Time's Eye by Stephen Baxter and Arthur C. Clarke

Time's Eye by Arthur C. Clarke

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Jacket Blurb: 1885, the North West Frontier. Rudyard Kipling is witness to a British army action to repress a local uprising. And to a terrifying intervention by a squadron of tanks from 2137. Before the full impact of this extraordinary event has even begun to sink in Kipling, his friends and the tanks are, themselves flung back to the 4th century and the midst of Alexander the Great's army. Mankind's time odyssey has begun. It is a journey that will see Alexander avoid his premature death and carve out an Empire that expands from Carthage to China. And it will present mankind with two devastating truths. Aliens are amongst us and have been manipulating our past and our future. And that future extends only as far as 2137 for that is the date Earth will be destroyed. This is SF that spans countless centuries and carries cutting edge ideas on time travel and alien intervention. It shows two of the genre's masters at their groundbreaking best.




March's book group selection.

I’m usually not enthusiastic about alternate history type books - I did not finish Dies the Fire by SM Sterling, but I did greatly enjoy To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis.  I won’t read Blackout/All Clear however.  Absolutely, totally, utterly no interest.


Time’s Eye pulled me in from page one.  I think the initial interest was because I recently watched the History of India (PBS special) and the significance of the Khyber Pass between India, Afghanistan and Pakistan was explained from a historical perspective.  And partly because I’m already fascinated with this corner of the world and some of the great accomplishments that came out of various periods of history.

What was different about Time’s Eye was that it really wasn’t an alternate history – it was more a speculative look at what would happen if you took some of the greatest armies in mankind’s history, caused a massive worldwide Time Discontinuity, and pitted those armies against one another.  Add in a couple of modern people (but not too futuristic!) on each side just to level the playing field and put the battlefield in the ancient city of Babylon.

Yup, a historians wet dream and where I began to loose interest.

It was like the authors had this great Discontinuity idea to account for the backdrop but when story started moving into implausibility with one subplot - with our Mongolians and our female character who managed to get into the good graces of Genghis Khan - I was kicked out of the story.  Given the historical parameters the author set up, it seemed too farfetched to even be remotely plausible. The author acknowledges the lack of hygiene, people getting sick from dysentery, poor eating habits (spitting gristle back into the common stew pot) and here we have a 21st Century woman who allows herself to get banged by a aged Mongolian and then becomes one of his advisers.  Right.


But it wasn't just that.  There was a time span from the beginning of the Discontinuity to about 6 years toward the end of the story.  Most of the electronics from the modern's helicopter that crashed continued to work despite being left in the acid rain. One characters 'smartphone' batteries lasted 6 years.  The British kept a pre-human alive in simple netted cage for 6 years. Food seemed rather easy to come by.  I could go on, but there were so many of these little and not so little 'hiccups' that left me shaking my head in disbelief.   If I can't believe in the parameters of the story, I can't believe the story itself.

So the book started with promise and ended flat.



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