IN TIME FOR REVENGE

by Jasper T. Scott ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 19, 2019

A wealthy inventor—framed for murder—decides to use his time machine to seek justice, jumping forward nearly a century to a dystopic America. 

Prolific author Scott (Into the Unknown, 2019, etc.) constructs a time-travel SF thriller with the qualifier that the machine is created to go forward, not backward—it’s more like a teleporting time capsule. It is the invention, in 2020, of the Bruce Wayne-esque Colorado billionaire Byron Gaines, who wants to market his brainstorm as a boon to the terminally ill (or the incurably curious). People can enter it and leap across decades into the future, where new medicines or health care treatments await, or so they can just see and enjoy whatever tomorrow holds. But Gaines is married to Alison, a young, ambitious model, and as the project nears completion, issues of money and trust ruin their relationship. After he catches Alison and his lead engineer, Grant Coleman, in bed together, Gaines wakes to find himself covered in blood, apparently having murdered them in delirium. With a faithful, Alfred-style butler looking after his interests, Gaines starts serving a lengthy prison term—only to realize belatedly that he’s been framed, and those who betrayed him have taken the time device into the future to exploit it for themselves after things settle down. Not without his own resources, Gaines leapfrogs nearly a century after them, into a technologically advanced (but not for the better) America, where religious terrorists, implanted identity chips, and fearsome security robots are standard features of the surveillance state. Gaines has to adapt if he wants his plan for vengeance to succeed. Moreover, he knows that his adversaries have probably anticipated his pursuit and will have taken their own steps against him. But even he doesn’t realize the truth. A writer more concerned with seriously messing up readers’ psyches—Philip K. Dick inevitably comes to mind—might have played around with the paranoid cyberpunk settings. In this milieu of multiple conspiracies, high-tech disguises and near-human androids and simulacra scramble identities and hardly anything (or anybody) is what it seems. But Scott calls his book “A Sci-Fi Murder Mystery” and sticks mostly to the thrill ride agenda. He does have his hero occasionally consider the moral cost and justification of what he is undertaking just to settle scores. And—in between robo/mecha fights and subterfuges—Gaines grows emotionally and even a bit spiritually along the way. A religious undertone lingers around the margins (future faith-based folks interpret government ID chip implants as the biblical mark of Satan and become insular “Fundys” confined to their own ghettos). But the author keeps the preaching to a minimum, and his first-person narrator/hero tends to be hard-nosed and skeptical most of the time. Meanwhile, the extrapolated worst-nightmare scenarios of a Homeland Security-type staff that runs rampant after a 9/11-style incident are fairly piquant. SF fans may note that the existence of time travel as a commercial commodity doesn’t seem to have amounted to much in terms of being a game-changer for this imagined society. Instead, the time machine is a handy device for propelling the compelling storyline forward and giving characters something to scheme about.    

A diverting, futuristic, cyber-edged thriller that delivers thoughtful aspects as well as bang-’em-up action. 

Pub Date: Oct. 19, 2019

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: 561

Publisher: Anthem Press

Review Posted Online: Oct. 14, 2019

Review Program: Kirkus Indie