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Chronoplane Wars #1
The Empire of Time
Last Time for TIME
Jerry Pierce was the Intertemporal Agency's most experienced operative, a seasoned time-traveler on the old subway train that whisked him back and forth through the ages. He'd already altered history by directing the Turkish conquest of Constantinople four centuries ahead of schedule and garrotting an obscure Mongol chief before the man became a problem. But his biggest difficulty lay ahead of him.
Seventy-four years ahead, to be exact.
Somehow, someway -- nuclear war, alien attack, no one really knew -- Earth was going to be destroyed and left a lifeless cinder. It was every Intertemporal agent's goal to find out how and to prevent disaster. But suddenly the problem had become Pierce's special assignment. And just as suddenly, the man for all ages had been mentally blocked from knowing what was going on. What he didn't know was that he was now programmed to kill -- and was being pushed to the end of the world....
Jerry Pierce was the Intertemporal Agency's most experienced operative, a seasoned time-traveler on the old subway train that whisked him back and forth through the ages. He'd already altered history by directing the Turkish conquest of Constantinople four centuries ahead of schedule and garrotting an obscure Mongol chief before the man became a problem. But his biggest difficulty lay ahead of him.
Seventy-four years ahead, to be exact.
Somehow, someway -- nuclear war, alien attack, no one really knew -- Earth was going to be destroyed and left a lifeless cinder. It was every Intertemporal agent's goal to find out how and to prevent disaster. But suddenly the problem had become Pierce's special assignment. And just as suddenly, the man for all ages had been mentally blocked from knowing what was going on. What he didn't know was that he was now programmed to kill -- and was being pushed to the end of the world....
182 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published December 1, 1978
22 people are currently reading
102 people want to read
About the author
Crawford Kilian
28 books17 followersCrawford 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.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
December 31, 2019
This energetic old pulp-SF parallel-worlds thriller really caught me up in its spell last night, even though (objectively) it isn't very good. Here's my edit of the SF Encyclopedia's take: Crawford Kilian "began to publish sf with the first volume of his complex Chronoplane Wars sequence, The Empire of Time (1978) . . . The protagonist of the series is a "Trainable" superman with the ability, along with those similar to him, to absorb knowledge almost instantly; he is faced with a world that demands the most of this ability: in a savagely declining Near-Future America, the discovery of portals into eleven "chronoplanes" – nine of them being Alternate World versions of Earth history, two of them being desolate, Ruined Earth future eras – inspires the creation of an intrusive Time Patrol into which he is recruited. The sequence revolves less around the avoiding of the Disaster that has afflicted future Earths than it does around the ethical conflicts between the protagonist and his interventionist agency...." http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/...
Who knows what you would think, but I enjoyed it a lot. A quick, easy read. Others reactions here (to be charitable) are mixed. This one has been sitting on the TBR-maybe shelf for years.
This book actually ends the series on an optimistic note. The other two (which I haven't read) are prequels. The charm of this one starts with the Stephen Hickman cover on my 1987 reprint: http://www.isfdb.org/wiki/images/b/be... -- which is worth a look. The author's discussion about writing the book, his first published novel, may be of interest: https://crofsblogs.typepad.com/fictio... "In hindsight, I can see it was a farrago of what I liked to read in those days: Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Ian Fleming, as well as countless SF stories about time-traveling or interstellar secret agents."
Who knows what you would think, but I enjoyed it a lot. A quick, easy read. Others reactions here (to be charitable) are mixed. This one has been sitting on the TBR-maybe shelf for years.
This book actually ends the series on an optimistic note. The other two (which I haven't read) are prequels. The charm of this one starts with the Stephen Hickman cover on my 1987 reprint: http://www.isfdb.org/wiki/images/b/be... -- which is worth a look. The author's discussion about writing the book, his first published novel, may be of interest: https://crofsblogs.typepad.com/fictio... "In hindsight, I can see it was a farrago of what I liked to read in those days: Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Ian Fleming, as well as countless SF stories about time-traveling or interstellar secret agents."
October 9, 2018
Very interesting premise, but its priorities are in the wrong places.
A time machine reveals the date of a doomsday scenario, so it's used to establish an empire over parallel past earths, for the purpose of doing science that might stop the doomsday. The hero is a James Bond for-the-empire type, but it tries to be more than just a power fantasy as the author doesn't shy away from the brutality of what running an empire means: it's a world of forced migration downstream, where historic nations are raided for their 'Trainables' and the rest left to their own fate.
The writing isn't up to a whole lot, but that's fine, pulp doesn't need flourish. I just want pastos meeting modern warfare! Is that too much to ask? The book has two sequels, and I'm half-thinking of tracking down the second one, which starts with an IED ripping apart a Roman colosseum.
What's unforgivable, however, is how boring most of the setting is: the majority of the book takes place in an ancient version of California... transformed into a modern suburb. Depressing! It's sad because the author really seems to get how anarchically fun anachronisms can be: we keep getting glimpses of paeloindians armed with AKs, Napoleon's navy wrecking the English with the help of modern radio equipment, Genghis Khan getting garrotted before he becomes a problem (egregiously mentioned only in passing!), a university town situated in ice age San Francisco, Renaissance Italy blasted by modern artillery, William Blake and Lord Byron as diplomats for a nascent Intertemporal League, Thomas Jefferson negotiating with the empire, etc. All shrugged off for a subpar James Bond in suburban prehistoric California. So disappointing.
A time machine reveals the date of a doomsday scenario, so it's used to establish an empire over parallel past earths, for the purpose of doing science that might stop the doomsday. The hero is a James Bond for-the-empire type, but it tries to be more than just a power fantasy as the author doesn't shy away from the brutality of what running an empire means: it's a world of forced migration downstream, where historic nations are raided for their 'Trainables' and the rest left to their own fate.
