The Fall of the Republic

Chronoplane Wars #2

by Crawford Kilian

It was the 1990s and the world was going to hell in a trashbasket. Poverty was up, employment was down, and bashing foreign cars was in.

Revolutionaries of every kind stalked the streets. The government ruled by martial law and its last-minute solutions to critical problems were only stopgaps.

One of the few people willing to fight the coming end of Civilization was Jerry Pierce. A colonel barely out of his teens, Pierce learned early not to let scruples, friendship, or inconvenient dead bodies stand between him and doing a job right. And a good thing, too: because it wasn't just civilization--or even America--he was fighting to preserve, but all Mankind and planet Earth itself.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction

293 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published August 12, 1987

About the author

Crawford Kilian was born in New York in 1941. Raised in Los Angeles and Mexico City, he is a naturalized Canadian citizen living in Vancouver, British Columbia, with his wife, Alice, and daughters, Anna and Margaret. Formerly a technical writer-editor at the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory in Berkeley, he has taught English at Capilano College in North Vancouver since 1968.

Reviews

[Mark · Rating 1 out of 5]

Crawford Kilian’s prequel to his 1978 novel The Empire of Time begins with a world in crisis. The time is the then-near-future of the 1990s. A prolonged economic depression and ongoing environmental problems has left America a desperate nation under military government. Leading the effort to address these many issues are the “Trainables,” people identified at adolescence with the ability to absorb enormous amounts of information rapidly. Their efforts to maintain social order are given an unexpected boost by the discovery of “chronoplanes,” alternate Earths at different periods in time that can be settled and exploited. Two young Trainables, Eric Wigner and Jerry Pierce, envision the chronoplanes as offering not just a new hope, but the opportunity for a different world in the present. Using the knowledge gained covertly by a trip to a future chronoplane, they conspire to turn their vision into reality – but will they succeed before their superiors in the government can stop them?

Kilian’s first novel in his “Chronoplane Wars” series was an entertaining book almost overstuffed with interesting ideas, and a prequel would seem to provide an opportunity to explore some of them in greater detail. Yet Kilian seems to approach this book with all of the enthusiasm of a high school student trying to complete his homework. Key developments such as the discovery of the chronoplanes are simply dumped into the story, with their impact upon events more described than shown. Instead the primary focus of the plot is on the conspiracy, yet even here Kilian does little to develop sympathy for his characters or suspense over the inevitable outcome. The result is a bloated disappointment that squanders the opportunity to develop the promise of his earlier work in the series.

[Allan Ashinoff · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm not keen on the idea of the US giving up its sovereignty to an international federation. In fact, they'd bury me early on because of my open and vocal opposition to throwing away the Founding Fathers Great Experiment and sacrificing the freedoms of future generations of Americans. That said, the sci-fi elements of the story - time/space travel, a society oppressed by the stranglehold of corrupt governance was well done. While in its way accurate, the author should have projected his setting a bit further in the future - 1990 came an went. Overall a fun read.

[Eero · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book feels strangely, disturbingly topical these days. Things appear to be falling apart much in the way Kilian describes.

I read this in KIndle edition, and my biggest problem was that apparently this hadn't been proofread after being OCRed from hardcopy. It seems every instance of the word "corner" has transformed into "comer" and quite a few times where "finally" has turned into "Anally" (worth a chuckle at least), just to give two examples. It got really hard to slog through the book just for that reason. It seems nobody cares whether an ebook edition of an old book is even readable. At least I got these free at some point.

[Ian Hamilton · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a real disappointment. The ideas that stemmed from the first in this trilogy set the groundwork for something bigger and better, but this was a slog with a narrative that veered in too many directions. But…..I’ll probably end up reading the third…

[Resonant · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bad OCR, great book

This has a huge number of typos from when they scanned a paper copy, but the story is worth it. Sort of like The Umbrella Academy with government agents.

[Waleed · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book, nice story. Interesting development of the world setting. Good setup for the rest of the series.

[SciFiOne · Rating 3 out of 5]

1989 grade C+

Series CP

Violent.

[Steve Clark]

Paperback

[gary whitehead]

a very interesting read