All of an Instant

The discovery of a medium beyond time and space propells humans into an unexpected encounter with a new and violent realm they don't understand. Reprint.

Richard Garfinkle's debut novel, Celestial Matters, won the Compton Crook Award for Best First Novel and earned its author two nominations for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Author--no surprise, because Celestial Matters is a terrific alternate history with appeal across nearly the entire imaginative-fiction spectrum, from hard SF to epic fantasy. Now Garfinkle returns to alternate history with a very different but equally idea-rich and even more ambitious second novel, All of an Instant.

Humans are trapped in time and space, cause and effect--until a brilliant scientist discovers the Instant, a paradoxical nonplace that is simultaneously all times and no time. Soon contending armies roam the Instant, stirring its waters as they struggle not only to conquer the world but also time itself. But every ripple in the Instant causes entire cultures and timelines to vanish. Even the first humans are threatened with destruction, though that would mean the end of humanity itself. Then Nir, War Chief of the first people, discovers an even greater threat. The waters of time, churned and changed by the ever-more-numerous armies and the ever-increasing time paradoxes, are solidifying--crystallizing into a shattered and toxic island that is spreading, threatening to freeze all time and end not only history but all life. --Cynthia Ward