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Time's Child: A Powerful Science Fiction Novel Where a Peasant and Viking Change Destiny in a Plague-Ravaged Future
Earth, 2308. Multiple pandemic plagues have ravaged the earth beyond recognition. Working desperately, the Philadelphia National Archives uses a mysterious time machine to bring key members of the past into the future, to save humanity from destroying itself. Pulled from Renaissance Italy, former peasant Benedetta brings a friendship with master artist Leonardo da Vinci . . . and an unprecedented ability to change destiny, aided by her new partner, the Viking Ivar. But it is not easy to reconcile the past and the present, and the time refugees have their own plans for their new world. Weaving together time travel, quantum mechanics, Templars, and outlaws, acclaimed author Rebecca Ore delivers a powerful tale of intrigue and possibility, and the fight to be free.
327 pages, Paperback
First published February 20, 2007
9 people are currently reading
84 people want to read
About the author
Rebecca Ore
34 books19 followersRebecca Ore is the pseudonym of science fiction writer Rebecca B. Brown.
Rebecca Ore was born in Louisville, KY, out of people from Kentucky and Virginia, Irish Catholic and French Protestant turned Southern Baptist on her mother's side and Welsh and Borderer on her father's. She grew up in South Carolina and fell in love with New York City from a distance, moved there in 1968 and lived on the Upper West Side and Lower East Side for seven years. Somehow, she also attended Columbia University School of General Studies while spending most of her energy in the St. Mark Poetry Project. In 1975, she moved to San Francisco for almost a year, then moved to Virginia, back and forth several places for several years, finished a Masters in English, then moved to rural Virginia for ten years, writing s.f. novels and living in her grandparent's house after they died.
Rebecca Ore was born in Louisville, KY, out of people from Kentucky and Virginia, Irish Catholic and French Protestant turned Southern Baptist on her mother's side and Welsh and Borderer on her father's. She grew up in South Carolina and fell in love with New York City from a distance, moved there in 1968 and lived on the Upper West Side and Lower East Side for seven years. Somehow, she also attended Columbia University School of General Studies while spending most of her energy in the St. Mark Poetry Project. In 1975, she moved to San Francisco for almost a year, then moved to Virginia, back and forth several places for several years, finished a Masters in English, then moved to rural Virginia for ten years, writing s.f. novels and living in her grandparent's house after they died.
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Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
August 31, 2007
Capsule: Starts very strong, but can't figure out what kind of book it wants to be and peters out to a slow, rolling stop.
Time's Child starts great. We get a great protagonist: a Renaissance artillary crew woman with more cleverness than anyone expects, and drop her in a great situation. Philadelphia of the 2300's has used a time machine to scoop her up and teach them history and technology they lost in 300 years of plagues. Oh, and hopefully to provide some genetic diversity.
She gets two possible allies, a viking youth from around 1000 AD and a middle-aged hacker from the twentieth century. They work to free themselves from the mostly benevolent control they're kept under and each has their own reasons for wanting to change the policy on time rescues.
The plot kicks into high gear when the time travellers become aware of "blue fluxes" -- faces peering out of the blue glow the time machine makes. People in the future are sending them instructions, but it becomes clear that they future people are trying to ensure that their preferred future develops. The time travellers and their allies have to decide which future people to trust; when they take various actions, sometimes future faces wink out as their possibility of existing vanishes. The stakes are much higher to the future than they are to the present or the past.
The first third is very strong. The confluence of cultures, technologies, languages, and motives proves excellent, especially when the characters begin interacting with the city-state politics and several groups of Philadelphians with varying motives (and with varying degree of trustworthiness). The questions about predestination and how "used" they should feel by the future fit in with the best of science fiction time-travel stories and the relatively low-impact action stays interesting.
Unfortunately, around 1/3 of the way into the book, the protagonists basically succeed at what they want (getting control of time travel). They then give every group time machines, mostly shutting down the political story. The rest of the book breezes by with months or years between chapters as the characters age, meet for dinner to discuss old times, and run for political office or found their own townships.
