The Chronotic Empire spans centuries, creating a utopian world of seemingly limitless potential, but there are cracks growing in the utopia; dissident heretics and a war with another time travelling civilisation from the future. Both are coming to a head and threaten not just the empire but all humanity.
Written, I believe, some eighteen months after Collision with Chronos, the Fall of Chronopolis is another time travel story from innovative, SF classic writer Barrington J Bayley and, though the two are often linked and even published together in an omnibus, they do not share quite the same time travel science; in Collision Bayley introduced a theory of time travel that quite neatly side stepped paradox problems whilst in the Fall of Chrons he positively embraces paradoxes. The entire model of time that he presents here is so fantastical that it really slips into the realm of science fantasy and even if mind expanding drugs were not involved in the writing, the reading certainly does a good dose of mind expansion. My best advice is to just go with the flow and not worry too much about the detail and brace yourself for a wild ride. It’s all huge fun, if you don’t let it tie your mind into too many knots.
Bayley is often accused of poor character development and that is undoubtedly true, his characters are shallow clichés living in an unashamedly male oriented society, the few women that appear are distinctly second class characters who are never play any major roles are always subservient to the male characters. This shouldn’t be too surprising for when the book was written but it is always something I find annoying when reading books from this ‘classic’ era. Setting that aside this is a great space operatic style adventure that maintains a fast pace throughout. That latter being another difference from Collision which was at times a touch pedestrian.
A great little read that I would recommend to lovers of early SF just don’t expect to make sense of everything; I rather suspect even Bayley himself struggled to make sense of everything.
4/5 stars.
Written, I believe, some eighteen months after Collision with Chronos, the Fall of Chronopolis is another time travel story from innovative, SF classic writer Barrington J Bayley and, though the two are often linked and even published together in an omnibus, they do not share quite the same time travel science; in Collision Bayley introduced a theory of time travel that quite neatly side stepped paradox problems whilst in the Fall of Chrons he positively embraces paradoxes. The entire model of time that he presents here is so fantastical that it really slips into the realm of science fantasy and even if mind expanding drugs were not involved in the writing, the reading certainly does a good dose of mind expansion. My best advice is to just go with the flow and not worry too much about the detail and brace yourself for a wild ride. It’s all huge fun, if you don’t let it tie your mind into too many knots.
Bayley is often accused of poor character development and that is undoubtedly true, his characters are shallow clichés living in an unashamedly male oriented society, the few women that appear are distinctly second class characters who are never play any major roles are always subservient to the male characters. This shouldn’t be too surprising for when the book was written but it is always something I find annoying when reading books from this ‘classic’ era. Setting that aside this is a great space operatic style adventure that maintains a fast pace throughout. That latter being another difference from Collision which was at times a touch pedestrian.
A great little read that I would recommend to lovers of early SF just don’t expect to make sense of everything; I rather suspect even Bayley himself struggled to make sense of everything.
4/5 stars.
