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Time Ahead
"I wish I could offer up an explanation of how I came to be here, but I can't. I fell asleep, and I woke up."
A haunting tale of what might have been. Stan wakes in a post-apocalyptic version of the world he fell asleep in the night before. Amidst crumbling buildings and lost hope, he struggles to figure out where he is and how he got there.
Left with nothing but time, he grapples with the man he is, what he's left behind, and a life he can never have.
The first in the 'Memoirs on Being' series, Time Ahead is a journey through human regret, set in a world that's been driven off a cliff by progress
A haunting tale of what might have been. Stan wakes in a post-apocalyptic version of the world he fell asleep in the night before. Amidst crumbling buildings and lost hope, he struggles to figure out where he is and how he got there.
Left with nothing but time, he grapples with the man he is, what he's left behind, and a life he can never have.
The first in the 'Memoirs on Being' series, Time Ahead is a journey through human regret, set in a world that's been driven off a cliff by progress
62 pages, Paperback
First published May 4, 2013
About the author
Robert King
5 books2 followersThe majority of my writing, thus far, can best be described as Existential Sci-Fi, though I've recently been experimenting with flash fiction in different genres as well.
In the Memoirs on Being series, I explore themes of isolation, regret, despair, and meaning - set against the backdrop of science fiction. Removing man from his natural world of understanding and predictability, and into an unfamiliar landscape, provides me a mechanism for highlighting and contrasting a variety of existential themes.
I'm currently working on the 3rd, and final, installment in the series. Book III is a return to the first person, existential-style writing of Time Ahead.
All of my books are free on the iTunes App Store and Google Play.
In the Memoirs on Being series, I explore themes of isolation, regret, despair, and meaning - set against the backdrop of science fiction. Removing man from his natural world of understanding and predictability, and into an unfamiliar landscape, provides me a mechanism for highlighting and contrasting a variety of existential themes.
I'm currently working on the 3rd, and final, installment in the series. Book III is a return to the first person, existential-style writing of Time Ahead.
All of my books are free on the iTunes App Store and Google Play.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
February 13, 2014
It is hard to pin down what the message being conveyed in Time Ahead by Robert King is exactly. Is it the feeling of loss, squandered time, human technology gone astray, or false promises of religion? I am inclined to believe that it is all of these, and these messages are conveyed in a very short read. Set in 2187, this is a modern day rendition of the Rip Van Winkle story, where our lone character wakes after a 182 year slumber. The world is bereft of oil, the sky is a blue haze of radiation, and the cities are left in rubble with a handful of humans left to live in squalor and with little hope, while the genetic mutation called transhumans have left them to slowly die out. This is stated to be the first part in many installations of the Memoirs of Being Series, and it has left me yearning to read the next chapters. As dystopian tales go, this particular story could actually come true in my mind, and that is what chills me to the bone. It is well crafted, yet abstract, and leaves little room for hope for the future of the character. I highly recommend this series, as it may possibly be a guide to what our future here on earth holds.
April 3, 2014
When I read [Robert King's] [Time Ahead] my first thought was Rip van Winkle. The idea of falling to sleep and waking up in another time. As I read on I realized that I missed the existentialism that was so present in my younger years. Reading this was like a breath of fresh air for me. This may sound odd since it is a dark and depressing view to most people. The style [King] wrote it was truly engaging and there were points when the irony made me laugh out loud. This type of writing is very rare to come across and even more having it done well.
March 6, 2014
A hard look at yourself is always difficult to take gracefully and this novella brings us to that brink and then holds us there while we contemplate our choices. A quick read that leaves you contemplating for many hours afterwards. I would recommend this book to many of my friends and family.
July 25, 2014
"Science fiction as an existential metaphor." This dystopian novella casts the protagonist into a future wasteland, where he ruminates on what kind of man he is, past failures, and whether his life is worth living any longer. This short, page-turner is potent.
February 28, 2014
Deeply moving and thought provoking, extremely well written.
February 14, 2014
As usual, I received this book for free in exchange for a review. This time it was from LibraryThing. Despite that kindness I will give my scrupulously honest opinions below.
This book is essentially a Rip Van Winkle tale. A rather unfocused and alcoholic man goes to sleep one night in his apartment and wakes up almost 200 years later. In that time... well, a lot has changed about the world and a lot hasn't. The meat of the story is the protagonist's exploration of this new world and his grappling with everything that he left behind.
On the positive side, this is a really engaging story. It's not just about the march of technology into some doomed abyss or the degradation of humanity but also the inner workings of one man's mind as he finds himself wrenched from the fragmented and dysfunctional world he knew and thrust into a totally new fragmented and dysfunctional world. There's a potent psychological thread that runs through this tale and the reader simultaneously sympathizes with and despises the narrator.
To the negative, part of the reason the story is so engaging is that it's very, very familiar. This is science fiction premise #1: "Technology ruins mankind." So there's no grand newness to any of that. More amusingly, the text is in need of some editing. Representative examples from the book include: "I found myself angry with myself" and "...the family watched a Christmas movie, and had desert." While these are certainly not book killers they are distractions and point to the book's general lack of polish.
