Threshold of Eternity
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- $6.99
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- $6.99
Publisher Description
The legendary John Brunner wrote the original Threshold of Eternity in 1957. Sixty years later Damien Broderick revisits the world Brunner created in that classic, forward-looking story and modernizes it to retell the exciting tale of time travelers, augmented intelligences and aliens.
When Korean war vet Ret. Corporal Lawrence “Red” Hawkins stumbles across a doctor from the future, he embarks on the most important journey of his life…with the future of humanity at stake. For he must travel thousands of years into the future to join in a galactic Time War where alien beings are poised to eradicate humanity in a conflict that never ends.
Spearheading the fight against the alien race (known only as the Enemy) is Artesha, a human so advanced, so damaged by a war she’s been fighting across endless time and space, that her physical form has been destroyed; she not only has been uploaded into the Center’s web where she runs humanity’s vast communication network—she has become it.
While Artesha tries to calculate the best way to victory in a playing field being continuously altered by time surges, it is all that she and her fleet coordinators, Paulo Magwareet and Burma Brahmasutra, can do to keep up with the fallout. For there is also another presence at play whom the humans know as the Being, and the Enemy label the Beast. It will take all of the time travelers, across many different eras of humanity, working together to uncover this mysterious entity’s goal, to make right a time torn asunder so they can forge a future for the human race.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Broderick (Time Considered as a Series of Thermite Burns in No Particular Order) attempts to update an early novel by the late, great Brunner (1934 1995, author of Stand on Zanzibar) in this uneven story of interstellar war and time travel. Brunner's novel was originally serialized in New Worlds magazine in 1957, when the author was 23 year old. Even after a face-lift, the novel reveals its pre new wave origins with thin characters, awkward dialogue, and unabashed pulp action. In the 41st century, human colonists are under attack by "the Enemy," genocidal alien villains. "With a body full of seething youthful juices," 25-year-old Artesha Wong leads the local planetary defenses, first as a human, later as a machine-based intelligence. Meanwhile, unpredictable time surges possibly caused by a mysterious alien called the Being are unleashing chaos throughout history. Korean War vet "Red" Hawkins and Chantal Vareze, a French doctor from 2037, join Artesha in the fight. Short chapters keep the action rocketing along. Broderick's rewrite highlights Brunner's early promise as a writer synonymous with big ideas and the culture shock of political, technological, and social change.
