A sequel to _Time Future_, this novel continues the adventure of Halley, the unwilling commander of space station Jocasta. Avoiding politics, Maria Halley experiments with Invidi space drive technology trying to break the powerful monopoly of the ancient races. Her illicit experiment plunge her into a dangerous place, where Halley continues to learn heartbreak and courage in her struggle to improve the fate of humans and the entire Confederacy.

I haven't enjoyed a sci-fi novel so much since Neal Stephenson's Diamond Age -- not that Time Past is a derivative of anyone else's work. This is a new style of writing space science fiction that I haven't seen before.

The characters in Time Past speak and act like real people: they don't have the theatrical quality and stilted speech of many sci-fi characters, who have to 'explain' what the book reader can't see or hear. You don't get spoon fed each fact just as you need it, the way you do in television scripts. But this also isn't one of those books where you're left guessing at the end.

The best sci-fi novels have always offered a 'point' rather than just being robotized cops-and-robbers. Time Past considers the way we misreport history, making saints and villains out of more mundane folk and ascribing every event of their day to them, whether they were personally involved or not. It also questions how loyalty and authority work in groups and larger communities. And it considers the trade-off between today's needs and the needs of the future.

That's a lot of weight to put on a book that also maintains a taut storyline and a large cast of characters, humanoid and other. It says something for McArthur's ability to keep the flow of the narrative that I didn't find myself checking back every few pages to see who was who and what they'd done.

At the end of the book I found a short bio of Maxine McArthur. She's an Australian who's lived most of her adult life in Japan. Writing is her second career. Maybe it's having lived a rich life that has enabled her to write books that are both complex and intelligent, and explains her ease with intercultural (interspecies?) relationships.

If you are looking for a rip-snorting action-packed adventure, this isn't it. I found it a bit slow and tiring to read but still worth the effort. The space station is cut off from outside support by hostile alien ships which have damaged the station and killed several in the process. The station is overloaded with refugees plus an assortment of enigmatic and haughty aliens. They can't escape, they can't yell for help. They can only survive. Now toss in the arrival of a mystery ship with sleepers from 100 years past. Add in the station commander's divorced husband who is into deep intrigues (nor is he the only one!) and, for good measure, let's have an invincible biological killing construct. Our intrepid station commander stumbles thru it all constantly in need of sleep. I wouldn't say the book was exceptionally well done but there's a lot of stuff going on. A picture was painted. Maybe not vividly, but I feel like I know these people and I can practically see parts of the station. I found some new (to me) ideas and treatments of things and it all kept me going. It will never be my favorite book, but I'll buy the next one, Time Past, when it comes out.

The commander of the deep space station Jocasta is blockaded by hostile creatures, communications & key systems are failing; rations are low & tensions between humans & aliens are at a flashpoint.

What a good start for Maxine McArthur! Seldom do I find in an author';s first work the kind of character control that this one brings. She has really captured the cultural shock of first contact & its impact in a near future.

From one end of this book to the other, the human characters are able to see their situations' changing advantages & disadvantages. I really like her confrontations of realities. Insofar as what you see is not always what you get & what you get is not always what you think it is. I liked that McArthur allows her characters to think, question & grow.

This reader is looking forward to more from this intriguing author.

I have just spent my Sunday reading Time Future and Time Past. Suffice to say, as soon as I finished the first, I went straight onto the second. Both books are unputdownable. The writing style is sufficiently skilled so that you don't notice what she's up to. I was thoroughly sucked in at the outset, and spat out at the end!

Basically Time Future is set on a space station in the near future, narrated by an extremely sympathetic character. The story is set around a series of mysteries, the unravelling of which progress the plot, and lead to more rivetting questions. McAurthur offers us a great plot, great characterisation (of main and minor characters), well thought out aliens, technology, and speculative ideas - both scientific and socio/political.

Some people turn up from 100 years in the past, just after alien intervention, so there is a nice juxtaposition of the views of the contemporary narrator and the time travellors, who come from a time in our near future. This is further juxtaposed with the view of the reader of 2002 so in reading it we re-experience our own views of our place in the world, and contemporary issues such as poverty, the environment, refugees, and political instability and State responsibility. It is all so delightfully and subtly done that the experience is part of the pleasure of these books, not an impediment.

This is superior stuff. I wish she'd hurry up and write another one. Those who like early Heinlein, Bujold, Julian May, Nancy Kress and the like will love this.