The back half of the book feels like an outline. Some of that is fine at the end of a good book--The Forever War ends that way very effectively--but here it sucks the energy out of an extremely promising start.
I don't regret reading Time's Child, but it was a shame to see the promise of the opening fall apart.
Time's Child starts great. We get a great protagonist: a Renaissance artillary crew woman with more cleverness than anyone expects, and drop her in a great situation. Philadelphia of the 2300's has used a time machine to scoop her up and teach them history and technology they lost in 300 years of plagues. Oh, and hopefully to provide some genetic diversity.
She gets two possible allies, a viking youth from around 1000 AD and a middle-aged hacker from the twentieth century. They work to free themselves from the mostly benevolent control they're kept under and each has their own reasons for wanting to change the policy on time rescues.
The plot kicks into high gear when the time travellers become aware of "blue fluxes" -- faces peering out of the blue glow the time machine makes. People in the future are sending them instructions, but it becomes clear that they future people are trying to ensure that their preferred future develops. The time travellers and their allies have to decide which future people to trust; when they take various actions, sometimes future faces wink out as their possibility of existing vanishes. The stakes are much higher to the future than they are to the present or the past.
The first third is very strong. The confluence of cultures, technologies, languages, and motives proves excellent, especially when the characters begin interacting with the city-state politics and several groups of Philadelphians with varying motives (and with varying degree of trustworthiness). The questions about predestination and how "used" they should feel by the future fit in with the best of science fiction time-travel stories and the relatively low-impact action stays interesting.
Unfortunately, around 1/3 of the way into the book, the protagonists basically succeed at what they want (getting control of time travel). They then give every group time machines, mostly shutting down the political story. The rest of the book breezes by with months or years between chapters as the characters age, meet for dinner to discuss old times, and run for political office or found their own townships.
The back half of the book feels like an outline. Some of that is fine at the end of a good book--The Forever War ends that way very effectively--but here it sucks the energy out of an extremely promising start.
I don't regret reading Time's Child, but it was a shame to see the promise of the opening fall apart.
December 2, 2012
It read like fanfic of historical figures. It took some fascinating possibilities and flubbed them. I think I'm still glad I read it.
August 6, 2016
I couldn't finish it. Started off okay and just meandered off meaninglessly about nothing. Not one of the three protagonists was likable or understandable
May 16, 2019
Time's Child by Rebecca Ore
Time's Child is from yet another stack of books I picked up a while ago. Rebecca Ore is an author whose books I've read before. She has a refreshing new voice in the stream of voices that run through my library. So This small time travel novel caught my interest. This is a time travel story that has the travelers all moving forward in time. Though the machine allows the future to observe the past they are limited to only drawing specific people from the past and it is usually someone who has no recorded history in the past.
The primary protagonist is Bernedette whose life intersects with Leonardo Da Vinci.
Bernedette is brought from the past at the moment she is meant to die and the future people save her life and then interview her for information about the past. But the future people first play a game of being gods and their institutes being heaven, hell, or purgatory; all somewhat dependent on the individual they are dealing with. Bernedette sees through this quickly and just as quickly begins to have a number of questions about the sincerity of what these people are doing. She is told that they can't let her out into the world because of all the mutated viruses and the fact that others they have brought forward have died from culture shock even after being fully inoculated.
The story slowly reveals that the time machine might not be these people's creation and in fact they are still struggling with understanding it. It seems that some future has sent it to them, but it's unclear what that future wants them to do with it.
Bernedetta and several others escape or are released finally and they help to expose this project to the public while at the same time they plot to steal the time machine. At some point it appears the people in the future of this society (who might have sent back the plans for the time travel machine) are interested in the people brought from the past gaining control of the device.
This is one of those save the future through the past but no so much changing the past as it is bringing the past forward to repopulate a world that has become a self defeating dystopia. It's quite interesting to see the people of the past coming to terms with the future and future society; and possibly being able to recognize the problem and the threat to civilization that the future people don't know exists.