The writing isn't up to a whole lot, but that's fine, pulp doesn't need flourish. I just want pastos meeting modern warfare! Is that too much to ask? The book has two sequels, and I'm half-thinking of tracking down the second one, which starts with an IED ripping apart a Roman colosseum.
What's unforgivable, however, is how boring most of the setting is: the majority of the book takes place in an ancient version of California... transformed into a modern suburb. Depressing! It's sad because the author really seems to get how anarchically fun anachronisms can be: we keep getting glimpses of paeloindians armed with AKs, Napoleon's navy wrecking the English with the help of modern radio equipment, Genghis Khan getting garrotted before he becomes a problem (egregiously mentioned only in passing!), a university town situated in ice age San Francisco, Renaissance Italy blasted by modern artillery, William Blake and Lord Byron as diplomats for a nascent Intertemporal League, Thomas Jefferson negotiating with the empire, etc. All shrugged off for a subpar James Bond in suburban prehistoric California. So disappointing.
April 1, 2015
In a world where time travel is normal and the population is split between people who can be trained to learn rapidly (“trainables”) and those who can’t, Jerry Pierce is one of the fortunate trainables. He’s also a highly-trained, and “hyped” to triple his already fast reaction time, agent of change.
Jerry’s job is to alter history, often using brutal methods.
The main problem facing the human race is the impending destruction of Earth. No one knows how it will happen, but 72 years in the future, Earth is just a lifeless cinder.
Massive deportation of un-trainables to various times in the far past allows them to live full “normal” lives, but most resent it.
But Jerry’s boss may have found the reason and a solution. And Jerry is supposed to handle that. The problem is, that, as usual, Jerry has no idea what he’s supposed to do nor why. The information has been programmed into him, but he won’t know until the triggering moment presents itself. Maybe he’ll kill someone when he encounters him, or blow something up, but he doesn’t know.
Until he meets Anita !Kosi, an Australian Aborigine from the far past with unusual talents.
I had trouble staying awake through the first part of the story. Not entirely the book’s fault (I was tired anyway). However, a really good book would not have done that to me, even if I were very tired. In 1978 when this was published, you could still get by with a slow start. But today’s reader has gotten used to “fast starts” (except for disaster stories) and demands instant immersion into the main plot (or at least some action or problem that will draw them into the tale.
The latter half of the tale is engaging enough, but the end sort of dies with a whimper and never fulfills the “promise” of the action that precedes it.
I purchased this at a used bookstore in return for two books I was no longer interested in owning (and taking up room in my shelves). But I doubt if I’d pay even the original $1.75 cover price to acquire it. In fact, it’s going into my “trading” bag.
Jerry’s job is to alter history, often using brutal methods.
The main problem facing the human race is the impending destruction of Earth. No one knows how it will happen, but 72 years in the future, Earth is just a lifeless cinder.
Massive deportation of un-trainables to various times in the far past allows them to live full “normal” lives, but most resent it.
But Jerry’s boss may have found the reason and a solution. And Jerry is supposed to handle that. The problem is, that, as usual, Jerry has no idea what he’s supposed to do nor why. The information has been programmed into him, but he won’t know until the triggering moment presents itself. Maybe he’ll kill someone when he encounters him, or blow something up, but he doesn’t know.
Until he meets Anita !Kosi, an Australian Aborigine from the far past with unusual talents.
I had trouble staying awake through the first part of the story. Not entirely the book’s fault (I was tired anyway). However, a really good book would not have done that to me, even if I were very tired. In 1978 when this was published, you could still get by with a slow start. But today’s reader has gotten used to “fast starts” (except for disaster stories) and demands instant immersion into the main plot (or at least some action or problem that will draw them into the tale.
The latter half of the tale is engaging enough, but the end sort of dies with a whimper and never fulfills the “promise” of the action that precedes it.
I purchased this at a used bookstore in return for two books I was no longer interested in owning (and taking up room in my shelves). But I doubt if I’d pay even the original $1.75 cover price to acquire it. In fact, it’s going into my “trading” bag.
September 14, 2011
Just finished re-reading this. For the life of me, I can't remember why I liked it decades ago.
March 23, 2023
1984 grade B-
2023 grade B
An old and a bit odd dystopian alternate worlds action based hard SciFi novel. But I like hard SciFi because of the world building which is good. This one is only B level because it is too gritty and nasty. Earth prime colonizes alternate earths via time travel. That never fully made sense, but suspend your disbelief and it works just fine. Agent Pierce works for a policing agency that shuts down problems in the alternate worlds - or so he thinks. It turns out the evil things he has done have just been blocked from his mind. When the blocks are released, his actions change. I did not speed read it. It is too quickly paced for that. But I have over a dozen pages marked for skipping in the unlikely case I read it again. Still enjoyable.
(There are two spellings for the author's name. The book cover has "Kilian."
2023 grade B
An old and a bit odd dystopian alternate worlds action based hard SciFi novel. But I like hard SciFi because of the world building which is good. This one is only B level because it is too gritty and nasty. Earth prime colonizes alternate earths via time travel. That never fully made sense, but suspend your disbelief and it works just fine. Agent Pierce works for a policing agency that shuts down problems in the alternate worlds - or so he thinks. It turns out the evil things he has done have just been blocked from his mind. When the blocks are released, his actions change. I did not speed read it. It is too quickly paced for that. But I have over a dozen pages marked for skipping in the unlikely case I read it again. Still enjoyable.
(There are two spellings for the author's name. The book cover has "Kilian."
May 21, 2013
Hahaha. I got this for a dollar in Berkeley. It was terrible! I stopped a few pages from the end and forgot about it until last night when I took pity on it and finished. I think the cover art is the best part...
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews