Time of the Fox

Time Warrior #1

by Matthew Costello

When grad student Jim Tiber hears about a time machine at Columbia University, his first plan is to go back in time and to meet the Beatles and study the way they rose from mediocrity. However, just as he's about to discover their secret in 1962, he is thrown back in time to an alternate timeline - Rommel's powerful North Africa campaign.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Time Travel

331 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published November 6, 1990

Reviews

[Jim · Rating 2 out of 5]

I've been a big fan of time travel stories, such as the original-"The Time Machine" by H.G. Wells. There have been a lot of interesting stories involving travel in time, but this one, from 1990, isn't one of them. A student named Jim Tiber manages to sneak into a time machine to go back to Hamburg in the early 60s to see the Beatles when they were just beginning their career. Actually, that was interesting-but then Jim finds himself in North Africa during WWII. He meets General Rommel the "Desert Fox." Hence the title of the book. It was not that interesting and it didn't make sense. We find out that a group of diehard Communists are trying to change history to save the Soviet Union. But how helping Rommel win the North African campaign would help the Communists is not really explained! One thing that was interesting is that the building where the time travel is being done is in Columbia U.'s Trump Physics Lab, named for a former president (this is in the early 21st C.) Now that would be a story--someone going back in time to 2016 to change some history... Anyway, this book is only the first of a trilogy, but I probably will not look for the other books.

[Christopher · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a slow starting book but became interesting once you got into the meat of the story. A very interesting take on how time travel would work.