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The Bones of Time
A young Hawaiian mathematician discovers the secrets of time travel and alternative universes in the preserved bones of the great Hawaiian king, Kamehameha. By the author of Queen City Jazz. Reprint.
401 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published February 1, 1996
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About the author
Kathleen Ann Goonan
67 books52 followersFrom Locusmag.com
Author Kathleen Ann Goonan, 68, died January 28, 2021. She was born May 14, 1952 in Cincinnati OH and at age eight moved to Hawaii for two years while her father worked for the Navy, after which the family moved to Washington DC. She got a degree in English from Virginia Tech in 1975, and earned her Association Montessori International Certification in 1976. She taught school for 13 years, ten of those at Montessori schools, including eight years at a school she founded in Knoxville TN. She spent a year back in Hawaii and took up writing full time before returning to the DC area in 1988, the same year she attended Clarion West. She began teaching at Georgia Tech in 2010, where she was a Professor of the Practice.
Goonan’s first story ‘‘Wanting to Talk to You’’ appeared in Asimov’s in 1991. Notable stories include ‘‘Kamehameha’s Bones’’ (1993), Nebula Award nominee ‘‘The String’’ (1995), British SF Award finalist ‘‘Sunflowers’’ (1995), and Sturgeon Memorial Award finalist ‘‘Memory Dog’’ (2008).
Debut novel Queen City Jazz (1994), a New York Times Notable Book, was shortlisted for a British Science Fiction Association Award, and launched her Nanotech Quartet: sequel Mississippi Blues (1997), Nebula Award-nominated prequel Crescent City Rhapsody (2000), and final volume Light Music (2002), also a Nebula Award finalist. Standalone The Bones of Time (1996) was a Clarke Award finalist. Alternate history In War Times (2007) won the Campbell Memorial Award and was the American Library Association’s Best SF Novel of 2007, and was followed by sequel This Shared Dream (2011), a Campbell Memorial Award finalist. Angels and You Dogs, a short story collection, was published by PS Publishing in 2012.
Goonan and her work were featured in venues such as Scientific American (‘‘Shamans of the Small’’) and Popular Science (‘‘Science Fiction’s Best Minds Envision the Future’’). As a member of SIGMA, she gave talks for the Joint Services Small Arms Project and the Global Competitiveness Forum in Ryhad. She published more than 40 short stories, including ‘‘A Love Supreme’’ (Discover Magazine 10/12), ‘‘Bootstrap’’ (Twelve Tomorrows 9/13), ‘‘Sport’’ (ARC 2/14), ‘‘What Are We? Where Do We Come From? Where Are We Going?’’ (Tor.com), ‘‘Girl In Wave; Wave In Girl’’ (Hieroglyph), ‘‘Wilder Still, the Stars’’ (Reach for Infinity), and ‘‘Tomorrowland’’ (Tor.com).
Goonan lived in Tennessee and Florida with husband Joseph Mansy, married 1977.
Author Kathleen Ann Goonan, 68, died January 28, 2021. She was born May 14, 1952 in Cincinnati OH and at age eight moved to Hawaii for two years while her father worked for the Navy, after which the family moved to Washington DC. She got a degree in English from Virginia Tech in 1975, and earned her Association Montessori International Certification in 1976. She taught school for 13 years, ten of those at Montessori schools, including eight years at a school she founded in Knoxville TN. She spent a year back in Hawaii and took up writing full time before returning to the DC area in 1988, the same year she attended Clarion West. She began teaching at Georgia Tech in 2010, where she was a Professor of the Practice.
Goonan’s first story ‘‘Wanting to Talk to You’’ appeared in Asimov’s in 1991. Notable stories include ‘‘Kamehameha’s Bones’’ (1993), Nebula Award nominee ‘‘The String’’ (1995), British SF Award finalist ‘‘Sunflowers’’ (1995), and Sturgeon Memorial Award finalist ‘‘Memory Dog’’ (2008).
Debut novel Queen City Jazz (1994), a New York Times Notable Book, was shortlisted for a British Science Fiction Association Award, and launched her Nanotech Quartet: sequel Mississippi Blues (1997), Nebula Award-nominated prequel Crescent City Rhapsody (2000), and final volume Light Music (2002), also a Nebula Award finalist. Standalone The Bones of Time (1996) was a Clarke Award finalist. Alternate history In War Times (2007) won the Campbell Memorial Award and was the American Library Association’s Best SF Novel of 2007, and was followed by sequel This Shared Dream (2011), a Campbell Memorial Award finalist. Angels and You Dogs, a short story collection, was published by PS Publishing in 2012.
Goonan and her work were featured in venues such as Scientific American (‘‘Shamans of the Small’’) and Popular Science (‘‘Science Fiction’s Best Minds Envision the Future’’). As a member of SIGMA, she gave talks for the Joint Services Small Arms Project and the Global Competitiveness Forum in Ryhad. She published more than 40 short stories, including ‘‘A Love Supreme’’ (Discover Magazine 10/12), ‘‘Bootstrap’’ (Twelve Tomorrows 9/13), ‘‘Sport’’ (ARC 2/14), ‘‘What Are We? Where Do We Come From? Where Are We Going?’’ (Tor.com), ‘‘Girl In Wave; Wave In Girl’’ (Hieroglyph), ‘‘Wilder Still, the Stars’’ (Reach for Infinity), and ‘‘Tomorrowland’’ (Tor.com).
Goonan lived in Tennessee and Florida with husband Joseph Mansy, married 1977.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
January 29, 2013
Meh. The book is OK, but one thing I struggled with is that the science is butchered so badly. At some point we have one of the characters (in an infodump) exclaiming that "Solving this math problem is non-computational. Godel proved it so. No computer could possibly solve it! Not even our AI. Only a human can solve this!" In one paragraph, this betrays a misunderstanding of Godel's incompleteness theorem, of artificial intelligence, and of the nature of human intelligence. Sigh. I know I shouldn't get caught up in this, as the book's main theme lies in the characters and their interactions, not the pseudo-science underpinnings, but in a science fiction book, it's distracting. At one point during the infodump, our hero says "I don't understand." and the other character just responds with "maybe you will someday" and continues on. I felt a certain sympathy for our hero at that point...
August 18, 2008
Marvelous story, set in near future Hawaii, but also with a time-travel twist. Lovely, lovely book.
April 3, 2025
Kathleen Ann Goonan proceeds from the premise that consciousness arises from quantum effects in the brain and that certain training may make it possible for people to be entangled in time. Pretty handwavy and more metaphysics than physics but it does give an entertaining tale. Split across three time periods we get the story of an Hawai’ian princess, Kaiulani, desolate after the annexation by the United States in 1898; a brilliant young Hawai’ian boy, Cen, who will unravel the mathematics and physics of quantum bilocation in 2014; and an Hawai’ian researcher, Lynn Oshima, in 2034, appalled at what the giant conglomerate Interspace is doing with bionan on a clone of the ancient Hawai’ian king Kamehameha. It is also a love story of sorts, where Cen and Kaiulani meet and produce a child, with fatal results. All this against the backdrop of the construction of a generation ship in orbit in 2034, which partly explains Interspace’s interest in spacetime manipulation. Gradually the story moves across times as the characters from different eras interact towards a startling denouement. Reminded me in parts of the 1980 film Somewhere In Time, although nowhere near as vapid. Time to jump the fractal.
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October 11, 2022To put it bluntly, The Bones of Time is incoherent hodgepodge of science fiction tropes and pop-science ideas of the era. Unfortunately, the book doesn't have a clue why these tropes worked in other books and doesn't have real understanding of science ideas it name-drops. For this reason, it renders crucial plot development completely hazy and unbelievable. It butchers science so much that it thrown me from any immersion at some points.
For the better aspects, it mixes science-fiction tropes with historical and contemporary culture of Hawaiʻi. I'm not particularly familiar with Hawaiian culture, so I can't assess how well it's depicted, but it was interesting and added to enjoyment of the book.
For the better aspects, it mixes science-fiction tropes with historical and contemporary culture of Hawaiʻi. I'm not particularly familiar with Hawaiian culture, so I can't assess how well it's depicted, but it was interesting and added to enjoyment of the book.
May 19, 2020
Tiptree longlist 1996
September 16, 2020
an excellent surprising book. I was a little concerned a book from 1997 set basically now would be dated but that's not a problem, it's magic and mystical and it quantum stuff all rolled into one.
