As the subtitle indicates, Time's Eye is the first book of a series intended to do for time what 2001 did for space. Does Time's Eye succeed in this goal? No. In 2001, humanity discovers a mysterious monolith on the moon, triggering a signal that astronauts pursue to one of the moons of Jupiter. In Time's Eye, mysterious satellites appear all around the Earth and scramble time, bringing together an ape-woman; twenty- first-century soldiers and astronauts; nineteenth-century British and Indian soldiers; and the armies of Genghis Khan and Alexander the Great. The characters march around in search of other survivors, then clash in epic battle. It's not until the end that the novel returns to the mystery of the tiny, eye-like satellites (and doesn't solve it). In other words, the plot of Time's Eye is a nearly 300-page digression, and 2001 fans expecting exploration of the scientific enigma and examination of the meaning of existence will be disappointed. However, fans of rousing and well-written transtemporal adventure in the tradition of S.M. Stirling's novel Island in the Sea of Time will enjoy Time's Eye. --Cynthia Ward

Product Description
Sir Arthur C. Clarke is a living legend, a writer whose name has been synonymous with science fiction for more than fifty years. An indomitable believer in human and scientific potential, Clarke is a genuine visionary. If Clarke has an heir among today’s science fiction writers, it is award-winning author Stephen Baxter. In each of his acclaimed novels, Baxter has demonstrated dazzling gifts of imagination and intellect, along with a rare ability to bring the most cerebral science dramatically to life. Now these two champions of humanism and scientific speculation have combined their talents in a novel sure to be one of the most talked-about of the year, a 2001 for the new millennium.

TIME’S EYE

For eons, Earth has been under observation by the Firstborn, beings almost as old as the universe itself. The Firstborn are unknown to humankind— until they act. In an instant, Earth is carved up and reassembled like a huge jigsaw puzzle. Suddenly the planet and every living thing on it no longer exist in a single timeline. Instead, the world becomes a patchwork of eras, from prehistory to 2037, each with its own indigenous inhabitants.

Scattered across the planet are floating silver orbs impervious to all weapons and impossible to communicate with. Are these technologically advanced devices responsible for creating and sustaining the rifts in time? Are they cameras through which inscrutable alien eyes are watching? Or are they something stranger and more terrifying still?

The answer may lie in the ancient city of Babylon, where two groups of refugees from 2037—three cosmonauts returning to Earth from the International Space Station, and three United Nations peacekeepers on a mission in Afghanistan—have detected radio signals: the only such signals on the planet, apart from their own. The peacekeepers find allies in nineteenth-century British troops and in the armies of Alexander the Great. The astronauts, crash-landed in the steppes of Asia, join forces with the Mongol horde led by Genghis Khan. The two sides set out for Babylon, each determined to win the race for knowledge . . . and the power that lies within.

Yet the real power is beyond human control, perhaps even human understanding. As two great armies face off before the gates of Babylon, it watches, waiting. . . .


From the Hardcover edition.

In this novel, a UN surveillance helicopter in 2037 is fired upon by a Pastun adolescent, damaging the tail rotor. The pilot, Casey Othic, breaks his leg in the emergency landing, but the co-pilot, Abdikadir Omar, and the observer, Biseasa Dutt, are not injured. All the fluttering and smoke attract the attention of nearby soldiers, who think the contraption is a Russian machine.

The soldiers are Tommies and sepoy troops from Jamrud, a fort in the English Raj of 1885. Included among them are two correspondents, the Anglo-Indian Ruddy and the American Josh White. They surround the smoking machine and order the occupants to surrender their weapons and exit the device. They have to help extricate Casey from the distorted frame.

A British patrol also finds a pair of "man-apes" wandering the plains. The mother and child look very much like chimpanzees, but they have longer legs and a truly upright posture. The helicopter crew decide that they are australopithecines from at least two million years in the past.

In low earth orbit, a Soyuz re-entry vehicle from 2037 is lost in time after launching from the International Space Station on a routine crew rotation. Musa, Kolya and Sable use their instruments to scan the planet, but can find only a few locations with signs of large populations. The capsule communications gear cannot detect any radio sources, but Sable uses a discarded amateur rig to locate two sources, one of which is the UN helicopter radio.

In this story, the UN personnel share information with the Soyuz crew and determine that they are stranded in the thirteenth century. The British capture some scouts from an army translocated from 326 BC and send Biseasa and Abdikadir with some of the Raj troopers to make contact. The Soyuz crew land and find themselves among a Mongolian empire.

This story is a well crafted tale of time dysfunctions and mixed histories, much like Dickson's Time Storm, but with a static timescape. It is also much like Stirling's Island in Time novels or Flint's Grantville series on a grander scale. However, it adds the omnipresent silvery spheres, which Biseasa senses are observation devices. She has gained an impression of a very old species, maybe from the earliest formed stars, which she names the Firstborn. Apparently these aliens have caused the time dysfunctions or, at least, are busily observing the phenomenon.

Despite the hype, this novel does not present any new notions. Unlike Clarke's The Other Side of the Sky, it does not set a new standard for SF works. The only high-tech idea is the use of superstring theory to (vaguely) explain the time dysfunctions.

The story does have a lot of name dropping, from Rudyard Kipling to Genghis Khan and Alexander the Great, and even more use of famous locales. The Kipling inclusion is probably a tribute to a fellow SF writer, but the other contrived coincidences are rather tacky. Nonetheless, the story is well written and entertaining, the best joint work produced by these authors to date.

Recommended for Clarke and Baxter fans and for anyone else who enjoys tales of alternate history and castaways in time.

-Arthur W. Jordin


fascinating science fiction   January 14, 2004
 14 out of 23 found this review helpful

On March 24, 1895, journalists Josh and Ruddy are covering the British Presence in India. It is June 9th in 2037 and U.N. peacekeepers Casey, Abdikadir and Bisesa are running a peacetime flyover in Afghanistan. Also in 2037, the Soyuz craft has disengaged from the space station and Kolya, Musa and Sable are returning after a three month mission to Earth. A woman and her child from prehistory are foraging for food with their tribe when a glowing orb appears.

All these people are ripped away from their own space time continuum and returned to an earth that is made up of bits and pieces of different eras. The Eyes continually watch their every movement and action especially when Genghis Kahn and Alexander The Great fight each other for domination of this new world called Mir.

TIME'S EYE is a fascinating work of science fiction. The concept is simple but the results of the Discontinuity the Eyes have caused are really amazing. Twenty-first century technology aids two great warlords who were previously alive millennia ago and millennia apart. The weather and geographical upheaval caused by this phenomenon are awesome and the authors make that point very clear. There is a sequel to this excellent novel coming soon that should tie up the deliberately dangling threads.

Harriet Klausner


The Beginning of a Great Saga   February 10, 2004
 12 out of 16 found this review helpful

In the tradition of Clarke's 2001 series, this is the first book of a new odyssey, only this one is based in time rather than in space. It's Earth-time 2037 and suddenly, for a few small groups of people, there is a huge upheaval in time, with the result being that people from all segments of Earth's history are thrown together in a crazy quilt patchwork made up of different time periods. Early hominids find themselves captured by 19th Century English colonialists in India. Space travelers splash down to learn that they're in 13th Century Afghanistan. The armies of Alexander the Great and Ghengis Khan, separated in original Earth time by four centuries, come face to face in a bloody and brutal war instigated by one of the astronauts from 2037, who has a sort of "Man Who Would Be King" complex. Ultimately, one of the "good guys," a woman with a UN peacekeeping force from 2037, makes it back home to her own time, but only at the price of losing her 19th Century lover, who remains stranded in ancient Babylon.

While it may sound confusing, this cleverly imagined novel is all you would expect of the great Arthur C. Clarke and his writing partner, the brilliant hard sci-fi master, Stephen Baxter. By the time I got to the last page -- which was not very long after I started this book -- I was wishing I had waited until the next volume was out so that I could go on reading and immediately find out what had happened to my favorite characters. And the bonus is that, in addition to an intriguing plot and lots of interesting historical factoids and science tidbits, this novel raises some provocative questions about the human soul and our destiny among the stars. Altogether, an excellent top-of-the-line sci-fi read that will probably become a classic.

So why haven't I given it 5 stars? Well, the novel itself deserves 5 stars. This edition of the book gets only 4 stars, however, because the publishers, who included what looks like a good CD-ROM in the book, chose to use an e-book format that can only be downloaded onto a handheld running the Windows operating system. Those of us who prefer Palm OS are out of luck, unable to access two bonus novels and interviews with the authors. What a chintzy decision, especially for a novel by authors of the stature of Clarke and Baxter.


What If?   April 18, 2004
 12 out of 13 found this review helpful

Because of the many similarities of the premise of this book to 2001, many readers will pick the book up expecting something quite similar and stimulating in the same ways. That expectation would be wrong. Although on the surface the books have similar elements, Time's Eye uses a story-telling technique that focuses much more on bringing incongruities from different periods of history together to imaginatively describe "what if?" You have famous authors (Rudyard Kipling), famous conquerors (Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan), and famous places (Babylon in its prime) brought together in unexpected collisions. It's like running a particle accelerator to collide with something to see what might happen.

The book lives or dies by how compelling you find the historical juxtapositions. I personally found them to be mildly interesting . . . but not compelling. The story itself was a little clunky in its plot elements, and I found myself disbelieving the ending.

The 2001-like element in the book mostly recedes into the background. Had it been more in the foreground, the book could have been a four-star effort.

I loved the idea of including the CD with bonus book and other material. Nice!

Perhaps the series will improve in the rest of the book . . . I hope so. The potential for a good story is certainly there.


Unusual and exceptional collaboration   February 13, 2004
 8 out of 10 found this review helpful

The Earth has been carved up into a giant temporal jig-saw puzzle and put back together randomly by aliens called the Firstborns. These aliens were unknown to humanity until their watchdogs (or are they?) in the form of little silver orbs floating quietly above humanity.

This forms the fascinating and promising premise of Arthur Clarke and Stephen Baxter's Time's Eye which is subtitled A Time Odyssey. While only time (pardon the pun) will tell if this is as important or thought provoking as Clarke's other Odyssey novels, this makes for a fascinating start. Clarke has finally found another collaborator up to the task of working with him. The only other novelist that would have been capable and could flesh out Clarke's characters was the late Mike McQuay.

Baxter's a well known sf novelist and award winner in his own write (all these nasty puns just keep wanting to pop in for time). His novels Manifold: Time is an essential modern science fiction classic (and included in CD-ROM form with the book). The characters are pretty well developed (a problem for even Clarke's best novels)and the writing is about as sound from a science point of view as a tale like this could be. We'll have to wait for the other two novels in this series to be published before finding out what the real motives are behind the Firstborn.

With Clarke and Baxter's well developed idea along with the deft characterizations make Time's Eye an important sf book from two of the best writers around.