Rating: 
Summary: Pretty good.
Review: Not the smartest or most challenging piece of sci-fi but it's a good read anyway.
Rating:
Summary: Somewhat predictable yet very enjoyable
Review: The foundation of the story is very simple: time-traveling historians and their surly "timeship" pilot go to 1937 to witness the Hindenberg zeppelin disaster. Except, of course, the Hindenberg lands without any problems, and all of the passengers and crew safely disembark in Lakehurst, New Jersey. So what went wrong? Did one or all of them do something to cause a paradox?In the "present" of 1998, there is a government scientist, Murphy, who innocently writes an article for a popular science fiction magazine. He suggests that perhaps UFOs are NOT extraterrestrial spies in their spaceships at all, but merely time travelers in their time machines. While this is blasphemy to many hardcore UFO buffs, the article still manages to attract some unwelcome and unexpected attention for poor Murphy. Intersperse some non-UFO "angel" sightings, an X-Files type government agency, secret aircraft testing at Area 51, hardcore skeptics, an anti-Nazi German Resistance movement, plausible science, New Age crystal-meditating Whitley Strieber adherents, no-nonsense military generals and budget-conscious bureaucrats. The story arcs come together beautifully, and although parts of the book are rather predictable time-travel fare, the book manages to remain a page-turner. Allen Steele artfully creates situations and locations that are familiar and believable, only to slowly reveal that some of these events are happening in a parallel timeline, an alternate wordline. Unfortunately, I too must point out that the editing is poor and there are quite a few typographical errors and missing words. Some of these mistakes occur at some relevant points in the story and almost entirely change the gist of things; missing words during some important dialog, typographical errors regarding among other things, dates. Shame, shame. Perhaps Allen M. Steele is testing the waters a bit here with this novel. While an outright sequel may require some deft maneuvering, I'm hopeful the orbiting space lab, "Chronos Station" and the characters in it may be reappearing in future books by this talented author. Fun and lighthearted time-travel science fiction fare.
Rating: 
Summary: Inadequate Potboiler
Review: This is an effort to write a time travel novel with causal paradoxes as a prominent part of the story. This book is an expansion of an award winning novella and the stretch marks are obvious. The quality of writing and characterization are pedestrian. Books like this can be saved by a clever plot and application of causal paradoxes but the paradoxes are predictable and the plot is marked by the sudden appearance of super powerful aliens defending the structure of space-time. This type of Deus ex Machina device is poor. The author has also a rather poor grasp of 20th century history. In this book, a key event is the destruction of the dirigible Hindenberg with the circumstances of that event influencing the survival of the Nazi regime. This is a laughable idea and a very shaky foundation for the generation of an alternative pattern of history.
Rating:
Summary: Inadequate Potboiler
Review: This is an effort to write a time travel novel with causal paradoxes as a prominent part of the story. This book is an expansion of an award winning novella and the stretch marks are obvious. The quality of writing and characterization are pedestrian. Books like this can be saved by a clever plot and application of causal paradoxes but the paradoxes are predictable and the plot is marked by the sudden appearance of super powerful aliens defending the structure of space-time. This type of Deus ex Machina device is poor. The author has also a rather poor grasp of 20th century history. In this book, a key event is the destruction of the dirigible Hindenberg with the circumstances of that event influencing the survival of the Nazi regime. This is a laughable idea and a very shaky foundation for the generation of an alternative pattern of history.
Rating:
Summary: Not bad, but a bit sloppy . . .
Review: This is the first thing I've read by Steele and I was attracted to it by the time-travel theme. He does a pretty good job, but the style is somehow reminiscent of ANALOG of the 1950s and '60s -- which is fair enough, I guess, since the protagonist, NASA bureaucrat/physicist David Z. Murphy, is a lifelong fan of the magazine and now writes science articles for it. He doesn't know it, but his counterpart on another worldline is about to devote his life to the development of a working time machine, all because a research expedition from three centuries in the future has gone back to visit the zeppelin HINDENBURG just before its fiery demise at Lakehurst. Only it doesn't explode until a half-hour *after* everyone has disembarked. And in their bewildered flight back to their own time, the timeship crew manages to crash-land in 1998 Tennessee. Yes, it's all about as confusing as it sounds, but Steele manages to keep everything straight -- usually. He could have done with improved copyediting, though, especially in his chapter headings, which consist of dates -- and several of which are totally impossible.
Rating: 
Summary: Fast paced time travel novel
Review: This is the first thing I've read by Steele and I was attracted to it by the time-travel theme. He does a pretty good job, but the style is somehow reminiscent of ANALOG of the 1950s and `60s -- which is fair enough, I guess, since the protagonist, NASA bureaucrat/physicist David Z. Murphy, is a lifelong fan of the magazine and now writes science articles for it. He doesn't know it, but his counterpart on another worldline is about to devote his life to the development of a working time machine, all because a research expedition from three centuries in the future has gone back to visit the zeppelin HINDENBURG just before its fiery demise at Lakehurst. Only it doesn't explode until a half-hour *after* everyone has disembarked. And in their bewildered flight back to their own time, the timeship crew manages to crash-land in 1998 Tennessee. Yes, it's all about as confusing as it sounds, but Steele manages to keep everything straight -- usually. He could have done with improved copyediting, though, especially in his chapter headings, which consist of dates -- and several of which are totally impossible.
Rating:
Summary: A fast-paced, absorbing novel
Review: When a time ship crew inadvertently changes the past, they find their future in jeopardy and a newfound understanding of time lines challenges in this fast-paced, absorbing novel. Parallel universes and the dilemmas of a time-lost crew keep Chronospace fast-paced and hard to put down.
| 
