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

It's always hard for me to walk by a book with the name Arthur C. Clarke on the cover. Admittedly, I wasn't familiar with Stephen Baxter, but with a limited selection of English books in a Panamanian farmacia, this was one of the first books I picked. I don't regret it. Time has fractured the Earth in a completely original way - almost seemingly an exaggeration of the difference between the developing nations and the developed nations. But this fracture in time is changed in ways that only the duo of Stephen Baxter and Arthur C. Clarke could do. This has to be one of the most original books I have read - where I grew up reading the great authors of Science Fiction, this book transports the reader to times and places which show that there are still great authors of science fiction - able to create and share new worlds.

Time's Eye

Most of the cast of characters are known - from Rudyard Kipling to Alexander the Great to Genghis Khan; astronauts from 2038 to English Army regulars of the 1800s. And yet, with some of the best characters that have graced our history, they are all overshadowed by the fractures of time across the Earth, where boundaries of the Earth itself are not geographical but temporal. Imagine crossing a geographical line where you leave the present day and cross into the Ice Age. Imagine strange orbs appearing in mid-air, floating and perhaps even looking at you as you trek toward what can only be the center of what is happening - and you trek just to find out what is happening.

From start to end, the reader follows such a trek - following events that defy the world as we know it. That's science fiction. This is a great book.

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