With Fate Conspire

The Destiny Makers #1

by Mike Shupp

Vietnam veteran and MIT student Tim Harper uses his new invention, a time machine, to travel ninety thousand years into the future, where he is captured by Alghera clansmen who seek to use his discovery to change the course of history.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Time Travel, Speculative Fiction, Fantasy

306 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published November 12, 1985

Reviews

[Amy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I picked this book up in a used bookstore just because the blurb on the back cover sounded interesting and the author has the same name as a long-lost college friend. While the plot of the book is an interesting one, the author is a rather bad storyteller. I'm surprised it made it into a 4-book series in the mid- and late 80s.

The novel tells the story of college kid named Tim who mysteriously finds himself in the bubble of a time machine. The actual mechanism of the time machine seems to be in the dorm room below his own. The time machine allows him to walk 90,000 years into the future before it stops. The future is populated with normal people and telepathic people, and wars have been fought because of the fear of the normals for the telepaths. Tim uses his time machine to try to change the future for the better, but nearly everything he does causes little to no results.

Unfortunately, my understanding of the story beyond this is very sketchy because the author only alludes to the actions in story. I re-read many scenes trying to figure out what actually happened within a scene because the author writes like a person who skips the joke and goes straight for the punchline. The author has a whole world in his head but forgets to write that world for the reader to see the complete picture. Probably the biggest example of this is that I never figured out where Tim's time machine came from, why it won't go farther than 90,000 years in the future, if there were already many time machines in the future or if Tim's friends reverse-engineered his time machines to make others. Frankly, I skimmed the last 70 pages because I got so tired of re-reading pages trying to figure out what happened based on sentences which required me to constantly read between the lines. Really, this style of writing doesn't make for enjoyable reading.

No wonder mine is the only review of this book. The plot of the book is an interesting one taken as a whole, but the actual book was quite a dud.

[Ben Cohen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I first read this when it came out, oh so many years ago. The extended delay between the start of the series and the eventual end, when I did read book 5, I recall left me feeling unfulfilled. Thus, I decided to do a full re-read straight through of the entirety.

Some spoiler-ish elements follow …

With Fate Conspire leaves far too much unsaid and unexplained. It's possible these are intentional gaps (given the multiple bouncing-arounds through time), but even for a time travel book, there's a definite sense of disjointedness. And, while the main character, Timothy Harper (become Timt ha'Ruppir) is well-defined, many of the others fade a bit too much into each other. Given the inter-Sept "politics" (not that Teeps are allowed to engage in politics in Alghera, of course), having a better grasp on who everyone was would have definitely cleaned the story up more.

All-in-all, though, I enjoyed reading it at least as much as I first did and I am looking forward to continuing with book 2, Morning of Creation.

Bottom line: it's an interesting blend of time-travel and dealing with telepaths in a society, interwoven with glimpses into a global war to decide how telepaths (Teeps) are allowed to operate as part of that society.

[George Riggs · Rating 2 out of 5]

Poorly written