It’s one thing to make history… it’s another to change it completely. Professor Anthony Howard is a man with an ambition. He doesn’t just want to do well in his chosen profession; he wants to do something ground-breaking, something that will change the world, like all the biggest names in science. But Howard’s failure, frustration and disappointment very soon mean ruin, madness or death for those around him – and presently he begins to change the lives of people he has never even Zoe Cleminson, Belfast schoolgirl; the one and only Miss Jane Austen; the entire team of researchers who seem to disappear down a sort of cosmic plughole; even the Abominable Snowman… not to mention the uncounted victims of the Outsiders, the foul, violent creatures to whom Howard has unwittingly handed the fate of Humanity. Most dangerous to Howard, however, are the traumatised survivors of the Outsider invasion, who bear him a monumental grudge for making it all happen…