Conrad's Time Machine (Cross-Time Engineer)

Frankowski, Leo

ISBN 10: 0743471911 / ISBN 13: 9780743471916

Published by Baen Books, 2004

About this Item

vg++ 1st edition 2004 Baen Books paperback book In stock shipped from our UK warehouse.

Seller Inventory # 188206

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Conrad's Time Machine (Cross-Time Engineer)
• Publisher: Baen Books
• Publication Date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0743471911
• ISBN 13: 9780743471916
• Binding: paperback / softback
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: vg++
• Seller catalogs:
  • 2

About this title

Synopsis

Just out of the Air Force, Tom Kolczyskrenski joins two old friends--mechanical engineer Ian McTavish and behavioral scientist Jim Hasenpfeffer--who hit the road on their motorcycles, but their plans change when they stumble upon a mysterious machine that takes the three of them on a bizarre odyssey through time. Reprint.

From Publishers Weekly

Since the publication of The Cross-Time Engineer in 1993, Frankowski's Conrad Stargard series about a bunch of socially immature male engineers has amused many readers, but this sloppy, adolescent prequel, which roughly explains the origin of the time machine featured in the other novels, is for die-hard fans only. Soon after leaving the U.S. Air Force in 1968, Tom Kolczyskrensi hooks up with two old college buddies, Jim Hasenpfeffer, a grad student about to get his doctorate in Behavioral Psychology, and Ian McTavish, a mechanical engineer at General Motors. (Tom himself is a college drop-out.) The three of them learn how to create a time machine and amass the financial wherewithal to build it. During a motorcycle vacation, they encounter a massive "implosion," which just happens to send out one intact piece of paper with electrical schematics and bits of humans. This fortuitous accident sets them on the way to wealth, health and unlimited sex with hosts of compliant and beautiful young women, the narration of which occupies more than a third of the novel. The story's opening postdates the end, highlighting the conventional time-travel paradoxes as well as most of the author's literary flaws, chiefly wooden, repetitive prose. In a foreword Frankowski informs the reader that he began the book as a high school student in the 1950s. It's too bad his more mature self apparently chose to finish it at the same level.
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