ASA scientist David Murphy has always loved science fiction. That's why he's so excited and grateful that Analog has been publishing some of his speculative nonfiction essays. His most recent article, postulating that the UFOs humans have been claiming to see for all these years are actually timeships from humankind's future, has been garnering more attention than Murphy would have expected, not all of it good. Some higher-ups at work are quite concerned about how people might perceive a NASA scientist talking about time travel, which is why they're insisting on seeing all of Murphy's future submissions to the magazine. Not only that, but a man claiming to be one of Murphy's favorite science-fiction authors and requesting a meeting with Murphy turns out to be an impostor! What are all these people so worked up about?
Over 300 years in the future, Franc and Lea have just gotten approval from the CRC (the Chronospace Research Centre) to mount a mission to observe and record the 1937 Hindenburg disaster, potentially quite a dangerous assignment. Not only is there the possibility of ending up one of the victims, but, considering what a major event in Earth's history it is, they don't want to do anything to significantly alter history and create a time paradox, which as everyone knows could produce truly disastrous results. And who knows if they'll spot one of the "angels" their colleagues have reported seeing on their recent missions?
But the 1937 mission goes far from smoothly. Despite their painstaking efforts to make themselves as non-influential as possible on the past, for some reason the Hindenburg doesn't blow up (or isn't sabotaged) at the right time—just a few minutes' difference means that there are no casualties in the "disaster." And, to make matters worse, when the time travelers attempt to return to their own present, they end up in the year 1998, the same year David Murphy gets himself abducted by a strange old man wielding a strange weapon.
Bigger is not always better
An expansion of his 1997 novella, "Where Angels Fear to Tread," Allen Steele's Chronospace may leave some readers wondering of the novel what some of its characters wonder of time travel—should it have been meddled with in the first place?
While it does certainly contain some interesting (and well researched) ideas, some smart alternate history speculation, and some good "hard" science fiction, Chronospace isn't exactly the most compelling tale in the world. The first two-thirds of the novel is largely a drawn-out setup of the various plots, complete with a frequent preoccupation with technical detail (like the schematics of the Hindenburg or the geography of Frankfurt) that sticks out as often as it weaves nicely into the narrative, and characters that come across more as testy science-community functionaries than individuals to really care about. (What female characters there are in the book are represented particularly flatly.) A few sections of the book can lead to some real page-turning, but not for long; the narrative as a whole never really gathers that much steam or delivers that much satisfaction. There's also a fair amount of science-fiction community name-dropping that comes across more awkwardly than it does reverentially.
Time travel can be a tough subject to tackle, especially for "hard" science fiction—it's difficult to find the right balance between too much theory and paradoxical consideration and not enough. Steele goes after the subject relatively unflinchingly, if not always convincingly—a debate on what's happened to the fabric of space-time toward the end of the novel may have readers wondering why CRC Chrononaughts didn't go over such contingencies in Time Travel 101.