This is a good book for SFF fans though its not particularly outstanding as a time travel novel it does have some new twists on the time travel tale. Picture a time traveler from the past jumping into Aldous Huxley's Brave New World.
J.L. Dobias
Time's Child is from yet another stack of books I picked up a while ago. Rebecca Ore is an author whose books I've read before. She has a refreshing new voice in the stream of voices that run through my library. So This small time travel novel caught my interest. This is a time travel story that has the travelers all moving forward in time. Though the machine allows the future to observe the past they are limited to only drawing specific people from the past and it is usually someone who has no recorded history in the past.
The primary protagonist is Bernedette whose life intersects with Leonardo Da Vinci.
Bernedette is brought from the past at the moment she is meant to die and the future people save her life and then interview her for information about the past. But the future people first play a game of being gods and their institutes being heaven, hell, or purgatory; all somewhat dependent on the individual they are dealing with. Bernedette sees through this quickly and just as quickly begins to have a number of questions about the sincerity of what these people are doing. She is told that they can't let her out into the world because of all the mutated viruses and the fact that others they have brought forward have died from culture shock even after being fully inoculated.
The story slowly reveals that the time machine might not be these people's creation and in fact they are still struggling with understanding it. It seems that some future has sent it to them, but it's unclear what that future wants them to do with it.
Bernedetta and several others escape or are released finally and they help to expose this project to the public while at the same time they plot to steal the time machine. At some point it appears the people in the future of this society (who might have sent back the plans for the time travel machine) are interested in the people brought from the past gaining control of the device.
This is one of those save the future through the past but no so much changing the past as it is bringing the past forward to repopulate a world that has become a self defeating dystopia. It's quite interesting to see the people of the past coming to terms with the future and future society; and possibly being able to recognize the problem and the threat to civilization that the future people don't know exists.
This is a good book for SFF fans though its not particularly outstanding as a time travel novel it does have some new twists on the time travel tale. Picture a time traveler from the past jumping into Aldous Huxley's Brave New World.
J.L. Dobias
April 30, 2024
This had good characters and a mostly, decent storyline but somewhere in the middle, we lose the plot. Just barely ekes out a third star for a hopeful ending.
P.S. though this came up in a time travel list, it isn't. It's more of a rag tag group of people pulled from their own time lines to a common future.
P.S. though this came up in a time travel list, it isn't. It's more of a rag tag group of people pulled from their own time lines to a common future.
December 16, 2019
The characterization in this novel was strange, and there wasn't much in the way of an actual plot arc. I think a lot of the story didn't quite make it from the author's imagination onto the page.
April 22, 2020
A 15th-century Lombard gunner’s widow, an 11th century Viking & a 20th-century hacker are brought to 24th-century Philadelphia to save humanity from destruction.
February 24, 2013
Earth in the early 24th century is pulling itself back together after centuries of plagues that started sometime in the 21st century. (Uh-oh. That's now.) The reduced population of North America has created a nation of city states, and Ore centers her book on Philadelphia. Why is there something inherently both funny and boring about Philadelphia? She introduces us to the Archive, a group in charge of using a time machine, a contraption that has fortuitously arrived from some future time to gather people from the past. The one caveat is that these people must have been on the verge of disappearing when the Archivists scoop them up. In other words, you can't just grab Abraham Lincoln or Julius Caesar or Jane Austen. The archivists' most recent additions are Benedetta, a 15th century peasant who happened to know Leonardo da Vinci; Ivar, a Viking teenager who fell overboard on a boat trip to Iceland; and Jonah, an alcoholic, 21st century computer troll from a good Philadelphia family who passed out drunk in the snow and would have frozen to death.
Most of those the archivists bring up-time either die of diseases they lack immunities to or go insane. But these three are real survivors. Jonah, ever the troll, helps Benedetta escape the archive just for the fun of making trouble. City states are a natural institution for her, and she becomes active in Philadelphia politics. Ivar, like any teenager, takes quickly to new technology and is soon able to reverse engineer time machines and start his own retrieval service. And Jonah is always on hand to cause trouble. He is either convinced or just wants to convince others that everyone is a subprogram in a computer game. What seems more likely is that all these characters and those they interact with are being used by the future to create the version of the future those particular future beings want. These future beings appear periodically as blue blobs that can provide some handy contraband or put a stop to a dangerous situation.
Most reader reviews complain that Ore's novel sets up great characters and this unique world and then does nothing with it. I felt what she was establishing was that those who survive remarkable times, whether earthly plagues or the dislocations of time travel, are likely to do what it takes to make life livable again. That doesn't make for a lot of exciting plot developments, but the characters are engaging to spend time with as they settle into their new roles.
Here's Benedetta having it out with Jonah, who really is a prick.
The elitists at the Archive worry about bringing in an underclass, or that the Chinese will use their Ivar-provided time machine to repopulate with a billion of their own kind. But in the United States the sparse population and inter-marriage have resulted in a near disappearance of races. Same sex couples are also common and even bear their own children. (The biology involved here is never explained.) The new arrivals from the past are bringing genetic diversity, more food options, and a livelier social life.
But Ore is not writing a utopian novel. We never learn just what those blue blobs from the future really want, and Ivar, now living with Benedetta and soon to be a father, harbors his own doubts about the future.
Carpe diem.
Most of those the archivists bring up-time either die of diseases they lack immunities to or go insane. But these three are real survivors. Jonah, ever the troll, helps Benedetta escape the archive just for the fun of making trouble. City states are a natural institution for her, and she becomes active in Philadelphia politics. Ivar, like any teenager, takes quickly to new technology and is soon able to reverse engineer time machines and start his own retrieval service. And Jonah is always on hand to cause trouble. He is either convinced or just wants to convince others that everyone is a subprogram in a computer game. What seems more likely is that all these characters and those they interact with are being used by the future to create the version of the future those particular future beings want. These future beings appear periodically as blue blobs that can provide some handy contraband or put a stop to a dangerous situation.
Most reader reviews complain that Ore's novel sets up great characters and this unique world and then does nothing with it. I felt what she was establishing was that those who survive remarkable times, whether earthly plagues or the dislocations of time travel, are likely to do what it takes to make life livable again. That doesn't make for a lot of exciting plot developments, but the characters are engaging to spend time with as they settle into their new roles.
Here's Benedetta having it out with Jonah, who really is a prick.
"It's the future, Jonah. We're all getting beyond what we thought we remember from before. Memory is treacherous sometimes. People are happy to be alive, to have another chance in a different world. Food in their bellies. Sex that doesn't give them clap or the pox or get them hanged. Babies to hug tht live beyond their first year."
The elitists at the Archive worry about bringing in an underclass, or that the Chinese will use their Ivar-provided time machine to repopulate with a billion of their own kind. But in the United States the sparse population and inter-marriage have resulted in a near disappearance of races. Same sex couples are also common and even bear their own children. (The biology involved here is never explained.) The new arrivals from the past are bringing genetic diversity, more food options, and a livelier social life.
But Ore is not writing a utopian novel. We never learn just what those blue blobs from the future really want, and Ivar, now living with Benedetta and soon to be a father, harbors his own doubts about the future.
...The universe proved to be a cold place with small temporary lumps of fusion reactions circled by planets too hot or too cold for life. The one known exception existed in bubbles of alternatives that actions and even thoughts pricked into nonexistence...Human futures were boxed possibilities that events obliterated or released. Everyone who wasn't obliterated by a time change died anyway.
Carpe diem.
November 16, 2007
Book Description (from Amazon.com)
Earth, 2308. Multiple pandemic plagues have ravaged the earth beyond recognition. Working desperately, the Philadelphia National Archives uses a mysterious time machine to bring key members of the past into the future, to save humanity from destroying itself.
Pulled from Renaissance Italy, former peasant Benedetta brings a friendship with master artist Leonardo da Vinci . . . and an unprecedented ability to change destiny, aided by her new partner, the Viking Ivar. But it is not easy to reconcile the past and the present, and the time refugees have their own plans for their new world.
Weaving together time travel, quantum mechanics, Templars, and outlaws [Owen Glendower], acclaimed author Rebecca Ore delivers a powerful tale of intrigue and possibility, and the fight to be free.
Earth, 2308. Multiple pandemic plagues have ravaged the earth beyond recognition. Working desperately, the Philadelphia National Archives uses a mysterious time machine to bring key members of the past into the future, to save humanity from destroying itself.
Pulled from Renaissance Italy, former peasant Benedetta brings a friendship with master artist Leonardo da Vinci . . . and an unprecedented ability to change destiny, aided by her new partner, the Viking Ivar. But it is not easy to reconcile the past and the present, and the time refugees have their own plans for their new world.
Weaving together time travel, quantum mechanics, Templars, and outlaws [Owen Glendower], acclaimed author Rebecca Ore delivers a powerful tale of intrigue and possibility, and the fight to be free.
June 10, 2025
How about this for a wild premise? In the 24th century, pandemics have decimated the population. But all is not lost. There is a time machine that can scoop up people who are about to die and be lost to history. Harvest a little DNA, and the species gets a fresh start.
One of the rescued is a woman who posed for Leonardo da Vinci. Another is a Viking who jumped overboard so he would not be killed by some bandits who weren’t worthy warriors.
Moral: be careful who you bring back. Not everyone adapts well to life in the 24th century. If you bring back a Templar, what are you going to say about the fate of Jerusalem? And do you really want to resurrect an Internet troll?
I like the shifting narrative point of view, but the pacing is uneven. The last half seems rushed. Jodi Taylor would be my go-to author for this kind of story.
One of the rescued is a woman who posed for Leonardo da Vinci. Another is a Viking who jumped overboard so he would not be killed by some bandits who weren’t worthy warriors.
Moral: be careful who you bring back. Not everyone adapts well to life in the 24th century. If you bring back a Templar, what are you going to say about the fate of Jerusalem? And do you really want to resurrect an Internet troll?
I like the shifting narrative point of view, but the pacing is uneven. The last half seems rushed. Jodi Taylor would be my go-to author for this kind of story.
January 4, 2013
Like many of the other reviews--started off strong, could not figure out what it wanted to do or where it wanted to go. I tried reading it several times. I would start it again and again, wanting to like it and hoping it would get better, but to no avail. None of the characters could decide who they were or what they wanted. No one had any reason or purpose behind their actions, thus there was no true plot or story line. Do not recommend.
April 5, 2008
Good start but I started getting way confused with new characters appearing and disappearing. What with time travel and time paradoxes and all, that is to be expected. I was into it and following everything up until half way through. I got so confused and became so disappointed in the direction the characters went that I just skimmed to the end.
April 22, 2013
This book had an interesting premise and engaging characters. The three main characters were unique but only one was truly prominent nearer to the end, thus limiting the readers perspective on the issues. Unfortunately it lacked a sense of urgency behind the main action. The introduction went by quickly but I lost interest through the last hundred pages.
March 3, 2008
Interesting speculation on the relative intelligence and resourcefulness of people from the past who have been transported to a post-plague future.
October 13, 2010
This book jumped all over and rarely finished a thought.
gave-up
July 24, 2011Haven't finished, got rather bogged down. Wanted more of the female character, didn't find the male viewpoints particularly engrossing.
November 12, 2012
Started out pretty good, but totally fell apart in the middle to the point where I could not make my eyes focus on the page any more.
March 22, 2013
I did not like this book. In fact, I am not entirely sure why I bothered to suffer through it.
March 24, 2007
Complicated, intriguing concept and characters. Challenging read.
July 19, 2010
Started out good, but just wandered towards an ending. Definitely not a re-read.
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews