By: Robert Forward Publisher: Backinprint.com Average Rating: Binding: Paperback Label: Backinprint.com Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 291 Publication Date: August 21, 2001 Release Date: August 21, 2001
Product Description: Read the tale of Randy Hunter, billionaire industrialist, who communicates with aliens, achieves interstellar flight and explores far-flung worlds in a future filled with technological wonders. The future physics is mind-boggling but firmly grounded in the science of today, and the action never stops.
Rip Roaring adventure in a time paradox So here we have domesticated Aliens made of exotic negative matter being the basis of interstellar travel. Throw in information transfer from the future and a really bad guy and you have adventure through space and time. This book is better than a lot of Forward's work as he doesn't try to tie up all the scientific ends in an Einsteinian way. It is more like a Campbell romp or an Heinlein adventure story. I enjoyed it and couldn't put it down which I can't say about the last Forward book I read.
Send This Book Back In Time! Billed as the "definitive" book on time travel, Timemaster disappoints on so many levels it's pointless to list them. The most obvious criticism: How could a mind that understands the workings of physics miss the workings of culture and society? Clearly, Mr. Forward harkens from the "Greatest Generation" whose heroes were John Wayne, Errol Flynn and other, now mostly forgotten, larger-than-life examples of manhood in, say, the nineteen fifties. Did he not realize that people would move on and change in almost every way by 2036 - 2050? This book feels like it was written by Ayn Rand! The slagging of animal rights activists and the worship of wealth and over-consumption completely ruined what was left of the plot for me. Normally, I don't drag my personal beliefs into a book...but this was simply way too much. I think this book was written by Forward in 1952 and sent, ahem, forward, to 1992 just to upset the more progressive SF readers! :-)
One of Robert Forward's Best. . . This reviewer has noted time and time again, that Dr. Forward's novels excel in "hard science" but not so much in depth of character or development of plot. In "Timemaster" we still have the outstanding science -- with enough of an improvement in character and plot to satisfy most Sci-Fi fans.
When dealing with his "neg matter" plants -- and the opportunities such creatures would provide for relatively intstaneous space and time travel, Forward continues to fill his books with life forms radically different from anything we have (or can really imagine) on Earth -- and make them believable.
This one is a good read. I highly recommend it.
Timewaster Space entrepeneur Randy Hunter discovers a kind of space-dwelling plant composed of negative matter, which allows him to develop interstellar spaceflight and time travel, not to mention acheiving all of his dreams, winning the girl, foiling his drug-addicted rival, and becoming an all-around great guy. ... Author Robert L. Forward never lets us forget how wonderful and brilliant he thinks his hero is, which came off as more than a little self-congratulatory since I couldn't shake the feeling that he was meant to serve as an alter-ego for Forward himself. There is much juvenile one-upmanship between Randy and his cartoonish arch-rival, Oscar, who is just as bad as Randy is good and whose dislike is never explained as anything more than jealousy (but then, who wouldn't be jealous of such a terrific guy as Randy). I found the key plot device of the Silverhairs to be ludicrous and uninteresting. The sole saving grace of this book is some fascinating business toward the end concerning time travel and the interaction between the Randys of various time periods. Had this aspect of the story been more prominent, it would have been a better book, but instead it is buried among juvenile characterizations and dull plotting.
awful I'm a fan of sci-fi books, having read everything from Asimov to Zelany. I was hopefully this would be a good book considing what others have said about it. To put it bluntly, this book stinks.
The hero is absolutely perfect, achieves everything and wins the girl. This may be an acceptable character to a target audience of 12 yr olds (see Johnny Quest or Asimov's Lucky Starr series) but just proves annoying to anyone beyond a middle school level education. Every other character proves to be just as badly developed as this. The science may be real and plausible but nothing else about this book is.
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