DTI: Watching the Clock by C. L. Bennett Review Thread (Spoilers!)

[Christopher]

^Thanks!

[Hugh Cambridge]

I never wrote anything here before, reading the posts was enough till now.
But now I have just read DTI and ... wow !
I have to say it, this book is above outstanding, it is even above Star Trek.
The way scientific concepts are handled by Christopher reminds me the way Pohl or Asimov handled them: it gives access to complicated scientific views without losing the reader or giving a boring lecture.
And the story is very good and manages to unite all the temporal loose ends that can be found in Star Trek.
Simply put, for me, it is a masterpiece.

[Christopher]

^Wow, thanks to you too!

[MatthiasRussell]

I haven't read this book. Though I've liked Bennett's books, I'm not a fan of time travel or alternate universe stories; they usually leave me frustrated as I'm as much a believer in time travel as the Vulcan Science Academy. So should I read WTC?

[Christopher]

MatthiasRussell wrote:

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I haven't read this book. Though I've liked Bennett's books, I'm not a fan of time travel or alternate universe stories; they usually leave me frustrated as I'm as much a believer in time travel as the Vulcan Science Academy. So should I read WTC?

As I've said before, I'm not much of a time travel fan myself. My goal in writing this book was both to get away from the cliches and conventions of the genre and to make sense of them in the most scientifically plausible way I could. Basically I wanted to do a time travel story for people who don't like time travel stories.

[MatthiasRussell]

So I am the type of reader/fan this book should especially appeal to?

[Christopher]

^Well, there's only one way to find that out.

[Art Vandelay]

MatthiasRussell wrote:

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So I am the type of reader/fan this book should especially appeal to?

If the reason for your dislike of time-travel stories is the idea that going back in time allows you to fix anything and have an infinite number of do-overs, then the book will definitely appeal to you.

The main characters - the people working for the Department of Temporal Investigation - do not travel through time themselves, they reject that notion. Their job is to anticipate and prevent the mess others create by thinking they can fix anything by tampering with the timeline, when doing that really causes nothing but ripples... on top of consequences... on top of trouble.

[MatthiasRussell]

That pretty much pegged me. My biggest problem with many time travel stories is the protagonists are left without consequences or memory. Since there are infinite universes, you can do no wrong, merely create a new universe. Also, like with the butterfly effect, it seems no matter what you do when you go back in time, you'll cause changes.

I'll check it out. Christopher's winky face is challenging me to find the answers.

[Jedi_Master]

MatthiasRussell wrote:

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That pretty much pegged me. My biggest problem with many time travel stories is the protagonists are left without consequences or memory. Since there are infinite universes, you can do no wrong, merely create a new universe. Also, like with the butterfly effect, it seems no matter what you do when you go back in time, you'll cause changes.

I'll check it out. Christopher's winky face is challenging me to find the answers.

And your friend has been on you for weeks to read it.

[Jedi_Master]

Christopher, I thoroughly enjoyed your novel - all though I must admit I skimmed over some of the technical stuff. I also appreciated how you set up for the future. Pardon me if you have been asked this before - but are you planning on setting up a series for the DTI?

[Christopher]

Jedi_Master wrote:

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Pardon me if you have been asked this before - but are you planning on setting up a series for the DTI?

Planning? No. I actually expected this to be a one-shot, so I crammed in everything I could, tried to make it sort of a series unto itself. I was, however, open to the possibility of continuations. And as it happens, my editor invited me to do a TOS/DTI novel for 2012 -- it's called Forgotten History and will involve the origins of the DTI.

[shanejayell]

Well, I like the concept alot and hope to see more.

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Another question:

Why does the DTI keep a vault full of time travel technology? What use could it possibly have? Shouldn't these things be destroyed, since the mission of the DTI is to prevent time travel?

[Christopher]

Mr. Laser Beam wrote:

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Why does the DTI keep a vault full of time travel technology? What use could it possibly have? Shouldn't these things be destroyed, since the mission of the DTI is to prevent time travel?

Why did the government store the Ark of the Covenant at the end of Raiders? Why does Stargate Command store alien technologies in Area 51 in Stargate? Bureaucracies like to store and catalog things. Besides, secret warehouses are cool.

Seriously, I can think of several reasons for storing these technologies rather than destroying them. First, they involve powerful energies and incomprehensibly advanced technologies, so the DTI doesn't know if it can safely destroy them. Second, studying these artifacts can help the DTI understand how temporal technologies and phenomena work and thus help them devise means of detecting them and defending against them, as well as improving their general theoretical and practical knowledge of temporal physics, which can help them do their jobs better. Third, some of these artifacts may be evidence in ongoing investigations and prosecutions and thus need to be preserved. Fourth, there's pure science -- all physics is interconnected, so these artifacts could advance Federation understanding of physics in general and open the door to improvements in fields other than time travel. Fifth, the DTI knows that there will come a time when the Federation is able to manage temporal technologies responsibly, so there might be value in preserving such devices until such a time.

And sixth, there's the Godzilla Threshold. There may come a time when the timeline is so thoroughly screwed up that time travel is the only way to fix it. So it makes sense for the DTI to keep some time travel capability on hand just in case.