story identification - Ocean of time book?

I remember reading a book where people figured out time travel and when they entered "Time" they could swim through it, but it would cause ripples and change things.

They would take certain time zones and physical locations as their new currency, eventually there were wars in the ocean of time.

After a while there was a hardening of the ocean of time.

I also remember that they never went to the beginning for fear of erasing Humans completely.

Characters: No main Characters

Type: A narrative history (Sci-Fi)

I read this book probably close to 12 years ago (2003?)

What book is this?

Answer

I believe this is All Of An Instant by Richard Garfinkle, published in 1999.

Description from a reviewer on Goodreads.com:

Richard Garfinkle creates one huge metaphor for time travel and works with it to the last consequence.

Time travel is done by a chosen few tribes, who swim in the ocean of time, every movement they make creating a wave which in turn changes the world of normal people. These changes are secondary to the travelers, change in the real world is constant, no one knows what the original history has once been. But every tribe tries to install it's own version of it, and so every tribe is in constant war with the other tribes.

Official summary:

From the author of Celestial Matters, which won the Compton Crook Award for best first novel and earned the author two nominations for the John W. Campbell Award for best new writer, All of an Instant is a large-scale, ground-breaking SF novel. It chronicles the discovery of a medium of existence outside of time (the Instant), from which one can influence all past and future history. War dominates this strange, abstract place -- war among forces contending for control of all time and place.As Harry Turtledove said of Garfinkle's first novel, "This is hard science fiction with a difference. Garfinkle works out the implications inherent in them as rigorously as any writer has done....A fast-paced adventure plot with lively, well-differentiated characters."

Another more confusing summary here.

Comments

languages - Do we ever see written English in the Star Wars films?

In Empire Strikes Back , we see a transcription of what R2's beeps and bloops mean, but it's not English (sorry for the low quality, it's from the 2004 DVDs): I'd assume it's what Basic looks like when written, but is there some point in the the Star Wars films we see written English instead? (This sort of spun off from a discussion in How do people understand astromech droids? .) Answer At one point there was English but it has been phased out in subsequent versions of the films. Chris Gould at DVD Active did a comparison of all versions of each of the Star Wars films, and in his comparison of Episode 4 , there are a couple of screenshots showing how the power gauge for the Death Star tractor beam was changed. I imagine there are probably more to be found in his other comparisons but I haven't got around to reading those yet.

Was the "pure soul" of Harry's what had really hurt Voldemort?

In the Order of the Phoenix, Voldemort possesses Harry, and it hurts. Greatly. I think that Dumbledore explained that it was because Voldemort's rotten soul was incapable of assimilating Harry's pure soul, that Voldemort didn't understand the love and friendship etc that Harry has in his heart. But, I think it was a lie. Remember that in Deathly Hallows, while looking for information regarding Horcruxes, it is discovered that it is in fact possible to merge a soul fragment back, but that the process was extremely painful. Now then, if Voldemort tried to possess Harry, and Harry had a fragment of Voldemort's soul, I think that it could have been the true cause of Voldemort's pain: the fact of having his soul so close of another fragment. I think that Dumbledore knew that fact, but had to lie to Harry because it was inappropriate to let him know that he had one of Voldemort's soul fragments at the moment. Is that right? Or was it truly the pure soul of Harry's...

star wars - What "exactly" happens when someone turns to the Dark Side?

When I saw the original Star Wars saga as a kid, the concept of the Dark Side imprinted in me was quite simple. You did a bad thing, so you're a bad person so you go to the Dark Side and keep doing bad things. Now, obviously this doesn't hold true in reality. In my mind it is perfectly reasonable for Luke to kill the Emperor and Vader and then just flee the Death Star and rejoin the Alliance. After all they are at war, those are enemy officers that have captured him and are taunting him by threatening with death of all loved ones and the whole operation was intended to kill the Emperor anyway. The same would hold true for Anakin. He could have killed Mace Windu to save the Chancellor and Padme but that doesn't mean he's going to then go mad and kill all Jedis including children. It doesn't add up from a merely psychological point of view. He had a set of objectives and that made him want to keep the Chancellor alive (quite valid by the way, Mace Windu is quite clums...

star trek - Warning regarding forward saucer section in Nemesis?

In Star Trek: Nemesis , just before the Enterprise rams into the Scimitar, Picard sends a text message from his captain's chair arm pad to Troi — who is manning the helm in lieu of the crewman who was just blown out through what was once the view screen — indicating that she should put full impulse on standby. (Literally, if you watch the scene closely, Troi's console prefaces the order with "TXT MSG" !) My question is: Did Picard also somehow warn crew members in the forward saucer section about what was about to happen? The ramming of the Scimitar was a heat of the moment decision. Considering that he also resorted to calling the auto-destruct sequence shortly after (which ended up being offline), he probably was of the mindset that any losses would be acceptable in order to hault Shinzon's march to Earth. Still, I'm curious. Answer The original script indicates that he called for the crew to " brace for impact ". Whether that call (or the comma...

Blog

Search This Blog