All of an Instant

All of an Instant is a large-scale, ground-breaking SF novel. It chronicles the discovery of a medium of existence outside of time (the Instant), from which one can influence all past and future history. War dominates this strange, abstract place, war among forces contending for control of all time and place.

Garfinkle's second novel (his debut, Celestial Matters, won the Compton Crook Award for best first novel) launches its talented author into territory utterly unlike his firstAinto the fourth dimension, the "ocean of time" itself. A man named Dhiritirashta is the first to build a suit that allows him to swim in the seas of time, known as the Instant. From there he can swim in the three spatial dimensions, as well as in a fourth spatial dimension corresponding to Earthly time. When changes are made in the past, they flow forward, changing the future, and this flowing substance is the water of time. By manipulating these waters, Dhiritirashta attempts to dominate all of human history, but his changes inadvertently create thousands of histories from which humans can leap into the Instant, all battling to control time. Long into this unending war, a mysterious island of cracked solidity develops in the sea of time, the menace bringing together Nir, born near humanity's beginning; Quillith?, a far-sighted woman from the end of human history; and Kookatchi, a slave created with a memory only a minute long. While at first the narrative may appear to be a simple fantasy plot cloaked in space-time physics, it develops a sophisticated consideration of the nature of consciousness, of the continuity of selfhood across a lifetime, and of ethnic conflict. Should one try to make the future the image of one's own past? Should Nir, Kookatchi, and Quillith? try to save the chaos of the Instant or destroy it by freezing it into a single history? Garfinkle explores both questions with stunning imagination, thrilling the reader with adventure, philosophy, and topological wonders. (Nov.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Another memorably strange construct from Garfinkle, whose previous outing, Celestial Matters (1996), depicted a universe where the natural laws as understood by the ancient Greeks were literally true. Time itself is the focus here. The lower half of time, the Flux, is solid and subject to cause and effect; the upper half, the Instant, is a surging ocean whose every wavelet changes reality in the Flux. So, whoever controls the Instant controls reality, and therefore the Instant is a perpetual battleground where Time Warriors struggle to impose their own notion of perfection on the Flux, and attempt to enslave the time-bound folk and turn them into new warriors. Time Warriors have tails whose length is proportional to their memories; each warrior's consciousness moves along the tail and then recycles. Nir, the War Chief of the Ghost warriors, must venture into the Instant to study an incomprehensible but perhaps vitally important new piece of technology. Expert thief Kookatchi is a Drum, a warrior whose memory is less than a minute long, but he was born into the Dreamtime and so can perceive the Instant as a timeless whole; this permits him to slip through the waves undetected and unharmed. In the ocean deeps dwells Quillith, the Instant's greatest strategist; her task is to ensure that no single group dominates in the endless war. Eventually, these three will meet, combine their skills, and bring about a new kind of time. Mind-boggling but numbingly abstruse: easy to admire but nearly impossible to read. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

The discovery of a means to exist outside time on a new plane of being named "the Instant" leads to a grand-scale, century-spanning struggle to control the destiny of humankind. Garfinkle (Celestial Matters) delves into the phenomenon of time travel and its implications for altering the cycle of cause and effect in a tale of multiple permutations and unforeseen consequences. The author relies on the strength of his philosophical speculations to propel his panoramic story to its conclusion than on the depth and variety of his characters, making his latest novel a good choice for fans of cerebral, idea-oriented sf.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.