A Fold in the Tent of the Sky

Rating:
Summary: A Good Read
Review: Hale's imagination of the consequences of time travel is the centerpole of this novel. The multiple variations of memory suffered by protagonist Peter Abbot are well illustrated and bring a real sense of his mental turmoil about the actual sequence of events in his life. At times, you get the sense that Hale is trying to write poetry instead of telling a tale as he wanders into bizarre phrases and metaphors, but despite these forays into semi-verse, the book has a quick pace and never drags. Overall, an interesting plot built on the always popular time-travel idea. I highly recommend it.

Rating:
Summary: A Good Read
Review: Hale's imagination of the consequences of time travel is the centerpole of this novel. The multiple variations of memory suffered by protagonist Peter Abbot are well illustrated and bring a real sense of his mental turmoil about the actual sequence of events in his life. At times, you get the sense that Hale is trying to write poetry instead of telling a tale as he wanders into bizarre phrases and metaphors, but despite these forays into semi-verse, the book has a quick pace and never drags. Overall, an interesting plot built on the always popular time-travel idea. I highly recommend it.

Rating:
Summary: An excellent, contemplate time travel/psychic thriller
Review: It's odd that this little gem hasn't received more attention, or that I'm the first one to review it, considering that it's more than a year old.

As the published reviews indicate, this is a novel about a group of psychics who work for an organization that uses their talents to assist law enforcement groups or search and rescue missions. One of the psychics is able to go back in time and affect events: for example, he convinces one of Charles Manson's cult members to leave the cult, which changes the past because that cult member originally killed actress Sharon Tate. Tate now (from our standpoint) ends up in a number of B-movies. Only the psychic remembers the world in which Tate dies. The psychic, who is a bit of a psychotic and paranoid to boot, starts eliminating his fellow psychics by preventing their conceptions. The race is then to stop him before he can wipe them all out.

This is a literary thriller. Hale is not particularly interested in developing the commercial side of the psychics' talents; thus, very little of the novel is devoted to the missions. Rather, he focuses on two aspects of the psychic talent: (1) what would it be like to have such a power?; and (2) what happens if you change the past?

The psychics are not a group of people who are enamored with their talent. For some, it's a curse that they can pick up so much of other people's miseries through a casual touch. None of them, prior to being recruited by the organization, has found the talent to be particularly useful. (One uses her power to select lottery tickets that pay $5, $10, or $20, but that's it.)

The second focus is clearly what Hale found fun to write. As the psycho psychic starts popping back in time and messing with the past, McDonald's becomes spelled MacDonald's, the Watergate scandal never occurred, and stock market tanks, and "some dork" is in the White House. The psycho remembers both versions of the past: the original one, and the one incorporating his changes.

As thrillers go, this is not a fast-moving or especially chilling novel. It is, however, an involving book with a satisfying resolution. As time travel novels go, this is far more satisfying than, say, Crichton's "Timeline," in that much more thought went into the time travel paradoxes here.

[The time travel aspect here was also featured in an episode of "The Outer Limits," where a scientist who discovered the power to time travel took it upon herself to kill murderers before they committed their murders.]

Rating:
Summary: A great read for Time Travel/Star Trek Fans
Review: This thriller is about a group of psychics assembled together on St. Martin in the Caribbean by a venture backed company for the purpose of enhancing and then exploring the pyschics' abilities for remote viewing of past and present events - e.g. JFK's assassination. The most talented psychic, Simon Hayward, discovers early on that not only can he do remote viewing but that he can materialize in the past and alter history -his first act delivers Charles Manson into historical obscurity. Hiding this materialization ability from his employers, the increasingly paranoiac Hayward decides to "delete" his fellow psychics through either historical murder or simply "coitus interruptus."

Hale has done a great job playing with how the universe resolves the paradox of reconciling "known" and "new" pasts as Hayward's interferences combine together to have an exponentially increasing effect on history. If you're a time travel or Star Trek fan, I'm almost certain that you'll enjoy this one - and the satisfying ending which rings true - no fake ruses here that leave you feeling cheated at the end.