Rating: 
Summary: Send This Book Back In Time!
Review: Billed as the "definitive" book on time travel, Timemaster disappoints on so many levels it's pointless to list them. The most obvious criticism: How could a mind that understands the workings of physics miss the workings of culture and society? Clearly, Mr. Forward harkens from the "Greatest Generation" whose heroes were John Wayne, Errol Flynn and other, now mostly forgotten, larger-than-life examples of manhood in, say, the nineteen fifties. Did he not realize that people would move on and change in almost every way by 2036 - 2050?
This book feels like it was written by Ayn Rand! The slagging of animal rights activists and the worship of wealth and over-consumption completely ruined what was left of the plot for me. Normally, I don't drag my personal beliefs into a book...but this was simply way too much. I think this book was written by Forward in 1952 and sent, ahem, forward, to 1992 just to upset the more progressive SF readers! :-)
Rating: 
Summary: One of Robert's best - Paradox Paradise
Review: From start to end an imagantive and well written sci-fi story of future science that seems like magic today. This story uses many ideas in Rob's book 'Future Magic' and demonstrates them very well. I finished this book in a couple of days - a really gripping plot with a great open end - or was it the start!?
Rating:
Summary: One of my favorite books
Review: I have read several of Dr. Forward's books, and this is, by far, my favorite---I read it twice and am considering a third reading. Dr. Forward writes "hard" science fiction, and Timemaster is no exception, sticking closely with the known laws of physics. The concepts presented in this book are intriguing and Mr. Hunter's solution to the problem of his nemesis in a delightful surprise. Highly recommended!
Rating:
Summary: awful
Review: I'm a fan of sci-fi books, having read everything from Asimov to Zelany. I was hopefully this would be a good book considing what others have said about it. To put it bluntly, this book stinks. The hero is absolutely perfect, achieves everything and wins the girl. This may be an acceptable character to a target audience of 12 yr olds (see Johnny Quest or Asimov's Lucky Starr series) but just proves annoying to anyone beyond a middle school level education. Every other character proves to be just as badly developed as this. The science may be real and plausible but nothing else about this book is.
Rating:
Summary: awful
Review: I'm a fan of sci-fi books, having read everything from Asimov to Zelany. I was hopefully this would be a good book considing what others have said about it. To put it bluntly, this book stinks. The hero is absolutely perfect, achieves everything and wins the girl. This may be an acceptable character to a target audience of 12 yr olds (see Johnny Quest or Asimov's Lucky Starr series) but just proves annoying to anyone beyond a middle school level education. Every other character proves to be just as badly developed as this. The science may be real and plausible but nothing else about this book is.
Rating: 
Summary: fun, fun, fun!
Review: Reading Robert Forward's books is just plain fun. Forward takes an idea and develops the hell out of it and does everything you'd want to see done plus a few things you haven't thought of. In Timemaster the key discovery is that of negmatter. The ramifications of that discovery for one very lucky entrepreneur are explored. A high velocity space drive, wormholes and time machines fall out this one discovery and Forward explores them all, within the frameworks of a somewhat juvenile plot. It is the ideas and exploration that drive this story, and I read it with a delight that I can only remember from my days of reading Campbell-era SF when stories weren't so dystopian and serious. If you like hard, idea-driven SF, you don't want to miss this one.
Rating:
Summary: fun, fun, fun!
Review: Reading Robert Forward's books is just plain fun. Forward takes an idea and develops the hell out of it and does everything you'd want to see done plus a few things you haven't thought of. In Timemaster the key discovery is that of negmatter. The ramifications of that discovery for one very lucky entrepreneur are explored. A high velocity space drive, wormholes and time machines fall out this one discovery and Forward explores them all, within the frameworks of a somewhat juvenile plot. It is the ideas and exploration that drive this story, and I read it with a delight that I can only remember from my days of reading Campbell-era SF when stories weren't so dystopian and serious. If you like hard, idea-driven SF, you don't want to miss this one.
Rating: 
Summary: Timewaster
Review: Space entrepeneur Randy Hunter discovers a kind of space-dwelling plant composed of negative matter, which allows him to develop interstellar spaceflight and time travel, not to mention acheiving all of his dreams, winning the girl, foiling his drug-addicted rival, and becoming an all-around great guy. ... Author Robert L. Forward never lets us forget how wonderful and brilliant he thinks his hero is, which came off as more than a little self-congratulatory since I couldn't shake the feeling that he was meant to serve as an alter-ego for Forward himself. There is much juvenile one-upmanship between Randy and his cartoonish arch-rival, Oscar, who is just as bad as Randy is good and whose dislike is never explained as anything more than jealousy (but then, who wouldn't be jealous of such a terrific guy as Randy). I found the key plot device of the Silverhairs to be ludicrous and uninteresting. The sole saving grace of this book is some fascinating business toward the end concerning time travel and the interaction between the Randys of various time periods. Had this aspect of the story been more prominent, it would have been a better book, but instead it is buried among juvenile characterizations and dull plotting.
Rating:
Summary: Bob Forward's done it again!
Review: This man just doesn't stop! Turning yet another odd idea into a mathematically proven concept which he then waves his magic wand around and turns into a masterpiece of science-fiction writing! Warning: Only intelligent people should read this book. In Timemaster, Bob Forward describes, in mathematically proven terms, the complex interaction of events if time travel became a reality. According to Forward's theory, if you know the future, you can't change it, and the oddest most weird stuff will happen to stop you if you try. He includes informative and highly interesting space-time diagrams describing the principals he develops in Timemaster. This is just really cool.
Rating:
Summary: Bob Forward's done it again!
Review: This man just doesn't stop! Turning yet another odd idea into a mathematically proven concept which he then waves his magic wand around and turns into a masterpiece of science-fiction writing! Warning: Only intelligent people should read this book. In Timemaster, Bob Forward describes, in mathematically proven terms, the complex interaction of events if time travel became a reality. According to Forward's theory, if you know the future, you can't change it, and the oddest most weird stuff will happen to stop you if you try. He includes informative and highly interesting space-time diagrams describing the principals he develops in Timemaster. This is just really cool.
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