Crux
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Schemes, betrayals, adventure, and satire blend in this delightful debut novel in the spirit of Poul Anderson's classic Time Patrol stories and Fritz Leiber's The Big Time. Albert E. Cowdrey is a bold new voice in science fiction.
Centuries ago, the Time of Troubles left Earth shattered and nearly empty. But a few survivors in Central Asia and returnees from Luna City hung on to bring the human race back to life. Now the Government of the Universe is spread out among hundreds of worlds. Genghis Khan is idolized as the Great Unifier of Humanity, and democracy is a long-forgotten notion. Old racial and religious divisions have been swept away by the rising oceans which lap around the Appalachian Islands, and peace abounds throughout the stars.
Into this glorious golden age comes a new threat. Scientists in the World City of Ulanor have created a wormhole generator-a machine which can send people into the past. A band of Old Believers, bleeding hearts, and other malcontents who call themselves "the Crux" have captured the generator to undertake the greatest humanitarian mission of all time: to stop the Time of Troubles by assassinating the man responsible, the legendary Minister Destruction.
Of course, Crux has to be stopped. Even the smallest change to the past will destroy the future-and the Controller of Earth won't stand for that.
The agents of the Office for the Exploration of the Past-Pastplor-work to thwart Crux and other sociopaths, criminals, and do-gooders who would jeopardize the fragile peace so hard won. Their missions spanning a wide array of vividly imagined futures, Pastplor's agents protect the past from those who would dare to meddle. The time-travelers are hailed as saviors of humanity-but cannot escape the feeling that they're on the wrong side of the war.
"A cast of well-fleshed characters and electrifying action should gain Cowdrey a satisfied audience."--Booklist
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Earth in the 25th century has been resettled by its space colonies after the 2091-2093 Time of Troubles nearly devastated humanity's home planet in Cowdrey's dark SF debut. From Ulanor, "the capital of the human race," Colonel Yamashita's fearsome KGB-style Security Service controls hundreds of inhabited worlds in an effort to prevent such a disaster from happening again even if it means liquidating most of the population. When "some idiots at the University" in Ulanor build a wormhole generator called "the Crux," a subversive gaggle of Old Believers, do-gooders and other agitators use it to send an agent back in time to block events that ignited the Time of Troubles. With four attempts to change the past by dizzyingly shifting combinations of conspirators, the narration becomes chronologically dyspeptic. Characters melt frenetically from "good" to "bad" and back again, and even Cowdrey's flattish protagonist, Hastings Maks, loses definition. Cowdrey evidently intended Alspeke, a mishmash of Earth's old tongues and now humanity's common language, to give an exotic as well as Orwellian flavor, but its heavy Russian component necessitates momentum-damping translations. A few tragi-ludicrous sexual situations, like the all-powerful near-mummified Controller Xian's lust for young men, help lighten the novel's otherwise oppressive atmosphere.