October 25, 2011
I blame the Coode Street podcast for my addition to the this author. They raved about the Nanotech quartet and they motivated me to find the first book Queen City Jazz. I loved it and now I am reading the writers work. I will review Nanotech quartet when I have completed it. But since this is a single book, I will review it now.
I will begin with accessibility and presentation. The cover is great but the font is small. I had to get a second hand copy. So, I imagine that this book is out of print. (If publishers stumble upon this review. REPUBLISH THIS BOOK NOW.) So, the accessibility score will be quite low and will not reflect my feelings for this book or the author. I give 2/5.
The structure is complex, flying between two, or three, different eras. This could have made it a complex read. But, Goonan's artistry makes this book readable. Therefore, I give the book 5/5 for structure.
The world is futuristic but, in some-ways realistic. If you're one of those people who ask for absolute realism in predictions, then you might have issues with this book. We're now living in one of the time periods of this book. But we don't have all the technology. However, I do not judge sci-fi by its predictive abilities. Despite their futuristic dilemmas, the characters are well drawn and you care about them. The world seemed real and interesting even though I am not qualified to judge the realism of her descriptions of Tibet. I give the book 5/5.
The science, and the ethical issues that arise from it, made me consider the issues of; time, identity, imperialism and the limits of science. So, I give this book 5/5 for thematic content.
I will begin with accessibility and presentation. The cover is great but the font is small. I had to get a second hand copy. So, I imagine that this book is out of print. (If publishers stumble upon this review. REPUBLISH THIS BOOK NOW.) So, the accessibility score will be quite low and will not reflect my feelings for this book or the author. I give 2/5.
The structure is complex, flying between two, or three, different eras. This could have made it a complex read. But, Goonan's artistry makes this book readable. Therefore, I give the book 5/5 for structure.
The world is futuristic but, in some-ways realistic. If you're one of those people who ask for absolute realism in predictions, then you might have issues with this book. We're now living in one of the time periods of this book. But we don't have all the technology. However, I do not judge sci-fi by its predictive abilities. Despite their futuristic dilemmas, the characters are well drawn and you care about them. The world seemed real and interesting even though I am not qualified to judge the realism of her descriptions of Tibet. I give the book 5/5.
The science, and the ethical issues that arise from it, made me consider the issues of; time, identity, imperialism and the limits of science. So, I give this book 5/5 for thematic content.
November 1, 2015
It's so annoying when you realise after the first chapter that you've already a book some 15 years earlier when it first came out in paperback and that you needn't have spent out your hard earned cash on a tatty second hand copy, when it's likely a pristine copy is sat in a box in your parents loft!!
Anyway I started so I finished (again!) and this time I'm a little wiser and a lot older.
The story is still very engaging and well written, the concepts offered up still stand because Kathleen is a great author and because of this is I still feel this is one of the best historical science fiction stories I've read - beats the pants off of Cloud Atlas - but technology has moved on slightly and so what I would've considered cutting edge then, now seems just a little dated; I'm sure I would have rated this 5* back when I read it first time but now with knowledge and hindsight I can mark it more objectively.5
Anyway I started so I finished (again!) and this time I'm a little wiser and a lot older.
The story is still very engaging and well written, the concepts offered up still stand because Kathleen is a great author and because of this is I still feel this is one of the best historical science fiction stories I've read - beats the pants off of Cloud Atlas - but technology has moved on slightly and so what I would've considered cutting edge then, now seems just a little dated; I'm sure I would have rated this 5* back when I read it first time but now with knowledge and hindsight I can mark it more objectively.5
November 8, 2016
Three and a half stars.
It was an easier, more accessible read than Queen City Jazz, but there were some structural similarities.
This feels like one of those books for which my opinion might change later; I'll have to see what persists and what fades over time.
It was an easier, more accessible read than Queen City Jazz, but there were some structural similarities.
This feels like one of those books for which my opinion might change later; I'll have to see what persists and what fades over time.
March 5, 2012
A not bad story of a mathematician (yay!) who is studying the possibility of time travel and multiple worlds. He keeps having strange experiences with the last hawaiian princess from long ago, our does he just imagine them?
3.5 stars, with extra credit for tieing in lots of Hawaiian culture.
3.5 stars, with extra credit for tieing in lots of Hawaiian culture.
August 14, 2010
Only read 140 pages before losing interest & then losing the book.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews