FALL OF TIME

After a surprisingly accessible time-travel method is discovered, agents of the Time Management Agency try to thwart a conspiracy of meddlers who get their thrills from changing human history.

Author Unwin, trained as a theoretical physicist, offers a sequel to his time-travel antic One Second Per Second (2021). In an increasingly rare virtue for this type of SF, close familiarity with the first novel is not absolutely necessary to follow its tale of a semisecret government facility called the Time Management Agency. Back in the 20th century, generating faster-than-light tachyon particles—resulting in time travel— was achieved via chemical means, not vast supercolliders. Now a subculture of miscreants (similar to anarchist computer hackers) know the secret and proceed to vandalize the eons, breaking Lee Harvey Oswald’s trigger finger, thwarting John Lennon’s murder, and generally delivering wish-fulfillment vigilante space/time justice. They rationalize that any historical damage is automatically sorted out by a morally indifferent universe (once a monstrous dictator called von Hayek was erased, an upstart named Hitler merely took his place). That’s not good enough for the TMA, who try to fix tachyon irregularities, both natural and human-made. Top time cop Joad Bevan has undercover agents and contacts within the ranks of the “Allfours,” the time renegades, including his own son, Dart. Their chief concern: a rogue mastermind with intimate TMA ties is organizing his devoted followers to perpetrate “the Big One,” a truly fiendish alteration to known events. What is the Big One? And what are the ramifications? Unwin's Vonnegut-type sense of humor about the essential absurdity of the situation yields some murky intrigues, double crosses, traps, and betrayals leapfrogging across the ages. The skulduggery reaches a crescendo with dire jeopardy, deaths, and a few prehistoric monsters. Dizzying plot twists centering on secret-identity subterfuges resemble something out of a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta but are potentially more confusing. A few diagrams might have helped readers understand the action. This novel may appeal most to those who’ve enjoyed fictional time-tripping with intricate cult favorites like Barrington J. Bayley’s The Fall of Chronopolis.

Complicated cause-and-effect shenanigans put a fresh spring in the step of time-travel SF.