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Retcontinuum
Retcontinuum tells the story of Ray, a man who makes his living by participating in experimental trials. One day, Ray signs up for a study sponsored by the Sinclair Group involving the implantation of a device in the brain that allows the subject to make jumps in time. However, making these jumps begins to erode Ray’s memory, so although he has important information inside his faulty memories, he can’t access it. Of course, this doesn’t stop the Sinclair Group from coming after Ray in an attempt to prevent others from gaining access to evidence Sinclair desperately wants to be kept hidden.
- GenresScience Fiction
222 pages, Kindle Edition
First published December 2, 2014
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
October 1, 2018
Time travel stories lose me if they get too interested in trying to convince me that their particular method of time travel is logically consistent and doesn't violate any rules about causality (which are just made up anyways.) Retcontinuum, fortunately, just establishes how things happen then gets on with its plot and characters, which are also better than whateverthefrick the guys' names were in Primer.
Ray's a great narrative voice, just resigned enough to his situation to be quippy in the face of government assassins but not to the point where he's an unsympathetic prig. The epistolary elements are well-integrated to add a lot of flavor to the world without serving as pure infodumps or forced foreshadowing. It moves along at a pretty swift pace, the characters all play off of each other really well, and despite being a pretty jaded genre reader I never felt like I could tell where things were going to go ahead of time.
Retcontinuum is a fun and engaging novella with a knack for dialogue that leaves the typical boring parts in the past.
Ray's a great narrative voice, just resigned enough to his situation to be quippy in the face of government assassins but not to the point where he's an unsympathetic prig. The epistolary elements are well-integrated to add a lot of flavor to the world without serving as pure infodumps or forced foreshadowing. It moves along at a pretty swift pace, the characters all play off of each other really well, and despite being a pretty jaded genre reader I never felt like I could tell where things were going to go ahead of time.
Retcontinuum is a fun and engaging novella with a knack for dialogue that leaves the typical boring parts in the past.
October 23, 2016
This review originally appeared on the May 20, 2016 issue of the Spring Creek Sun.
BY AMANDA MOSES
We all have our bad days. Times when it feels like you are falling through a hole of regrets, missteps and all around wrong decisions, and sometimes there really isn’t much we can do about it except persevere—at least in Raymond J. Irvine’s case, the protagonist of Retcontinuum by Shaunn Grulkowski. This sci-fi adventure tells the tale of a man without any ambition, a man who just wants to get through life in the easiest way possible. In an attempt to achieve his ambitionless goal, he enrolls in a dodgy clinical trial for time-travel—what’s the worst that could happen?
In the first moments we enter Irvine’s futuristic world, he undergoes one of the many side effects of time-travel—temporary blindness. In a flash, Grulkowski shocks the readers with his detailed description of the incident. Irvine was in the midst of using the bathroom when suddenly everything went white. Not the brief white glare and haziness you get while staring at a light too long. No, Irvine’s world went stark white. It was such a heart-dropping, “Oh my God” moment that shocked me as a reader. The incident was a combination of horror and humor because the ever-lighthearted writing of Grulkowski. He describes Irvine shrieking and flopping around with his pants around his ankles. For any normal, functioning human being, temporary blindness would be enough to call it quits with clinical trails, but not for Irvine.
Unbeknownst to Irvine, there is a strange conspiracy between the company hosting the clinical trails, Sinclair Group, and a failed space launch attempt to Mars that caused NASA to shut down. As a child, the mission to Mars was an important historical event to Irvine but when it failed, so did his hopes and dreams. Hence his current ambitionless demeanor; however, with the side effects and scrambled secrets hidden in Irvine’s brain, he becomes a liability to Sinclair. Enlisting the help of an unlikely sub-contractor at the Sinclair clinical trial center, Irvine makes an attempt to untangle his memories and find the connection between the mysterious company and the mission to Mars.
Creating a literary futuristic world is hard to do, and sometimes it becomes so strange that the reader finds it hard to relate to. This is not the case in Retcontinuum because Grulkowski makes his characters so relatable, and their reactions feel realistic. He doesn’t force feed information and background to the reader; instead we are given a glimpse into an insane future through interviews and case files. Humor and wit are interwoven throughout the story, making it a wonderfully entertaining read.
Link to original review: http://springcreeksunonline.com/from-...
BY AMANDA MOSES
We all have our bad days. Times when it feels like you are falling through a hole of regrets, missteps and all around wrong decisions, and sometimes there really isn’t much we can do about it except persevere—at least in Raymond J. Irvine’s case, the protagonist of Retcontinuum by Shaunn Grulkowski. This sci-fi adventure tells the tale of a man without any ambition, a man who just wants to get through life in the easiest way possible. In an attempt to achieve his ambitionless goal, he enrolls in a dodgy clinical trial for time-travel—what’s the worst that could happen?
In the first moments we enter Irvine’s futuristic world, he undergoes one of the many side effects of time-travel—temporary blindness. In a flash, Grulkowski shocks the readers with his detailed description of the incident. Irvine was in the midst of using the bathroom when suddenly everything went white. Not the brief white glare and haziness you get while staring at a light too long. No, Irvine’s world went stark white. It was such a heart-dropping, “Oh my God” moment that shocked me as a reader. The incident was a combination of horror and humor because the ever-lighthearted writing of Grulkowski. He describes Irvine shrieking and flopping around with his pants around his ankles. For any normal, functioning human being, temporary blindness would be enough to call it quits with clinical trails, but not for Irvine.
Unbeknownst to Irvine, there is a strange conspiracy between the company hosting the clinical trails, Sinclair Group, and a failed space launch attempt to Mars that caused NASA to shut down. As a child, the mission to Mars was an important historical event to Irvine but when it failed, so did his hopes and dreams. Hence his current ambitionless demeanor; however, with the side effects and scrambled secrets hidden in Irvine’s brain, he becomes a liability to Sinclair. Enlisting the help of an unlikely sub-contractor at the Sinclair clinical trial center, Irvine makes an attempt to untangle his memories and find the connection between the mysterious company and the mission to Mars.
Creating a literary futuristic world is hard to do, and sometimes it becomes so strange that the reader finds it hard to relate to. This is not the case in Retcontinuum because Grulkowski makes his characters so relatable, and their reactions feel realistic. He doesn’t force feed information and background to the reader; instead we are given a glimpse into an insane future through interviews and case files. Humor and wit are interwoven throughout the story, making it a wonderfully entertaining read.
Link to original review: http://springcreeksunonline.com/from-...
August 16, 2015
I read the original version of Retcontinuum on Jukepop last year. What a crazy, fun ride.....like wild, upside down rollercoaster fun. The story is full of suspense and plot twists and lots of f'bombs. You will find yourself laughing out loud at the most seemingly inappropriate tense moments. And just when you think that you've figured out something, the rollercoaster flips you upside down again. Mr. Grulkowski has written quite the page turner.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews