Timemaster
Page 33
From 1983 to the present, Dr. Forward has had a series of contracts from the U.S. Department of Defense and NASA to explore the forefront of physics and engineering in order to find new energy sources that will produce breakthroughs in space power and propulsion. He has published journal papers and contract reports on antiproton annihilation propulsion, laser beam and microwave beam interstellar propulsion, negative-matter propulsion, light-levitated perforated-sail communication satellites, space warps, and a method for extracting electrical energy from vacuum fluctuations.
In addition to his professional publications, Dr. Forward has written over eighty popular-science articles for publications such as the Encyclopaedia Britannica Yearbook, Omni, New Scientist, Aerospace America, Science Digest, Science 80, Analog, and Galaxy. His most recent science fact books are FUTURE MAGIC and MIRROR MATTER: PIONEERING ANTIMATTER PHYSICS (with Joel Davis). His science fiction novels are DRAGON'S EGG and its sequel STARQUAKE, THE FLIGHT OF THE DRAGONFLY (also published in a longer version as ROCHEWORLD), RETURN TO ROCHE-WORLD, MARTIAN RAINBOW, and now TIMEMASTER. The novels are of the "hard" science fiction category, where the science is as accurate as possible.
Dr. Forward is a Fellow of the British Interplanetary Society and Editor of the "Interstellar Studies" issues of its Journal, Associate Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Senior Member of the American Astronautical Society, and a member of the American Physical Society, Sigma Xi, Sigma Pi Sigma, National Space Society, and the Science Fiction Writers of America.
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Book information
"No one can beat Bob Forward at hard-core SF in the best Smith/Campbell tradition—and with Timemaster, he has excelled himself. What's more, it's just the right length—not one of those damn fat books like The G*rd*n of R*m*."
-Arthur C. Clarke
"How refreshing it is to read a hard-science sf book in which the science is done right. Bob describes the process of scientific discovery better than anyone else in the sf business."
—Charles Sheffield
"[Robert L. Forward] writes in the tradition of Hal Clement's Mission of Gravity and carries it a giant step (how else?) forward."
—Isaac Asimov
SCIENCE FICTION ADVENTURE
IN THE GRAND TRADITION
Read the tale of Randy Hunter, billionaire industrialist, who communicates with aliens, achieves interstellar flight and explores far-flung worlds in a future filled with technological wonders. The future physics is mind-boggling but firmly grounded in the science of today, and the action never stops.
TIMEMASTER
TIMEMASTER
ROBERT L. FORWARD
A TOM DOHERTY ASSOCIATES BOOK
NEW YORK
Note: If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as "unsold and destroyed" to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this "stripped book."
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental.
TIMEMASTER
Copyright © 1992 by Robert L. Forward
Ail rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.
Edited by David Hartweil
Cover art by Vincent Di Fate
A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, N.Y. 10010
Tor ® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.
ISBN: 0-812-51644-3
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 92-3276
First edition: May 1992
First mass market printing: March 1993
Printed in the United States of America
DEDICATION
To the original Timemaster, Albert Einstein—who taught us our first grappling-holds on that slippery and relentless foe of us all ... Father Time.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A hard science fiction novel draws upon many sources of factual information. That information has been laboriously gathered or deduced, and then published, by many researchers, scientific, engineering, and literary, scattered over decades of time. A few of the specific publications that I used the most in writing this novel are listed in the bibliography.
In addition, there are many people who gave me novel ideas, valuable insight, or factual information that contributed significantly (sometimes by showing me it couldn't be done that way) to my fictitious story of a universe in which time machines could exist. When the story follows the reader's personal version of the "known scientific facts," the people I acknowledge below can take most of the credit. When the science unrolled in the story begins to raise doubts in the reader's mind, then it is my responsibility. Either: (1)I made a mistake in my interpretation of the science, (2) my interpretation of the "known scientific facts" does not agree with the reader's interpretation, or (3) I followed the Final Law of Storytelling—
"Never let the facts get in the way of a good story."
With this understanding, I would like to acknowledge the help of the following people: Paul Birch, David Garfinkle, Todd B. Hawley, Hans P. Moravec, Michael S. Morris, Gerald D. Nordley, Paul A. Penzo, Kip S. Thorne, and Matt Visser. I also want to thank David Hartwell for his extensive and helpful editorial comments.
There exist semieducated but obstinate people who have raised the concept of strict local causality to godhead, and attempt to use such words as "obviously" and "it only makes sense that ..." in an attempt to "prove" that their version of causality cannot be violated, and that any sort of time machine is logically impossible. From my reading of the scientific literature, they are wrong. If I receive a letter from this sort of person complaining about the "impossibility" of the time machines in this novel, I will throw the letter in the nearest wastebasket ... unless the letter is accompanied by a reprint of a scientific paper published in Physical Review (or any other reputable, refereed scientific journal), written by the person writing the letter, which proves that the paper "Cauchy Problem in Spacetimes with Closed Timelike Curves" by Friedman, Morris, Novikov, Echeverria, Klinkhammer, Thorne, and Yurtsever, is erroneous.