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Downtiming the Night Side
When former Air Force officer and NSA agent Ron Moosic is assigned for special duty in charge of security for a nuclear power plant, he has no idea that the plant is only a cover for a top-secret project involving time travel.
The government has discovered a way to travel back in time and is sending secret observers to different periods. But there are serious limitations with the time travelling process. All travelers are automatically “re-born” into someone who is actually alive during the historical period, and staying in the past for too long causes memory loss and the risk of losing their own selves.
Suddenly Moosic is himself forced to travel back in time as terrorists infiltrate the facility. But little does he know that both he and the terrorists are just pawns in a much wider game played by future beings … a game that may result in the destruction of Earth itself.
The government has discovered a way to travel back in time and is sending secret observers to different periods. But there are serious limitations with the time travelling process. All travelers are automatically “re-born” into someone who is actually alive during the historical period, and staying in the past for too long causes memory loss and the risk of losing their own selves.
Suddenly Moosic is himself forced to travel back in time as terrorists infiltrate the facility. But little does he know that both he and the terrorists are just pawns in a much wider game played by future beings … a game that may result in the destruction of Earth itself.
284 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1985
12 people are currently reading
180 people want to read
About the author
Jack L. Chalker
132 books357 followersBesides being a science fiction author, Jack Laurence Chalker was a Baltimore City Schools history teacher in Maryland for a time, a member of the Washington Science Fiction Association, and was involved in the founding of the Baltimore Science Fiction Society. Some of his books said that he was born in Norfolk, Virginia although he later claimed that was a mistake.
He attended all but one of the World Science Fiction Conventions from 1965 until 2004. He published an amateur SF journal, Mirage, from 1960 to 1971 (a Hugo nominee in 1963 for Best Fanzine).
Chalker was married in 1978 and had two sons.
His stated hobbies included esoteric audio, travel, and working on science-fiction convention committees. He had a great interest in ferryboats, and, at his wife's suggestion, their marriage was performed on the Roaring Bull Ferry.
Chalker's awards included the Daedalus Award (1983), The Gold Medal of the West Coast Review of Books (1984), Skylark Award (1985), Hamilton-Brackett Memorial Award (1979), as well as others of varying prestige. He was a nominee for the John W. Campbell Award twice and for the Hugo Award twice. He was posthumously awarded the Phoenix Award by the Southern Fandom Confederation on April 9, 2005.
On September 18, 2003, during Hurricane Isabel, Chalker passed out and was rushed to the hospital with a diagnosis of a heart attack. He was later released, but was severely weakened. On December 6, 2004, he was again rushed to hospital with breathing problems and disorientation, and was diagnosed with congestive heart failure and a collapsed lung. Chalker was hospitalized in critical condition, then upgraded to stable on December 9, though he didn't regain consciousness until December 15. After several more weeks in deteriorating condition and in a persistent vegetative state, with several transfers to different hospitals, he died on February 11, 2005 of kidney failure and sepsis in Bon Secours of Baltimore, Maryland.
Chalker is perhaps best known for his Well World series of novels, the first of which is Midnight at the Well of Souls (Well World, #1).
He attended all but one of the World Science Fiction Conventions from 1965 until 2004. He published an amateur SF journal, Mirage, from 1960 to 1971 (a Hugo nominee in 1963 for Best Fanzine).
Chalker was married in 1978 and had two sons.
His stated hobbies included esoteric audio, travel, and working on science-fiction convention committees. He had a great interest in ferryboats, and, at his wife's suggestion, their marriage was performed on the Roaring Bull Ferry.
Chalker's awards included the Daedalus Award (1983), The Gold Medal of the West Coast Review of Books (1984), Skylark Award (1985), Hamilton-Brackett Memorial Award (1979), as well as others of varying prestige. He was a nominee for the John W. Campbell Award twice and for the Hugo Award twice. He was posthumously awarded the Phoenix Award by the Southern Fandom Confederation on April 9, 2005.
On September 18, 2003, during Hurricane Isabel, Chalker passed out and was rushed to the hospital with a diagnosis of a heart attack. He was later released, but was severely weakened. On December 6, 2004, he was again rushed to hospital with breathing problems and disorientation, and was diagnosed with congestive heart failure and a collapsed lung. Chalker was hospitalized in critical condition, then upgraded to stable on December 9, though he didn't regain consciousness until December 15. After several more weeks in deteriorating condition and in a persistent vegetative state, with several transfers to different hospitals, he died on February 11, 2005 of kidney failure and sepsis in Bon Secours of Baltimore, Maryland.
Chalker is perhaps best known for his Well World series of novels, the first of which is Midnight at the Well of Souls (Well World, #1).
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Want to read
July 6, 2015The TV Tropes Screw Yourself page informs me that this is yet another book which contains heinleining. The same page also lists the following:
Timemaster
The Coming of the Quantum Cats
With a Tangled Skein
We're now up to eight! I've started a Listopia list.
Timemaster
The Coming of the Quantum Cats
With a Tangled Skein
We're now up to eight! I've started a Listopia list.
April 3, 2014
Growing up, Chalker was one of my favorite authors--because of his rollicking adventure plots, and the fascinating legions strange non- and semi-humans who populated his stories, but most of all because of his unending interest in ideas of transformation and identity: how much does our body shape who we are? When it changes, what do we become?
This book is neither his best plot nor his best prose, and yet it is in many ways my favorite: an utterly original exploration of the time travel idea, which sees travelers forced to inhabit new bodies as they fight a war across the centuries. Reminiscent of Delany or Lem in its scope and breadth of imagination, with complex and elegantly drawn characters, this is a wonderful novel of ideas.
This book is neither his best plot nor his best prose, and yet it is in many ways my favorite: an utterly original exploration of the time travel idea, which sees travelers forced to inhabit new bodies as they fight a war across the centuries. Reminiscent of Delany or Lem in its scope and breadth of imagination, with complex and elegantly drawn characters, this is a wonderful novel of ideas.
January 4, 2026
**1/2 stars
The Time Travel novel relies (and eventually suffers) on the many 'holes' of continuous disrepair on the timestream. Ripples, waves, rips, folds, drops, you name it, but at its core, it's the exit hole that matters, and here in Jack Chalker's timescape, the holes become exasperatingly random as they multiply, and all the reader is left with are plot-eating swathes of a choose-your-own-adventure novel timed for a two-minute attention span.
I don't think Chalker wrote this book, he actually FILLED it.
The holes in narrative persist along with the page count, and then these holes multiply into the narrative with the viral intent of this winter's flu. So yeah, more holes than Bonnie and Clyde post-mortem. More head scratching than a lice breakout. More inane dialogue than a self-published harem of screenwriters rewriting The Time Machine for Cannon Films. (Actually, Golan and Globus might actually translate this into a marvel of lower-mid-budget cuckah - I want Lungdren playing Eric Benoni, the most elusive villain this side of remaindered pulp paperbacks).
This book stinks but I kind of liked it.
Sam Moosic is the everyday-man nuclear facility supervisor who on his first day on the job realizes he's not supervising a power planet but a goddamn time travel facility. And wait, the place is under attack by three terrorists who aim to steal the time suits and timeslip all the way back to go kill Karl Marx before his final works are published. Okay, are you scratching your head wondering what the hell this is really about?
Did I mention that there's these Outworlders, black metallic hybrid beasts wearing disco timebelts whose sole intent is to fuck up the whole fabric of the university in order for humanity to be saved. (see great book cover: those black monolith creatures look intimidating on the cover...sadly, inside the pages, they're as threatening as charred and burnt Matryoshka dolls.)
The Time Drip / Dissolution has Moosic's identity siphoned through many characters both future past and present. Perhaps author Chalker could grasp little of his narrative, so when in doubt on how to finish writing this book, he decided to put each dissolving version of our hero into a new body, and then fill a chapter with more discount dismay and back-pocket wonder before the hole becomes a bigger hole. Really now, our hero Moosic becomes a London street urchin, a matronly revolutionary, a gay bureaucrat in Paris, an asshole in a wheelchair, and all the way down the social strata to become Holly, a voluptuous young woman who prostitutes the streets of Maryland not for money outright, but to satisfy her majestically nympho desires. However she does want to save the world amidst all that fucking. Case in point. Check the dialogue here on the delicate nature of downtiming time itself with the existential charm of a nymphomaniac Popeye.
"You're a priest?"
"Yes, that does that bother you?"
"Yeah. It means I can't even get a good fuck - and boy, do I need one now! Sorry, Father - but I am what I am. I ain't Catholic anyway."
He shrugged. "A few of your lives were, including your origin, if I recall correctly. It does not matter. My branch of the Church is a bit more liberal and less orthodox than the one you know, in any case. You see, my church is on Mars."
She was suddenly wide awake. "Huh?"
You could say this novel does to feminism Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey did to time travel.
The Time Travel novel relies (and eventually suffers) on the many 'holes' of continuous disrepair on the timestream. Ripples, waves, rips, folds, drops, you name it, but at its core, it's the exit hole that matters, and here in Jack Chalker's timescape, the holes become exasperatingly random as they multiply, and all the reader is left with are plot-eating swathes of a choose-your-own-adventure novel timed for a two-minute attention span.
I don't think Chalker wrote this book, he actually FILLED it.
The holes in narrative persist along with the page count, and then these holes multiply into the narrative with the viral intent of this winter's flu. So yeah, more holes than Bonnie and Clyde post-mortem. More head scratching than a lice breakout. More inane dialogue than a self-published harem of screenwriters rewriting The Time Machine for Cannon Films. (Actually, Golan and Globus might actually translate this into a marvel of lower-mid-budget cuckah - I want Lungdren playing Eric Benoni, the most elusive villain this side of remaindered pulp paperbacks).
This book stinks but I kind of liked it.
Sam Moosic is the everyday-man nuclear facility supervisor who on his first day on the job realizes he's not supervising a power planet but a goddamn time travel facility. And wait, the place is under attack by three terrorists who aim to steal the time suits and timeslip all the way back to go kill Karl Marx before his final works are published. Okay, are you scratching your head wondering what the hell this is really about?
Did I mention that there's these Outworlders, black metallic hybrid beasts wearing disco timebelts whose sole intent is to fuck up the whole fabric of the university in order for humanity to be saved. (see great book cover: those black monolith creatures look intimidating on the cover...sadly, inside the pages, they're as threatening as charred and burnt Matryoshka dolls.)
The Time Drip / Dissolution has Moosic's identity siphoned through many characters both future past and present. Perhaps author Chalker could grasp little of his narrative, so when in doubt on how to finish writing this book, he decided to put each dissolving version of our hero into a new body, and then fill a chapter with more discount dismay and back-pocket wonder before the hole becomes a bigger hole. Really now, our hero Moosic becomes a London street urchin, a matronly revolutionary, a gay bureaucrat in Paris, an asshole in a wheelchair, and all the way down the social strata to become Holly, a voluptuous young woman who prostitutes the streets of Maryland not for money outright, but to satisfy her majestically nympho desires. However she does want to save the world amidst all that fucking. Case in point. Check the dialogue here on the delicate nature of downtiming time itself with the existential charm of a nymphomaniac Popeye.
"You're a priest?"
"Yes, that does that bother you?"
"Yeah. It means I can't even get a good fuck - and boy, do I need one now! Sorry, Father - but I am what I am. I ain't Catholic anyway."
He shrugged. "A few of your lives were, including your origin, if I recall correctly. It does not matter. My branch of the Church is a bit more liberal and less orthodox than the one you know, in any case. You see, my church is on Mars."
She was suddenly wide awake. "Huh?"
You could say this novel does to feminism Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey did to time travel.
December 11, 2025
I don't think this has ever happened to me before-- I was at least a third of the way into the book before I realized I had read it before! I had read a number of books by Jack Chalker (1944-2005) back in the 90s and that's when I read this one, published in 1985. I checked Goodreads about other editions of the book and I recognized the cover of the earlier paperback edition I had read. The book I just finished was the Baen edition printed in 1993.
Anyway, it's a great time travel story. Ron Moosic is our hero who has to go back in time to stop terrorists from changing history. He discovers that he and the terrorists are merely pawns in a time war being waged between humans and ex-humans...
I liked Chalker's Afterward in the edition I read ( it wasn't in the earlier edition I read before).
Anyway, it's a great time travel story. Ron Moosic is our hero who has to go back in time to stop terrorists from changing history. He discovers that he and the terrorists are merely pawns in a time war being waged between humans and ex-humans...
I liked Chalker's Afterward in the edition I read ( it wasn't in the earlier edition I read before).
July 30, 2018
Writing a time travel story requires a lot of thought before you start. You have to figure out what the exact rules of time travel are in your world and how you're going to deal with the inevitable paradoxes. You also have to know what your characters are going to change in the past and what effect that has on the present. That's going to require research. For example, if you kill off Marx when he's young, is that going to prevent communism from arising or is communism just intellectual cover for the rise of dictatorships/police states and will those just pick a different cover?
In this book, the way time travel works changes whenever the writer wants it to. Go 100 years into the past and you become a new person of that era. Ok. But, go millions of years into the past and that doesn't happen. Huh? There are lots of other frustrating details like that.
The future never really changes, no matter what happens. It takes the "heroes" a lot of effort to slightly influence the war going on in the future, when logically it shouldn't be that hard. Some useful intel or technology in friendly hands or a couple of hidden bombs in the right places, set to go off at the right time. Maybe some assassinations.
Basically, this book has a cool title, but that's about where the fun ends. The writer obviously did not think the story through before he started to write. He just wanted his paycheck.
In this book, the way time travel works changes whenever the writer wants it to. Go 100 years into the past and you become a new person of that era. Ok. But, go millions of years into the past and that doesn't happen. Huh? There are lots of other frustrating details like that.
The future never really changes, no matter what happens. It takes the "heroes" a lot of effort to slightly influence the war going on in the future, when logically it shouldn't be that hard. Some useful intel or technology in friendly hands or a couple of hidden bombs in the right places, set to go off at the right time. Maybe some assassinations.
Basically, this book has a cool title, but that's about where the fun ends. The writer obviously did not think the story through before he started to write. He just wanted his paycheck.
December 23, 2011
This is a time traveling story with alot of body switches and loops and turns. A little complicated, but some nice action scenes. My biggest issue is that none of the characters is really interesting. If half stars were available here, I would have rated this at 2 1/2. The book has some good scenes and its a fun idea, just couldn't get into the characters.
May 18, 2010
Very poorly written, but perhaps worth reading if only because you will never read anything else like it.
February 16, 2016
Good entertainment book. Not exactly "Science Fiction". It is fiction. Lacks science.
March 28, 2022
I have had many of Chalker’s “other” books/series on my To Read list for decades. The Diamond Lords and Well World are favorites but I just haven’t carved much into other series of his, or other stand alones. I should have read this years ago. It’s a clever twist on time travel. To today’s reader, who is old enough to remember , Quantum Leap (or the more recent Travelers) television show, the concept might not seem original.
So what we have is a convoluted, clever address of the paradox of time travel (to the past, anyway) and then… the twists. No spoiling. Read it yourself. It’s not a bad book though as with his inspiration for this, Heinlein, he shows men shouldn’t ever presume to write from a female perspective.
So what we have is a convoluted, clever address of the paradox of time travel (to the past, anyway) and then… the twists. No spoiling. Read it yourself. It’s not a bad book though as with his inspiration for this, Heinlein, he shows men shouldn’t ever presume to write from a female perspective.
August 14, 2019
An interesting take on time travel, leading to some interesting problems. But at the end this was a story focused on the protagonist. The protagonist actiens had wider politicale=mplicatio\s but they remained in the background and were not fully explored. For me this is a good thing but your milage may vary.
December 19, 2023
I first read this book shortly after it came out. Every 5-10 years or so, I unearth my copy and read it again... so I've read it like 5 times now. It's one of my favorite books - right up there with a lot of my favorites of Niven's known space series.
I thought it was an excellent and unique take on time travel.
Highly recommend.
I thought it was an excellent and unique take on time travel.
Highly recommend.
October 4, 2023
Interesting idea, executed horribly, written by an author who definitely had a few things on his mind at the time of writing about women and their worth. A decent director could take the premise, jettison everything else, and make a pretty decent sci-fi thriller out of it.
October 29, 2018
A very interesting take on time travel, amazing narrative and a well thought out story.
Bounces around a lot, but to be expected.
Bounces around a lot, but to be expected.
January 15, 2021
The twisted way this story is told. Loved it.
November 5, 2021
Only time traveling story with a well sorted out theory of what happens when we go into the past and change something. A must read!
August 5, 2008
Jack L. Chalker writes in the classic style of science fiction writers who seek to warn us not to screw up the future or that technology can both heal and harm.
Haven't met the man, I think he may be a little too pessimistic about humanity, but will certainly admit that as a species we do seem to hang close to that flame that could snuff us out.
Downtiming is one of my favorite Chalker stories because it pulls me into a world where we can literally become someone else. And I admit being fascination with the idea of experiencing life across racial and gender lines. In this story, time travel is realized, but the scientist discover that time doesn't like being tampered with. If you go into the past for very long, the time stream will shift reality enough to make you fit and the danger could be that you loose yourself in the process.
If you like this sort of tale, I'd also recommend Chalker's 'The Identity Matrix'. And for those that enjoy humour mixed with fantasy 'The River of the Dancing Gods' is a fun read.
Haven't met the man, I think he may be a little too pessimistic about humanity, but will certainly admit that as a species we do seem to hang close to that flame that could snuff us out.
Downtiming is one of my favorite Chalker stories because it pulls me into a world where we can literally become someone else. And I admit being fascination with the idea of experiencing life across racial and gender lines. In this story, time travel is realized, but the scientist discover that time doesn't like being tampered with. If you go into the past for very long, the time stream will shift reality enough to make you fit and the danger could be that you loose yourself in the process.
If you like this sort of tale, I'd also recommend Chalker's 'The Identity Matrix'. And for those that enjoy humour mixed with fantasy 'The River of the Dancing Gods' is a fun read.
December 17, 2016
I was initially skeptical of the convoluted and seemingly arbitrary explanations for the time travel mechanisms. It seemed like Chalker could have devised simpler devices that made more sense. So I recommend you stick with it and suspend disbelief for the first half of the book, and everything will eventually come together in a satisfying and fairly intricate way, which I always appreciate.
October 13, 2008
I read this a long, long time ago (early 90s) and it still sticks in my mind. It's time travel, but don't get any ideas that it's the time travel of Jack Finney's world. This is a very bleak, even disturbing book, but it's worth reading for the plots and characterization. more on this soon...
December 1, 2013
Intricately and deftly plotted, "Downtiming the Nightside" is among the very few time travel stories I've read or seen that didn't make me roll my eyes and shake my head. I haven't read any Jack Chalker before but I will be happy to try him again.
August 25, 2009
Singleton, not a series
December 5, 2010
time travel as the ultimate weapon
June 16, 2011
Grade B-.
October 6, 2012
I've read most books by Chalker. This is one of the most complex time travel stories I've ever read, but the pacing and writing style just weren't up to par with Chalker's other works.
November 6, 2012
A great and original take on time travel.
July 7, 2018
a weak fiction but i like it.
Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews