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.


Great idea, so-so execution   January 28, 2004
 7 out of 8 found this review helpful

This novel mixes themes from both Clarke's and Baxter's prior work - ancient intelligences, harvesting mind, pre-humans. The device in this novel is the creation of an earth composed of a patchwork of different timelines spanning 2 million years of history, culminating in 2037.

This sets up a world that allows exploration of the novelty of intersecting pieces from different timelines. The main plot centers around the events that lead to a battle between the armies Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan, aided by a small group of 21st century people and a contingent of a 19th century British army.

The main characters were well drawn, and I was felt that this world was real and interesting, mainly from the little details that are Baxter's trademark, especially the sense of smell.

Despite my being a huge Clarke and Baxter fan, I came away feeling this was not the best collaboration, certainly weaker than the "light of other days", and the ending had a definite Deux ex Machina problem. Baxter seems to be writing so much these days that maybe he is being stretched a little thin.

Overall this is an interesting read, but not up to the best that either author has written, with regards to theme and content.

(I used to be a little cynical that Baxter collaborated with Clarke to get a career boost from such a distinguished author. But his talent as an author is now so obvious that I have to wonder whether it isn't Clarke who is getting most of the benefit now.)


Unusual and exceptional collaboration   February 13, 2004
 7 out of 8 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.