In summary, there's a lot of good potential here and if this series showed up at my doorstep for free I'd happily read it and review it but I'd fall a bit short of actually paying money for it. There's a great story to be had here but it needs a bit of work before it's ready for prime time.
This book is essentially a Rip Van Winkle tale. A rather unfocused and alcoholic man goes to sleep one night in his apartment and wakes up almost 200 years later. In that time... well, a lot has changed about the world and a lot hasn't. The meat of the story is the protagonist's exploration of this new world and his grappling with everything that he left behind.
On the positive side, this is a really engaging story. It's not just about the march of technology into some doomed abyss or the degradation of humanity but also the inner workings of one man's mind as he finds himself wrenched from the fragmented and dysfunctional world he knew and thrust into a totally new fragmented and dysfunctional world. There's a potent psychological thread that runs through this tale and the reader simultaneously sympathizes with and despises the narrator.
To the negative, part of the reason the story is so engaging is that it's very, very familiar. This is science fiction premise #1: "Technology ruins mankind." So there's no grand newness to any of that. More amusingly, the text is in need of some editing. Representative examples from the book include: "I found myself angry with myself" and "...the family watched a Christmas movie, and had desert." While these are certainly not book killers they are distractions and point to the book's general lack of polish.
In summary, there's a lot of good potential here and if this series showed up at my doorstep for free I'd happily read it and review it but I'd fall a bit short of actually paying money for it. There's a great story to be had here but it needs a bit of work before it's ready for prime time.
March 30, 2014
I received Time Ahead, by Robert King, as a giveaway in exchange for a review.
A man “wakes up” in a world that is 187 years in the future. He is confused, lost, mystified. The story revolves around his slowly coming to the consciousness that he is in the future, which is a dystopian, post-apocalyptic world that had succumbed to greed and desire for personal power above all else; a world ravaged, but miraculously recovered, from the devastating effects of climate change. We learn that a new military-industrial complex is in place, and that a race of non-humans, Transhumans, are running the world. All sense of community and concern for one another has vanished, but there is a glimmer of hope in reported sightings of small communities that are like the “good old days.” The narrator spends most of the story reflecting on who he was, how he came to be, and what he might have been. The ending is dramatic.
I do not know what to make of this. Is it a cautionary tale? Is it the 21st century version of George Orwell’s 1984? Is it a moral lesson about what will happen to the world if we don’t change our ways of selfish consumption? It could be all of these; it could be done of these. I am left perplexed, and, ultimately, unsatisfied. There are many very good books that leave us wondering. This book leaves us wondering, but for me, not in a good way.
A man “wakes up” in a world that is 187 years in the future. He is confused, lost, mystified. The story revolves around his slowly coming to the consciousness that he is in the future, which is a dystopian, post-apocalyptic world that had succumbed to greed and desire for personal power above all else; a world ravaged, but miraculously recovered, from the devastating effects of climate change. We learn that a new military-industrial complex is in place, and that a race of non-humans, Transhumans, are running the world. All sense of community and concern for one another has vanished, but there is a glimmer of hope in reported sightings of small communities that are like the “good old days.” The narrator spends most of the story reflecting on who he was, how he came to be, and what he might have been. The ending is dramatic.
I do not know what to make of this. Is it a cautionary tale? Is it the 21st century version of George Orwell’s 1984? Is it a moral lesson about what will happen to the world if we don’t change our ways of selfish consumption? It could be all of these; it could be done of these. I am left perplexed, and, ultimately, unsatisfied. There are many very good books that leave us wondering. This book leaves us wondering, but for me, not in a good way.
June 17, 2014
As a kid during the Cold War Era, it was common to see my whole class of fellow students diving under our desks during a practice drill for anticipated nuclear destruction. Was I the only one to question the logic of this drill? Would we survive under our desks if everything was vaporized? This short novel presents the next step. Waking up after the blast as one of the few survivors and trying to evaluate what has happened. The author enables us to crawl around the mind of this survivor as he pieces together his today and tomorrow almost 200 years after he fell asleep. The copy that I received needed some additional editorial help. I thank the author and LibraryThing for a complimentary copy.
April 7, 2014
I got this as a giveaway. It is an interesting start to a story. The main character awakes to find himself about 200 years forward in the future. He doesn't know why he is there or what has happened to the earth in the time he missed. In this part of the story he spends a lot of time regreting his life to date but the author has mixed in some interesting philosophy and I'll be interested to see where he goes with this.
February 22, 2014
I received this book for free through LibraryThing's Member Giveaways.
This is a short book about a man in a post-apocalyptic world. I liked the story and the ideas behind it, but I wish it was a little bit longer. It has a lot of potential to become a full length novel.
This is a short book about a man in a post-apocalyptic world. I liked the story and the ideas behind it, but I wish it was a little bit longer. It has a lot of potential to become a full length novel.
March 27, 2014
The story is a whole jumble of depressing cliches about the worst in mankind. Even the protagonist is not even remotely likable . Some more editing would have helped, but would not have rescued the disorganized narrative .
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews