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Thrice Upon A Time

Author: James P. Hogan

Sending objects back in time—that is, from the 'now' to somewhere before the 'now'—is pretty much the same things as sending 'information' in general. Same goes for the future. The speed of light sets limits to what can be done. That's unless you count in 'wormholes'. Ah, what the heck! This novel is about sending information back and what kind of stuff could hit the fan. In this instance, there's a lot of that stuff around, made all the worse by the possible existence of multiple time-streams, some of which might just be completely wiped out as a result of TMI in the wrong place and at the wrong time and sent from the wrong time in the future. Got a headache yet? Why it's on the list: You've got to keep your wits together when you read this book, because, as they say, "it's complicated". But it's good fun nonetheless, and Hogan is a methodical thinker who ties strands together—as much as that can be done, given the weird entanglements of past, present, future and parallel time-streams. And it all starts so innocently when the main protagonist just wants to see if he can fool the information-time-machine—and the whole universe with it—into creating a temporal causality paradox. Bad idea!