I thought the cover was really fascinating and the title was endearing to me. I instantly had an inkling on what the story would entail before having read that, and I think that works in its favor. I haven’t had any experience going through bookstores so it was a bit of an overwhelming search, but there was a whimsical nature to the cover of Thrice Upon A Time so I just had to learn more about it.

In the barest of bones, it’s a story about time travel and exploring its potential limitations and consequences. Time travel is done through sending messages to the past, which then affect the present reality. There are also themes of this mechanism of time travel being controlled by the government and higher forms of power, and how these scientists stumble upon a machine they don’t understand the potential it holds until later in the story.

I would categorize this story as Hard SF, as it primarily uses theoretical mathematics and quantum physics to explain the mechanisms behind the technology used. There were a lot of pages dedicated strictly to theorizing how time travel would even work, and touched on the multiverse as it relates to infinite branching timelines. It also goes without saying that the story is about time travel, and looking at all the different ways things can be altered in these different timelines. I’m not usually a fan of Hard SF, but I could appreciate the amount of thought and care that went into developing this world and the technology. There are also subplots revolving around free will. This primarily relates to the relationships between the characters and whether they’d still come to fruition or end if the timelines weren’t altered by the messages.

I think there was way too much exposition, it was very hard to get through because a lot of the pages were going over the setting and the geography of each location which took me out of the story often. Most of the plot could honestly be taken out, I think the main draw of the story was how it explores relationships affected by timelines. The politics and the overarching bureaucracy, along with the vaccine & virus stuff wasn’t my cup of tea. I didn’t think it added to the story either, because the science behind it didn’t feel realistic to me. There also seemed to be significantly less effort put towards fleshing out the other sciences in this story unrelated to time travel. However, this point towards the plot might be biased because of my affinity towards soft SF and fantasy genres. This isn’t to say that the way James P. Hogan wrote this was necessarily bad, but the stakes felt higher for the relationships in the story, rather than the world succumbing to the deadly illness. I think the message it has about love is surprisingly optimistic, as it seems to validate fate as a force in the universe. Certain characters always find a way back to each other regardless of the timeline alterations. This personally aligns with my view of the world so it’s cool to see it affirmed in text that was written decades ago.

I’d recommend it to anyone interested in time travel as a genre, it’s a really interesting thought experiment the way it deals with timeline manipulation, as well as separate timelines. If you’re a hopeless romantic I would also recommend this story because it handles love in a really cute way!

Works Cited:

Hogan, James. Thrice Upon A Time. New York: Ballantine Books, 1980.

(Tyrese Duncan-Moore)

(Post by River Patterson)

Why did I choose this book?

I wasn’t sure what I wanted to read about before entering the bookstore. I asked the store owner for a recommendation of a book that corresponded with some of my personal interests and was given: Starship & Haiku. I decided to stick with it partly because the cover was purple and featured a grey whale.

What’s it about?

After global strife causes the moon to shatters into pieces, America falls into civil war.  Hawaii is ruled by three kings who command “gangs of wild people” (45) to kill the island’s inhabitants. The Japanese government, with polluted waters and no fish, enables mass suicide. The world is falling apart. Ryoko Ishida, the daughter of a Japanese government official, travels to Hawaii with her father and discovers she can speak to whales. On her trip, Ryoko meets Josh Nakamura, a Japanese-American boy who cares for “stranges” (36), mutants stricken by plague. Ryoko’s visit prompts Josh to leave war-torn Hawaii for Japan. Contemporaneously, Ryoko’s father works on a spaceships meant to rescue humans from the dying earth. On her voyage home, human Ryoko is impregnated by a whale. (70) Her offspring may have the potential to save the world…

What kind of SF?

The story is somewhere between apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic. Could fall into underwater SF category, or whale SF. Additionally, pre-cogs.

What’s good?

There are a lot of cryptic haikus. In part set in 2022, is serendipitously and scarily  pertinent. The writing ambience is beautiful, dark and poetic.

Do I recommend it?

If you like 80s trippy whale melodrama, but not really. While I have developed a small love for this book, it is pretty intense and complicated. The plot line is too layered. The main characters are not that interesting and their relationship is a little awkward. The whale pregnancy thing is also odd.

Sucharitkul, Somtow. Starship & Haiku. Timescape Books, 1981. 

(RIver Patterson)

(post by Liam Jacetta)

Most, if not all, of my book buying, has been done with a preconceived idea of what I’m buying. Whether that be an author I’m specifically looking for or an exact book, I have never gone in blind. Upon going into the store I was somewhat trying to avoid authors I had heard of before. I wanted to expand the variety of authors I have read and was looking for something different. I was mostly going off of the title and cover art. The Day the Machines Stopped had very interesting and retro cover art and the title alone drew me into the story.

The book is about a laboratory worker battling with the struggles and conflicts that come with a complete blackout. When the world falls into total electrical power outage there will soon be total anarchy. Their journey to find alternative power sources and navigate the disintegrating societal framework is unlike stories I have read before. All this happening while the story also follows a familiar plot line of protagonists fighting over a love interest: a coworker.

In comparison to some of the stories I have read to date, this is a pretty tame science fiction novel. There are no previous scientific anomalies or advancements that the characters have dealt with. Unlike stories that take place totally in the future or a more advanced time, the characters of this story have never dealt with anything unexplainable by their modern science. This leads to a great story in which you discover all of the supernatural problems along with the characters.

This book is great because it highlights an uncommon but very plausible kind of apocalypse. Most plagues and apocalypses are survived but the rich. Those who are prepared, or have enough money to become prepared quickly are usually the ones rising to the top. In such a crisis as is outlined in this book, there is no way to easily pay your way out of this issue. The solution to the problem does not lay in waiting out the apocalypse, but in finding a solution to restoring the power. This unites scientists, much like the two this story most closely follows, even if there is such a divide between them like a love interest.

I would recommend this book to those who are not looking for a hard-core science fiction or supernatural story. I quite enjoyed this book and I am looking forward to reading more by the author.

Anvil, Christopher. The Day the Machines Stopped. Derby, Connecticut: Monarch Books, Inc, 1944.

(Liam Jacetta)

Asimov’s 1966 Novel “Fantastic Voyage” tells the story of a mission to inner space: the intrepid crew of The Proteus are shrunk to molecular size and injected into the body of a comatose scientist in an effort to remove an inoperable blood clot from his brain. I found this copy as part of an Asimov section removed from the other science fiction on an endcap of a Green Hand bookshelf, it lacked a dust jacket and was an unassuming gray hardcover with small pink lettering. Also among it’s kin was “The Gods Themselves” which was a close second-place.

Interestingly enough, although Asimov was tasked with writing the novelization, the idea for “Fantastic Voyage” was actually cooked up in a short story by Otto Klement and Jay Lewis Bixby, who then sold the rights to Fox Studios who proceeded to make the 1966 movie of the same name. Fox Studios approached Asimov for a novelization, who apparently initially objected to the screenplay, suggesting that it was full of “plotholes.” However, Asimov ultimately followed through, and the novelization was published before the film had finished shooting, which lead many (myself included) to believe that the film was based on the book, not vice-versa as is reality.

While much of the science fiction of the late sixties doubtlessly focuses on outer space: the final frontier, telling stories of bold astronaughts and rocket heroes (vis. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), and others) Fantastic voyage instead looks inward at the vastness and complexity of our own bodies. Thematically, the story leans heavily on the symmetries of the very large and very small. while on the cosmic scale humanity is utterly insignificant, from the point of view of a microbe each individual is a galaxy of interacting biology. The book wrestles with ideas surrounding the existence of a divine consciousness and intelligent designer of life as well as the idea that all life is sacred no matter how small. In my opinion the greatness of this story stems from this unique notion that even the smallest systems are immense and well, Fantastic.

I would highly recommend Fantastic Voyage, although i would not call it Asimov’s best work. overall i’d give it a rating of 3×10^27 neurotransmitters and one raygun. The film is also definitely worth a watch, especially if you enjoy creative and cheesy 60’s special effects and truly fantastic set design.

and here is a still from the movie:

Asimov, Isaac, Harry Kleiner, and Otto Klement. Fantastic Voyage. New York: Bantam Books, 1966.

Kristine Kathryn Rusch is a Hugo Award winning author born in 1960. She also worked as the editor of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science fiction for a few years and writes in a variety of genres under several pseudonyms. For the Green Hand book project, I read her novel “The Disappeared”, published in 2002, which is part of a 15-book series called the Retrieval Artist series.

I was recommended this book because I was interested in worldbuilding and the idea of how different species might imagine coexisting together, which this book accomplishes in a futuristic setting where humans interact with multiple alien races as part of an “Earth Alliance”. Between the different species, there is an agreement to respect each others’ laws, although breaking these alien laws can bring unjust punishments, including giving away your first-born or being abducted to a hard labor camp.

There are a variety of fun technological novums in this book, some not too unlike the ones we have encountered with other texts, such as Shakespeare holofilms, an almost personified house security system (“House” referred to with a capital H), portals, spaceships, building materials like “moon adobe” and the like. What I found most intriguing how Earth seemed to be presented as a haven of antiquity. For example, flying cars being banned in certain settlements because they would obstruct the view. I was also intrigued by how outer space earthling settlements were named after historical figures of space travel (Gagarin Dome, Armstrong Dome, etc.)

The plot of the novel could well be described as an outer-space cop drama. It follows Miles Finch, whose job it is to retrieve folks who are on the run. Much of the novel is involved in Miles tackling dichotomies between Law and Justice, reminding me a lot of Javert from Les Miserables. There is quite a bit of intrigue and mystery in the text, which, coupled with an exploration of how humans might interact with aliens on a political level makes “The Disappeared” a very compelling read. If you liked Blade Runner, chances are you will really love this book too.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/372000.The_Disappeared

The book I decided to read was The War of the Worlds (1898) by H.G. Wells. I knew that this book is considered to be a classic by many, and has some funny stories surrounding it, most notably Orson Welles reading it aloud in a radio program in 1938 and causing a panic amongst listeners who did not know it was fictional. I was also very intrigued by the premise, being a martian invasion of the earth, as reading the blurb I was led to believe that it would not be a war of the worlds, but a massacre, as the martians seemed to be much more advanced than the humans.

My prediction ended up being correct, and my sentiments were echoed perfectly in a quote that stood out to me quite a bit: “This isn’t a war… It never was a war, any more than there’s war between man and ants” (Wells 146).

It is remarkable that such a book was published in the 19th century and continues to be so influential and prevalent in the SF space, as well as beyond. One cool fact that I learned is that Robert H. Goddard, the man credited with developing the first liquid-fuelled rocket, was inspired by the book.

My main issue with the book is a lack of character development, but this is generally a problem I have with most of the harder-SF I encounter. I sometimes hard it find to read through books when I am not personally invested in the characters that I am supposed to be rooting for. Despite this, there is plenty of action, and H.G. Wells’ style of writing is amazing. I would recommend this book to anyone looking for some classic SF action and adventure, but if you are looking for a literal war between worlds, you might be a bit disappointed in how pitiful the humans are.

Wells, H.G. The War of the Worlds (1898). London: William Heinemann.