Time Spike

Time Spike (2008) is a standalone time travel novel in the Assiti Shards universe. It is set in the Alexander Correction Center -- an Illinois prison -- that has been thrown back to the age of dinosaurs. The maximum-security prison is across the road from the Mississippi River and contains more than twenty-four hundred inmates. In this novel, Captain Andrew Blacklock is preparing for shift change as the afternoon personnel start punching out. As the head of the night shift, he is short of personnel again. The state cannot afford to hire many replacements because of the budget situation, so most of the men and women have worked double shifts at least three time in the past week. Lieutenant Rodney Hulbert is the second in command of the afternoon shift. He is a survival hobbyist, spending his weekends on trips into wilderness areas. He is also the best marksman in the prison. Lieutenant Joseph Schuyler is leaving with the afternoon crew. He is briefing Andy on the incidents during the second shift. The prisoners have been restless today. He decides to stay over with the night shift. Kathleen Hanrahan is an experienced Correctional Officer who is starting maternity leave after this shift. She already has three kids at home, but her birth control measures hadn't protected her from another pregnancy. With her husband laid off from his job, she can't afford to take earlier leave than the health benefits allow. So she has been working in the communications and control center. Jeffrey Edelman is a new CO with a background in science and technology. He was a geology graduate student at the university, but had to drop out when his mother became sick. Now he is working at the prison to help his family finances. Jennifer Radford is the only night shift nurse. She has just completed her orientation training and is working her first duty shift. She is an exceptionally well qualified Nurse Practitioner, but she has never before worked in a prison. James Cook is one of the new prisoners. He had been convicted of second degree homicide on very flimsy evidence. If he could have gotten a better lawyer, Cook would have probably been found innocent. Now he is preparing himself for the prison environment. Margo Glenn-Lewis is a physicist who is investigating the Grantville incident. She and her fellow conspirators in the Project are drawing federal grant money under false pretenses to study the available data on that event. Over the past seven years, they have been recording more data on the subsequent minor incidents of the same type. They have converted the equipment in an unused iron mine to collect the relevant data. Richard Morgan-Ash is a British physicist who has become part of the Project. He had read some papers issued by the scientists in the iron mine and became curious. Now he and his teenaged daughter are living in northern Minnesota. In this story, the Project detects a high energy temporal event occurring somewhere near

This is a fun, and quick, summer read. It returns to the 1632-verse, in the sense that we learn more about the causes. But in this case a max prison (Marion?), Cherokees, De Soto and Mound builders all get put into the Cretaceous. Complications ensue, but we also see a present-day group trying to discover what these "removals" are all about. The book had an unusual number of typos, and even a major continuity error on the cover flap, mentioning "Mark Stephens" a previous version of the head of the prison's name, Andy Blacklock. I have never seen this occur before! Nonetheless, the typos don't really distract (or detract) from the excitement, pacing and excellent characters. I would not have minded an extra 100-200 pages, though this book does not give any sense that there would be a sequel.

Supervisor Captain Mark Stephens was observing the guard mount shift changing at Illinois' maximum security prison when the ground rumbled. He and others assumed an earthquake occurred. However, looking outside, the geography has changed radically; The Mississippi river vanished and all evidence of human activity outside the prison like roads are gone. Instead they see strange looking flora and shockingly a dinosaur that uses the prison wall to scratch its skin. Mark quickly concludes somehow they have been transported back in time to a pre-human era when dinosaurs ruled the planet. They are not alone as other people from various millennia have also gone back perhaps a million years. Some of those locked up are cold blooded killers and some from the other groups like conquistadores quickly prove human life is expendable. Mark and his staff know they have their backs against the wall as they deal with human killers and dinosaurs, but enforcing the law of thou shall not kill is critical for their survival. The Assiti who relocated Grantville, West Virginia into seventeenth century Europe have stirred earth chronology again this time moving several periods into the dinosaur era although the displaced Illinois crowd is the prime focus. The story line will remind the audience of the first Ring of Fire tale as the story line is fast-paced and filled with action, but has not quite become overly complex with time paradoxes as later tales begin to have. Fans will appreciate this strong opening act of a new Assiti time experiment as humans continue to be their guinea pigs, but for Mark and his staff survival of the fittest means containing the violent prisoners and some as vicious other era travelers. Harriet Klausner

Timespike is a great read. It is another example of Eric Flint's ability to co-author another compelling story with an unknown author and make it work. The story is really a novel of survival and a short novel of discovery. The short novel tells of the reaction of our time line(OTL) to the event in southern Illinois and (from the 1632 novels and stories) Grantville West Virginia. The new time line(NTL)follows the coping of those dragged back to the past to their massive problems. As always, characterizations and interactions are what make the story work. John

I have read _Time Spike_ and enjoyed it greatly. As a reader of the 1632 series, I enjoyed learning more about what 'uptimers' thought about the disappearance of Grantville.