Time Twisters

by Jean Rabe (Editor), Martin H. Greenberg (Editor), Stephen Leigh (Contributor)

A new anthology by some of the top names in the genre.

Time travel and the dangers of altering the time stream continue to fascinate readers. This book offers 17 new stories of daring adventurers who meddle with time a science fiction fan who warded off an alien invasion of Earth through contemporary culture...Joan of Arc's training in future history...and an FBI hunt for a Mafia don who found his way back to the age of knighthood.

Genres: Science Fiction, Time Travel, Anthologies

306 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 2, 2007

About the author

When I am not writing, I toss tennis balls to my cadre of dogs. My house is filled with books and dogs, you can smell both when you walk in the front door. It's a good smell.

I have 36 published novels and am currently writing in the mystery genre. My latest mystery, The Dead of Winter, was a finalist for the Claymore Award and is the first in the Piper Blackwell series.

I live in a tiny town in the middle of Illinois that has a Dollar General, a pizza place with exceedingly slow service, a veterinarian (good thing, eh?), and train tracks...lots of train tracks.

Reviews

[Riju Ganguly · Rating 3 out of 5]

This collection of seventeen stories contained some mediocre and dragging tales, but there were lots of readable tales. Those tales, with elemens of some fantasy and snappy charm, kept me going. My favourites were~
1. Kevin J. Anderson's 'Mundane Lane';
2. James M. Ward's 'Downtown Knight';
3. Donald J. Bingle's 'Standing Still';
4. Skip and Penny Williams' 'One Rainy Day in Paris';
5. Pierce Askegren's 'Try and Try Again';
6. Wen Nicholson's 'Three Power Play'.
Other tales were mostly too full of themselves. But overall, the experience was good.

[Adam Duclos · Rating 2 out of 5]

Most of these short stories weren't that great, but a few did stand out to me. "Occupation Duty" was an interesting alternate history short about what the world would be like if the Jews didn't exist thousands of years ago and the Phillistines took over instead. "Standing Still' was a cool short about some of the further consequences of having a 'time war' and one man's way of getting out of it. Oh, and 'Try and Try Again' was a nifty short about what might happen if someone were sent back in time to change history, if he were part of a 'fixed event' in time. Good stuff. The rest were way too long, even for short stories. It was as if there was really only a paragraph worth of idea that they padded out with boringness.

[Michael Tildsley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Time travel and alternate history stories have always interested me, and this collection of short stories provides more good than bad stories overall. With any collection, you have to take the great with the good and the bad. I'd have to say that this is one of the better collected anthologies of science fiction that I've read in a while that aren't of the same author. Kudos, editors.

The stories I consider "Five Star" from this collection are:

"Mundane Lane" - Kevin J. Anderson
"Voices" - Jackie Cassada
"Downtown Knight" - James M. Ward
"Parsley, Sage, and Time" - Jon L. Breen
"A Better Place" - Linda P. Baker
"Chaos Theory" - Stephen Leigh
"Standing Still" - Donald L. Bingle

[Annabelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

A book of short stories on time travel is like porn to a reader with a time travel fetish. If only all the stories delivered. Almost half of the stories here are NOT about time travel, but depict a post-apocalyptic earth--an alternate reality, some would call it. Which isn't exactly my cup of SF tea.

[Bryan]

I bought this in ebook format at fictionwise.com, but the publisher decided they wanted more money, so I couldn't download it.

Fictionwise refunded my money after a few weeks, so now I have to decide if I'll ever buy this again.

Unlikely.

[Tracy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I just love the conundrums of time...

[Donald J. Bingle]

"Standing Still" is one of my favorite stories to do at author readings.