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ARC Riders #1
ARC Riders
The elite Anti-Revision Command, the ARC Riders, attempt to foil a desperate plot to destroy the United States. Reactionary 23rd century conspirators have changed history, and the Vietnam War has spread to central China.
320 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published June 1, 1995
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62 people want to read
About the author
David Drake
317 books889 followersDavid Drake is an American author of science fiction and fantasy literature. A Vietnam War veteran who has worked as a lawyer, he is now one of the major authors of the military science fiction genre.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
February 26, 2009
The ARC riders are soliders/operatives of "Anti Revision Command". Their purpose is to keep the timeline of history correct; stopping anyone who tries to change history.
In this book, someone has changed history so the Vietnam War is still going on in 1991. The team, split up by an accident, has both groups trying to "mend' the timeline back to the correct original history.
David Drake and Janet Morris did an adequte job here; but it is not as good as some of thier other works. The characters did not catch my interest, escept for one. Still--it was okay--a competent but uninspired tale. Recommended for fans of time travel stories and/or military sf.
In this book, someone has changed history so the Vietnam War is still going on in 1991. The team, split up by an accident, has both groups trying to "mend' the timeline back to the correct original history.
David Drake and Janet Morris did an adequte job here; but it is not as good as some of thier other works. The characters did not catch my interest, escept for one. Still--it was okay--a competent but uninspired tale. Recommended for fans of time travel stories and/or military sf.
May 16, 2017
Opening of a decent series.
June 18, 2019
Really liked the concept of the Anti Revisionist Command, the whole theory of this book's time travel and the way it was all written into a very good thriller.
April 21, 2015
Originally posted on my blog, SpecFic Junkie.
Stock standard in so many ways, ARC Riders left little to no impression on me. In fact, I doubt I could tell you much about the plot tomorrow. It's not that it was bad. It was just supremely "meh."
ARC Riders is time travel military science fiction, and it really, really wants you to know that this is the case. Frex, there's a metric tonne of milspeak all the time and every page is peppered with acryonyms and technobabble. To the point where I kind of just have to start skimming because it's that dense with nonsense.
So. Time travel. In some ways it's handled well. In others, it's eye roll worthy. But when is it not? They basically have to deal with their evil parallel timeline twins because they're... revision control specialists who keep timelines from being revised, but obviously this timeline has its own version of the revisionists... but their timeline is the good one and this is the bad one so.
Oh, and if you're a bad person and illegally revise history, they drop you in 50,000 BCE and let you live there... because that wouldn't ever raise legitimate questions in the long run. Like "why the fuck are there modern human remains found here that appear to be 52,000 years old?" Whevs.
There's a lot of action and shooting and completely forgettable characters. Except the analyst. I liked the analyst. Mostly because he was a utilitarian sociopath. I like utilitarian sociopaths. I think there was a lot of work done to make sure that the characters were varied and unique, but it just never stuck with me.
The pacing is also really weird and jerky. It seems like it's going slow one moment and then suddenly fast the next and there's no real sense of time. And not in the "we're time traveling" no sense of time. Then again, I was getting so bored I was probably missing things, as I was sometimes having trouble following what was going on.
One bit of weirdness: for some reason, Asians are regularly referred to as "Orientals." I think this is supposed to mark... a prejudice or something? But having a whole bunch of folks from the 26th Century refer to Asians as Orientals is a bit... jarring, to say the least. And it's not like this book was written a billion years ago. It was published in 1995. Didn't we figure out that wasn't cool by then?
Anyway, point is this book was really, really fleeting and mediocre. Unless you're looking for something to bore you or I don't know... keep you from thinking about things without being too stimulating, don't read it. There are better books out there.
Stock standard in so many ways, ARC Riders left little to no impression on me. In fact, I doubt I could tell you much about the plot tomorrow. It's not that it was bad. It was just supremely "meh."
ARC Riders is time travel military science fiction, and it really, really wants you to know that this is the case. Frex, there's a metric tonne of milspeak all the time and every page is peppered with acryonyms and technobabble. To the point where I kind of just have to start skimming because it's that dense with nonsense.
So. Time travel. In some ways it's handled well. In others, it's eye roll worthy. But when is it not? They basically have to deal with their evil parallel timeline twins because they're... revision control specialists who keep timelines from being revised, but obviously this timeline has its own version of the revisionists... but their timeline is the good one and this is the bad one so.
Oh, and if you're a bad person and illegally revise history, they drop you in 50,000 BCE and let you live there... because that wouldn't ever raise legitimate questions in the long run. Like "why the fuck are there modern human remains found here that appear to be 52,000 years old?" Whevs.
There's a lot of action and shooting and completely forgettable characters. Except the analyst. I liked the analyst. Mostly because he was a utilitarian sociopath. I like utilitarian sociopaths. I think there was a lot of work done to make sure that the characters were varied and unique, but it just never stuck with me.
The pacing is also really weird and jerky. It seems like it's going slow one moment and then suddenly fast the next and there's no real sense of time. And not in the "we're time traveling" no sense of time. Then again, I was getting so bored I was probably missing things, as I was sometimes having trouble following what was going on.
One bit of weirdness: for some reason, Asians are regularly referred to as "Orientals." I think this is supposed to mark... a prejudice or something? But having a whole bunch of folks from the 26th Century refer to Asians as Orientals is a bit... jarring, to say the least. And it's not like this book was written a billion years ago. It was published in 1995. Didn't we figure out that wasn't cool by then?
Anyway, point is this book was really, really fleeting and mediocre. Unless you're looking for something to bore you or I don't know... keep you from thinking about things without being too stimulating, don't read it. There are better books out there.
August 4, 2015
I discovered a new series by David Drake (and Janet Morris) for me to delve into. Ok it was written in 1995 but it was new to me. I’ve read a number of Drake’s books before and found them quite entertaining.
I was not really disappointed - that’s too strong a word - in ARC Riders but I wasn’t as pleased as I had hoped to be.
It’s pure Sc-Fi involving time traveling. Ok, that’s a big plus. However, the first 30 or so pages of the book were bogged down with techno-geek explanations about how this gizmo worked and how that one worked. It was slow reading
But then the story took off and for the next couple of hundred pages of the book there was plenty of action - now this was the Drake I enjoyed.
But as we neared the end, things were happening way too fast. It’s as if the authors had a deadline to meet so let’s cram everything in that last 15 pages of the book and hope it make sense.
I am on to the next book in the series. Hopefully that one will be better.
I was not really disappointed - that’s too strong a word - in ARC Riders but I wasn’t as pleased as I had hoped to be.
It’s pure Sc-Fi involving time traveling. Ok, that’s a big plus. However, the first 30 or so pages of the book were bogged down with techno-geek explanations about how this gizmo worked and how that one worked. It was slow reading
But then the story took off and for the next couple of hundred pages of the book there was plenty of action - now this was the Drake I enjoyed.
But as we neared the end, things were happening way too fast. It’s as if the authors had a deadline to meet so let’s cram everything in that last 15 pages of the book and hope it make sense.
I am on to the next book in the series. Hopefully that one will be better.
May 28, 2015
This is a fairly average run-of-the-mill time travel adventure, in the tradition of The Time Patrol and many others with a bit more of an emphasis on the military aspect. The best reason for two authors to collaborate on a novel is if one of them has a particular strength that offsets a weakness of the other, or if one has a particular expertise or knowledge that strengthens the work. So the work should be better by the two than either one could have produced alone. In this case I didn't detect any kind of strength that was added by the collaboration. I wasn't previously familiar with much of Morris's work, but I thought I'd enjoyed Drake's solo works much more. It's not a bad story, just not quite up to his usual standard.
September 21, 2012
I've been meaning to read this for a while and finally got it from the library. I'm about half way and enjoying it a lot!
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews