Dave’s Reviews > Time Twisters > Status Update

One Rainy Day in Paris by Skip and Penny Williams. This is a time travel/time alteration story about Marie Curie, the discovery of radiation, and its weaponization. Not a particularly memorable story, but I found it pretty entertaining and interesting after a somewhat of a slow start.

Standing Still by Donald J. Bingle. This one starts as a rather implausible that I was certain would be fairly predictable and bland. However, it took some dark and surprising turns toward the end that elevated the story quite a bit. This is another time-traveling, history-altering story that has some similarities to the first story in this collection, Pierson's "Pruning the Tree."

Oyer and Terminer by Joe Masdon. This is a story set during the Salem witch trials. Honestly, it did nothing for me. Also, oddly, it had a lot of typos, which has not been the case with any of the other stories in this collection.

The Man in Cell 91 by Gene DeWeese. A condemned man is forced to experience dreams/visions with the hope that it will cause him to change his views and help to alter the course of humanity. It was okay. I was not familiar with this author, but it appears that he has written predominately Star Trek and some other shared world fiction.

Chaos Theory by Stephen Leigh. Well, this had all the makings of the beginning of amateur erotica or male fantasy. It had one main talking point, historical determinism, so I am not sure that I would even classify the story as science fiction. Pretty unmemorable.

A Better Place by Linda P. Baker. A story about the nature of treasure and the nature of people in a post-apocalyptic United States. Quite a well-realized world for a short story of only 20 pages, but I am unsure how this one really qualifies as a "time twister". Alternate history I suppose?

Parsley Sage, Rosemary, and Time by Jon L. Breen. I am not familiar with the author, but this was a fun mystery story about a group of amateur writers who hold weekly reading. Saying more than that might spoil some of the discovery of the story, so I will leave it there.

Downtown Knight by James M. Ward. This story definitely took some inspiration from Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, except with Italian mafia characters. Somewhat fun, but more than anything it felt like a showcase for some characters to go around talking like Joe Pesci in Goodfellas while the medieval knights stand around bewildered.

Voices by Jackie Cassada. Some scientists of the future find a way to go back and rescue Joan of Arc from the past and bring her to their time, so that she can help save a world that is in peril. It is an interesting concept but I was pretty disappointed with the story. It was extremely brief. A longer work would have allowed for more detail about the world's crisis and Joan's reaction to the world of the future.

The Power and the Glory by Robert E. Vardeman. An alternate history story about Nikolai Tesla and the lead up to the first world war. It started out as too much of an exercise in name-dropping of famous people from the late nineteenth century, but eventually became a story with enough depth to warrant the reading.