TIME STORY

Two brothers happen upon a time machine and cause mayhem in Marplot’s SF novel.

At 22 years old, Applemon has invented a time machine—but the real shock is that his younger teenage brothers, Plunkett and Woby, have figured out how to use it. Using Woby, the youngest and least brilliant of the trio, as a guinea pig, Plunkett sends him back in time. When Woby returns, he reports on his near death due to traveling back to the midst of their building’s construction; apparently, getting the hang of traveling through time is more complicated than either had considered. This does not faze the brothers, as Plunkett is determined to find a way to use the machine to make him rich, and Woby is just willing to go along for the ride. As the brothers continue experimenting with the machine, Woby meets a girl about his age named Trice who, somehow, also seems to be traveling through time. Plunkett and Woby have created some messes in their endeavors, so Applemon will need to sweep in and fix all of the temporal errors (and save Woby’s new girlfriend). When Applemon is unexpectedly sidelined, who is going to figure out what’s really going on? As the author notes, “In a time story, it only makes sense to tell it in the order it couldn’t have happened….” In this clever time-travel novel, readers will enjoy the strange and wacky escapades of the confused Woby and the ever frustrated Plunkett. The ending may bewilder some readers with its quick pace and constant chronology-hopping. Marplot’s sense of humor comes through strongly in the text, and the prose approaches an almost poetic style at times, as when a character is “Knocked with a trill of cascading knuckles.”

A clever and amusing romp through time, both intriguing and well written.