Sea of Time

Rating:
Summary: An entertaining plunge into the depths of time travel
Review: In Cretaceous Sea, Will Hubbell took us on a wild ride 65 million years back in time, to an era when dinosaurs ruled the world - until the K-T Event, of course, which we experienced in the company of Hubbell's characters. That steep temporal plunge back into the Cretaceous Period looks like a small ripple in the Sea of Time compared to the experiences chronicled in this follow-up novel. Cretaceous Sea was ostensibly about time travel, but Sea of Time really mines the depths of questions, possibilities, and repercussions the subject of time travel engenders. We're with familiar characters as well, as the wonderful heroes from Cretaceous Sea are back - in one temporal form or another, anyway. The heart and soul of the story is still to be found in Constance (Con) Greighton, who is also Con Clements. At the end of the first novel, Con and Rick Clements, the paleontologist she fell in love with on Montana Island in 65,000,000 BC, settled down in 19th century Montana to live the life of Con's legendary ancestor - yes, Con became her own ancestor.

Con was ready to forget all about time travel and live happily ever after - but this was not to be. The mysterious futuristic man Sam, whose stolen time machine had transported Con back to the Cretaceous Period, shows up unexpectedly and tells Con she has been tricked into changing the course of history. Suddenly, Con's husband is murdered and her son has died, and she is more than willing to do anything Sam wants - if he can bring Rick and Joey back to her. Thus begins a series of time-skipping adventures that take Con centuries into the future to do Sam's bidding. She assumes the person of a scientist whose work changes human history in some unknown major way, and she later travels farther into the future to see just what she has done. Thirty-first century Earth as she finds it is a terrible place, where Sapes (Homo Sapiens) live lives of misery, hopelessness, and genetically engineered addiction, surviving only as the servants of a new and better breed of humans. Blaming herself for the troubles of numerous future generations, Con is increasingly distraught. Then she is visited by three future time travelers of the Home Perfectus species, and they explain to her that Sam has been using her not to "fix" history but to pervert and change it according to his own designs. They want Con's help - but Con refuses to do anything until she is reunited with Rick.

She gets her wish, but unfortunately this Rick comes from a time before he ever met Con or traveled back in time. Suddenly transported to a poor and filthy thirty-first century world and forced to deal with a "crazy" woman who insists she is his wife, Rick is not the happiest of men. To succeed in her new mission, Con must once again win the trust and, she hopes, the heart of the man she fell in love with 65 million years ago. As strong a character as she is, she alone cannot possibly survive some of the challenges she faces here.

The race to beat Sam at his own history-altering game is a strategic one that takes our heroes over diverse areas of the timestream, including the Jurassic Period of Earth's early history. Like time travel, the novel can become a bit confusing at times. First off, the fact that Con is her own ancestor supposedly gives her a special ability to alter time. Then there are a few sudden shifts in temporal causality in which we suddenly see the Con of a different reality in front of our eyes. In terms of the future, you have three species of humans competing for dominance, and in some of those future histories, at least one of the species has become extinct. Con is even confronted with the fact that, thanks to the altering of the time flow, she was no longer ever born- her future past has been completely expunged from the space-time continuum. There are some fascinating ideas espoused in this tale. For instance, time - like a river - tends to be only momentarily diverted by outside changes - it takes a significant stimulus to truly alter the future. I also liked the argument that time travel in and of itself tends to weaken the stability of the timestream.

While the entire book is filled with excitement, the ultimate scheme for foiling Sam's plans seems rather clumsy to me, and the ultimate turn of events can be seen from miles away by the reader. Still, I loved this book. With its heavy emphasis on the theoretical underpinnings and logic-defying nature of time travel, its multiple journeys across a number of millennia, its account of the heroes' struggles to survive in the most inhospitable of times and places (both past and future), and its rich and wonderfully complex main characters, Sea of Time makes for a gripping, entertaining read.

Rating:
Summary: Couldn't put it down!
Review: Rick and Con Clements are back on another zigzag and bizarre adventure through time to save the present from the twisted mind of Sam, a whacked-out scientist from the far future. On the way, the author presents us with plenty of characters and stops in time to stretch our imagination. Like Creataceous Sea, the ending is totally unpredictable. Hubbell's writing puts you right in the middle of every plot turn and character encounter. I can't wait for the next book in the series--what happens to that embryo?

Rating:
Summary: A Thoroughly Satisfying Sequel
Review: When I read Will Hubbell's "Cretaceous Sea" just over a year ago, I found myself completely enthralled by the main characters, especially Constance ("Con") Greighton, the rich girl, and paleontologist Rick Clements. Indeed, the final few chapters of the book, dealing with the cold-hearted "Homo Superior" people from the distant future, have haunted my dreams. It was after the most recent dream that I checked Amazon for any news on a sequel. And lo and behold, "Sea of Time" was due out the very next day!

Needless to say, I pounced on the book and scarfed it down in just under 24 hours. I couldn't put it down, except when I had to go to work. There I thought about the book all day long, and could hardly wait to get home to finish it. All of the elements which fascinated me in the first book are present in the second: an imaginative take on future timelines and time travel in general, dinosaurs, and the way Hubbell portrays and develops his characters.

One all-too common trap that any author or film maker can easily fall into with sequels is to just serve up more of the same, only bigger and more exciting, so that readers or viewers leave feeling that they've wasted their time and money on regurgitated entertainment. The better sequels, in contrast, make sure that their characters continue to grow as they meet new and different challenges or adversaries. At the same time, they answer a host of questions from the first installment. Such as: "Who are these people, and where did they come from?" or "How does the author imagine the future will look like?" or "How did things turn out the way they did?"

I am pleased to say that "Sea of Time" falls into the latter category. True, as with the first book, none of the ideas about time travel and causality are particularly new. Any fan of Star Trek knows the dangers of tampering with history. Indeed, "Sea of Time" reminds me of two books in particular, also among my all-time favorites.

The first is "Thrice Upon a Time", by James P. Hogan, where the two main protagonists fall in love, then are separated by a change in the timestream. The protagonists meet up again, but this time events prevent them from getting to know each other. The reader, who has a "God's eye" view of the plot, keeps rooting for the sparks to fly again, and is frustrated when they fail to. And yet, what if the timeline changes again?

In "Sea of Time" there is a slight twist on the above: Constance knows that she and Rick were supposed to live happily ever after in 19th century Montana, at the end of the first book, but the villain has killed Rick off for his own nefarious purposes (naturally, to change history). When other time travelers, trying to undo the damage, get Rick and Con back together, by ineptly kidnapping him from an earlier point in his life, he has no idea who she is, and, even worse, thinks she's a madwoman. The scene where they first meet up (again) is sad and comical at the same time. It becomes a major source of tension as Rick, who has not been shaped by the same experiences as in his previous existence, continues to disappoint Con, who can't help but let him know about it.

The second similar book is Isaac Azimov's classic "The End of Eternity", where a group of lunatic time travelers, called the Eternals, endlessly move "upwhen" and "downwhen", tinkering with history, trying to steer humanity in the "proper" direction. Living, breathing people are created and destroyed at a whim, with only the Eternals remembering them at all. So it is with the villain in "Sea of Time". He will stop at nothing to sculpt the future of his twisted tastes, even if it means misery and death for untold billions.

This is another source of conflict for Constance. Initially an unwitting pawn, sent first to the 27th century to carry out a major crime against humanity, then on to the 31st century to finish the work, she figures out what is happening, and begins to fight back. There are no certainties for her. She knows that at any moment the ones she knows and loves can vanish without a trace, as she's jerked about by a ruthless puppet master. Whom can she trust? What is even worse is what might happen if the timeline is ever set straight again, as she, Rick and their new time traveler allies race to stay one step ahead of the enemy. (Or maybe not.) Can she do it, knowing what sacrifices it could lead to? Will Con and Rick end up forever separated by a sea of time, with only the reader remembering their happiness together?

I can say that Constance is one of my all-time favorite fictional characters. I would love to meet someone like her in real life. But of course, reality is seldom like that.

It can give the reader a headache trying to keep close tabs on all the twists and turns of alternate realities. Better to just go with the flow. As one of the characters remarks, he never tries to understand it all without a computer and a temporal data probe.

As with "Cretaceous Sea", the ending of "Sea of Time" was hard to predict in advance, yet in retrospect pretty obvious when it arrived. While there is the potential for a third book, it would be a major coup for Hubbell to pull it off without sounding hopelessly trite. I do find myself hoping he tries.

As I wait for anything else Hubbell might choose to write, I plan on rereading both of his novels again, back to back. And I will dream.