Zeitpunkt Null

by Brian Ball, Wulf H. Bergner (Translator)

What happened to the colossal dimensional engine of the Forever Planet? What happened to the mysterious Pivot of Time?

TIMEPIECE told of the eerie extra-Universals who manufactured that vast and strange engine: TIMEPIT moves on to a day when the Pivot of Time has been locked away, to keep its terrifying powers from the curious an the bold. For centuries its safety is assured...like a precious fetish it is stored away, to be visited as it it were some magic touchstone.

And then a wasp stung Kelp on the nose! Kelp, curious, bold, resourceful, had been prisoner in the warm ooze of the coma-cells since the time of his arrest. His crime? He tried to investigate the secrets of the Pivot of Time. A wasp-sting brought him from a ten-year sleep into a sharp awareness of a mission unaccomplished. He leapt into action! Kelp's insatiable curiosity and boundless resources enabled him to smash the fearful guardians of the Timepivot but the consequences of Kelp's tampering with the Timepivot were indeed vast and terrible.

124 pages, Paperback

First published June 30, 2015

About the author

UK author (Also writes as Brian N. Ball.), until 1965 a teacher and lecturer, subsequently freelance, who began publishing sf with "The Pioneer" for New Worlds in February 1962, soon after editing a juvenile anthology, Tales of Science Fiction (anth 1964). His first novel, Sundog (1965), is one of his better books, in which – though restricted by incomprehensible and uncomprehending Aliens to the solar system and by itself to a rigidly policed Dystopia, – mankind transcends its limitations. The trigger factor is the simple-seeming Spaceship pilot Dod, who slowly discovers himself to be a rather more formidable Scientist who was subjected to "blocking" (see Memory Edit) when his researches frightened the regime.
There followed a projected five-book sequence involving an ancient Galactic Federation, its relics, Time Travel, and rebirth: Timepiece (1968), Timepivot (1970) and Timepit (1971). A second series, The Probability Man (1972) and Planet Probability (1973), follows the exploits of Frame-Director Spingarn in his heterodox construction of reality-spaces (frames) for the delectation (and voluntary destruction) of billions of bored citizens. Singletons include Night of the Robots (April 1965 Science Fantasy #71 as "The Excursion"; exp rev 1972; vt The Regiments of Night 1972), in which assorted visitors to a Ruined Earth inadvertently waken an ancient AI-controlled military installation. Though he sometimes aspires to the more metaphysical side of the sf tropes he utilizes, Ball's style tends to reduce these implications to routine action-adventure plots, competently executed.

Reviews

[Federico · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is just weird. I could not finish it i stopped reading it after like 50 pages. It is just such a confusing plot and the "sci" fi elements are making me mad. For a physics student like me those elements are like a pure bullshit bingo.
I think this book is simply a product of its time and for you to enjoy it you need to be a real fan of this weird 70s budget "science"-fiction