into a dangerous place, where Halley continues to learn heartbreak and courage in her struggle to improve the fate of humans and the entire Confederacy.