TIMEMASTER

Randy Hunter, a billionaire industrialist, communicates with aliens, develops interstellar flight, explores other worlds, and becomes immortal in a world where human dreams come true

Set in 2036, this latest hard - science novel by Forward ( Dragon's Egg ) deals with fringe physics and explores the exciting possibilities of relativity and quantum mechanics. Unfortunately, the author's characters and plot exist only as a pretext for his numerous, inventive gadgets and tricks. Protagonist Randy Hunter's astroengineering firm discovers a lifeform dubbed "Silverhair," which contains negative matter rather than antimatter. By carefully engineering the Silverhair, Hunter and his associates develop a method of building starships that reach near-light speeds. Negative and positive matter are also used to produce gravity-balanced black hole masses, artificial wormholes, means of instantaneous travel, and, eventually, time travel. The scientific speculation is fascinating, well-researched and believable, but the heroes are cardboard, the villain a paper tiger, the plot a wish-fulfillment fluff of cotten candy. Although this book exhibits great potential, it is not up to Forward's standard and will disappoint fans.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Juvenile exercise in gee-whiz folderol from the physicist and author of Dragon's Egg and The Flight of the Dragonfly. Young, diminutive industrialist Randy Hunter has four ambitions: to be the best horseman in the world, to become the richest and most important man in the solar system, to explore the stars, and to live forever. The one cloud on his horizon is politician Oscar, Randy's drug-addicted boyhood rival, now a spiteful opponent of Randy's grandiose dreams. Sure enough, thanks to Randy's development of orbiting linear accelerators to hurl goods and people to and from the planets, he soon becomes the richest and most important, etc. Then, after one of his planetary exploration teams discovers a Silverhair, a sort of talking space plant that's composed of negative matter, Randy's scientists and technologists are able to develop interstellar travel, both by ship and by space-warp. Then, since (how did you guess?) he's going to achieve all his ambitions, he wins the International Horseman of the Decade award--in between trips to nearby stars (oh, yes, he's married to a beautiful and understanding wife, whom he wooed away from Oscar, and has two wonderful children, too). All this--and Randy has yet to invent time travel, defeat Oscar, who tries to catch him in a time-trap, and, of course, bring back the secret of immortality from the future. Stuffed with speculations and scientific projections, most of them pretty far-fetched, held together by a footling narrative that would probably dissatisfy the average ninth grader. As for the ideas content, then: heady and furiously energetic if none too probable. Otherwise: hogwash. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

The latest novel by the author of The Dragon's Egg (1983) tells the life story of remarkable billionaire business mogul Randy Hunter. Hunter excels in everything he does, from choosing a wife to pioneering the latest technologies--including the discovery of an alien life form that can facilitate instantaneous travel through space and time. Forward is one of sf's most imaginative and playful writers, wreaking cheerful havoc with temporal paradoxes in a story that owes a considerable debt to Robert Heinlein's Lazarus Long novels. Unfortunately, the lack of immediacy and suspense makes this otherwise ingenious story a marginal selection for libraries.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.