The Fall of Chronopolis

Rating:
Summary: Wide-Screen Baroque
Review: It is Astounding! Amazing! Thrilling! But also Philosophical! Cosmological! Metaphysical!

THE FALL OF CHRONOPOLIS is possibly the most sustained single novel from Bayley's pen, juggling its numerous plots that thread through excitement and literariness with the assuredness of a zen master. The massive time-fleets, armadas of spaceships the size of cities patrol the universe and battle against their eternal enemy, The Hegemony, through the jungles of time and pastures of space. The novel is brief but packs a punch that makes you dizzy from invention. It rewards several reads for all the subtext hiding behind the obvious and exciting surface, dealing with issues like the cyclic nature of the universe, fascism and religion for the sake of high drama. It is a vivid, visceral ride through the universe that will knock your senses wide open if you're attuned to this brand of extravagance.

Rating:
Summary: Time well spent
Review: This is, in all probability, the best time travel-related book I have read - surpassing even Asimov's END OF TIME.

The Story:
Captain Aton of the 3rd Time Fleet of the Chronotic Empire is engaged in conflict with the Hegemony from the future. Betrayed and court-martialed, he is about to embark on an unexpected and arduous task.

Time is uncannily like an ocean. The Chronotic Empire controls one part of the surface while the Hegemony occupies another (the future). The surface of time is a wave-function with the crests, or nodes, separated by 170 years from those in front and behind. Only at these nodes can someone travel from the past or future and remain without any continuous expenditure of chronotic energy. The Chronotic Empire controls seven nodes and the non-nodal historical time that surrounds them. The Empire continues to stretch its control over more and more nodes and the Hegemony, in fear that it's time frame will be overwhelmed by the temporally expanding Empire gets control of a device, a time distorter, which completely removes any object, person or place from existence anywhere in time - so that it or he/she never existed!

In the meanwhile, Hulmu, Lord of the Depths, is stirring far below the surface in the Gulf of Lost Souls. Hulmu a potential creature of the depths, along with his Minion and the heretical sect of Traumatics want Hulmu to become real and they can only do so by making sure that the fabric of real time becomes so distorted that creatures such as himself could come into existence. To do that Mankind must be eliminated.

Aside from a great & original story, there are various metaphysical concepts running through the work. Brilliant and Original - and reading it is, indeed, time well spent.

Rating:
Summary: Time well spent
Review: This is, in all probability, the best time travel-related book I have read - surpassing even Asimov's END OF TIME.

The Story:
Captain Aton of the 3rd Time Fleet of the Chronotic Empire is engaged in conflict with the Hegemony from the future. Betrayed and court-martialed, he is about to embark on an unexpected and arduous task.

Time is uncannily like an ocean. The Chronotic Empire controls one part of the surface while the Hegemony occupies another (the future). The surface of time is a wave-function with the crests, or nodes, separated by 170 years from those in front and behind. Only at these nodes can someone travel from the past or future and remain without any continuous expenditure of chronotic energy. The Chronotic Empire controls seven nodes and the non-nodal historical time that surrounds them. The Empire continues to stretch its control over more and more nodes and the Hegemony, in fear that it's time frame will be overwhelmed by the temporally expanding Empire gets control of a device, a time distorter, which completely removes any object, person or place from existence anywhere in time - so that it or he/she never existed!

In the meanwhile, Hulmu, Lord of the Depths, is stirring far below the surface in the Gulf of Lost Souls. Hulmu a potential creature of the depths, along with his Minion and the heretical sect of Traumatics want Hulmu to become real and they can only do so by making sure that the fabric of real time becomes so distorted that creatures such as himself could come into existence. To do that Mankind must be eliminated.

Aside from a great & original story, there are various metaphysical concepts running through the work. Brilliant and Original - and reading it is, indeed, time well spent.