CRONOS

By: Andrew Mellott
Date: Sunday, November 04, 2001

CRONOS by Robert Silverberg is three novels in one, spanning the career of a man who has won more Nebula and Hugo awards than any other writer. All three novels deal with Silverberg's admitted obsession with time travel.

The first story (and the most recently written) is "Letters From Atlantis." It takes the form of a correspondence between a time traveler named Roy and his companion Lora, both of whom have been sent back to the Paleolithic era in the form of electric energy to study the continent of Atlantis. They must both inhabit the bodies of former Atlanteans and act as flies on the wall, gathering information about the lost continent's society and culture. Roy lands in the body of a prince and is therefore privy to historical and cultural information of great value to the project. He discovers startling facts about the Atlantean technology and a remarkable possibility as to their origin. The main conflict in this first tale involves Roy's urge to make his presence known to the prince he is occupying. He also struggles with knowing the fate of a land and people he admires and being forbidden to stop it. The story comes to a resolution with a statement on the enduring quality of Man's spirit. "Letters From Atlantis" is engaging, with a fully realized, detailed society and a method of time travel that brings to mind H.P. Lovecraft's "The Shadow Out Of Time."

The second story, "Project Pendulum," tells the story of twin brothers Eric and Shawn, who are chosen as the first explorers to visit the past and the future. The mechanics of time travel require exact masses to travel forward and back at the same time so that an equilibrium can be maintained. Sean, a paleontologist, longs to see the past while Eric, a physicist, is equally eager to see the future. They each get an eyeful of both as the device used swings them forward a little then back a lot and vice versa (hence Project Pendulum), until they reach "Time Ultimate," the extent of the machine's capabilities.


The story is somewhat confusing at first, with alternate versions of the twins popping up in the same place, and some strange jump interval terminology (i.e.; + or - 5x10 to the second power etc.). But you soon get the hang of it and are then treated to a parade of time that spans from 95 odd million years in the past to the same amount in the future. Each era visited is handled with a brief vignette that is satisfying though slightly sparse. The story is reminiscent of H.G. Well's THE TIME MACHINE, but never enough to be derivative.

The final story, "The Time Hoppers," doesn't deal with the means of time travel so much as the effect of it on past and future society. The setting is the overcrowded, dehumanized year of 2490 (think Orwell's 1984 crossed with Terry Gilliam's BRAZIL and the Mega Cities of the JUDGE DREDD comics). There are not enough jobs to go around so many of the unwashed masses elect to "hop" into the past as a means of getting away from it all. A government official named Joe Quellen is assigned the job of finding those responsible for the unsanctioned hopping and securing the technology for the government's use. The catch is that he cannot interfere with any of the hoppers who are on past records as being from the future which is now the present and...there I've gone cross eyed. The government fears that any interference could reverberate down the timelines and threaten their absolute power.

All three stories in this collection are well paced with intriguing characters and believably handled science. I was a little bogged down with details in the third story, which also had the weakest ending, leaving a few unanswered questions. All the titles pay homage to some of the greats and still retain a distinct voice. I have not read much by Silverberg, but after CRONOS, I intend to get better acquainted with his work.

CRONOS

Grade: A-

Author(s): Robert Silverberg

Publisher:  iBooks

Price: $14.95