Lords Temporal

by Joseph H. Delaney

When Stan Wyckoff's spaceship, Corona, is stolen by a group of powerful, time-traveling aliens, he is resolved to regain control of the ship.

Genres: Science Fiction

374 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1987

About the author

Joseph Henry Delaney was a lawyer and science fiction writer. He was first published rather late in life, in 1982 when he was nearly fifty, and was most associated with Analog Science Fiction and Fact. He would go on to be nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novella several times and win readers polls from Analog.

Reviews

[Marin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Found it in a library, not expecting much, but this book surprised me with an interesting story :)

[Kevin Phyland · Rating 3 out of 5]

Stan Wyckoff is a drifter in New York who steals an expensive suit from a drunken spaceman who is later killed by car thieves for his vehicle. Fearing he will be blamed, Wyckoff makes his way to the spacefield and boards the Corona in the guise of the dead spacer and bluffs his way into the job. But also on board is the dead spacer's girlfriend who blows Wyckoff's cover but gets away with it by pretending to be part of another crewmember's undercover police operation investigating the Corona's captain who is stealing supplies and selling them, leaving colonists to die on new planets. The police operation is real and when the captain finds out he abandons the Corona but not before killing most of the crew and locking the colonists up ostensibly to die a slow death in space. But Wyckoff had been hiding and frees the people on board just in time to reach a planet they can settle - but - it's already claimed by the lords temporal, a race that can master brief forays back and forth in time.…. Can Wyckoff and his new crew steal the Corona back, and find their way home? Convoluted and a bit overblown, Joseph Delaney's tale is readable but nothing special.

[Lilly · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had so many mediocre reads as of late. You can't say that they're bad even from a technical standpoint but they're just no good either. The story was kinda meh, the characters I did not care for one bit and that ending honestly felt like the author got bored with the story and just abandoned it. Also this book is not about time travel, it's such a minor theme and only takes place at the very end. Really weird stream of events in this novel. Whenever you got familiar with the plot, it made a 180. Not sure if that was necessarily a good thing.

[Mike Ward · Rating 4 out of 5]

Simple story with a small amount of the science to make it believable (?) based in Time Travel. A good read with good characters. Dated by the fact that it was printed in 1987. I enjoyed it and it is a reasonable book to add to my collected reading.

[Michal · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked this up used for about a dollar.
It looked like it was about time travel, so I thought what the heck, I'll give it try.
I enjoyed it. Lots of action, plot twists. It moved right along.
It's almost 30 years old but the science didn't feel dated, for one thing. It wasn't really about time travel as historical fiction but as a technology for interstellar travel to get around the time distortions of near the speed of light travel. Rather clever.