- Mass Market Paperback: 544 pages
- Publisher: Spectra; 1st mmpb edition (May 5 1997)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 055357681X
- ISBN-13: 978-0553576818
- Product Dimensions: 17.3 x 10.7 x 3.6 cm
- Shipping Weight: 272 g
- Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #342,066 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon.com
Clio Finn is a Dive pilot, one of the few humans able to guide a spacecraft back through time. In a 2019 that has seen Earth lose most of its plant life, Dives are the last hope humanity has for finding new seeds to replenish the planet. But Clio is strung out on drugs, one step away from a court-martial, and carrying a terrible secret about her past. When events force her to make a desperate attempt to save the planet, Clio has little to lose. It is then that she learns humanity's troubles are far worse than they seem ...
Product Description
Clio Finn is a Dive pilot on a troubled Earth in 2019. Public paranoia about the AIDS virus and its successors has led to the imprisonment of the "subversives" of the society (namely, drug users and gays) in forced labor quarantine camps known as quarries. Meanwhile, Earth itself is dying from a progressive lack of greenery, as the UV irradiation from a successively depleted ozone layer is killing off all the plants, and therefore the planet's ability to sustain itself.
To counteract this problem, the powers of Earth have decided that new greenery must be found on alternate worlds, to supplement Earth's dying stock with heartier, alien strains. But since faster-than-light travel is still unavailable, a new method must be found to achieve this. Enter time travel, in which a quick jaunt down through time can bring ships into the position of planets which had rotated through Earth's present position in the distant past, due to the galaxy's extended period of rotation.
As most people are unable to remain awake during these temporal Dives, the guiding duty is left to an exclusive class of Dive pilots. Only dive pilots have a limited span before they burn out. Most can last thirty to forty Dives. Clio Finn has lasted fifty-five, and she is on the ragged end of burn-out, kept on track only by a handful of outlawed drugs.
But the potential rewards are great. A previous haul of greenery, once thought to be Earth's salvation, is dying off, and an illicit jaunt into the future taken by Clio and her colleagues has discovered the violent end of humanity itself. So her current destination, Niang, an Edenic tropical planet, seems the answer to mankind's prayers. Only, on Niang's surface, Clio discovers a desperate secret. The green which may save mankind also subsists on metals, and may therefore destroy all of mankind's existing technology. Clio's dilemma--whether to regreen Earth at the risk of driving man back into the dark ages--is only exacerbated when an accidental loop in time catches her in a paradox between two alternate futures, each of which is determined to eradicate the other completely and absolutely.
To counteract this problem, the powers of Earth have decided that new greenery must be found on alternate worlds, to supplement Earth's dying stock with heartier, alien strains. But since faster-than-light travel is still unavailable, a new method must be found to achieve this. Enter time travel, in which a quick jaunt down through time can bring ships into the position of planets which had rotated through Earth's present position in the distant past, due to the galaxy's extended period of rotation.
As most people are unable to remain awake during these temporal Dives, the guiding duty is left to an exclusive class of Dive pilots. Only dive pilots have a limited span before they burn out. Most can last thirty to forty Dives. Clio Finn has lasted fifty-five, and she is on the ragged end of burn-out, kept on track only by a handful of outlawed drugs.
But the potential rewards are great. A previous haul of greenery, once thought to be Earth's salvation, is dying off, and an illicit jaunt into the future taken by Clio and her colleagues has discovered the violent end of humanity itself. So her current destination, Niang, an Edenic tropical planet, seems the answer to mankind's prayers. Only, on Niang's surface, Clio discovers a desperate secret. The green which may save mankind also subsists on metals, and may therefore destroy all of mankind's existing technology. Clio's dilemma--whether to regreen Earth at the risk of driving man back into the dark ages--is only exacerbated when an accidental loop in time catches her in a paradox between two alternate futures, each of which is determined to eradicate the other completely and absolutely.
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Most helpful customer reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
Amazing First Book!,
By
This review is from: The Seeds of Time (Mass Market Paperback)
Out of nowhere pops Kay Kenyon with a top shelf first book though with the imperfections of a first timer. It is so rare to find character development of this quality in a sci-fi novel. A woman as strong central characters is reminiscent of the Alien series. I liked this book so much I bought all her other books and every one is a gem. I recommend them all.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Clio Finn is a Dive Pilot and a Star that shines on Earth,
By
This review is from: The Seeds of Time (Mass Market Paperback)
Kay Kenyon is absolutely amazing. This story about a Dive Pilot named Clio Finn and her adventures in Space/Time Travel kept my face buried in this book from start to end with very few breaks. All good authors have strong points in their writing which breaks down into 3 or 4 different styles of writing. You get some that are proficient in one and sometimes two, Kay Kenyon is a true marvel as she excels in all ways and in my opinion is one of the finest writers whose work I have had the pleasure to read in a long time.
3.0 out of 5 stars
It had pretty good potential, but got messed up in places,
By
This review is from: The Seeds of Time (Mass Market Paperback)
The good parts:1. SF ideas: parallel universes approached not quite as usual and an interesting means of space travelling by time-travelling thus solving the eternal problem of FTL 2. The picture of a grim but not so impossible future with an ecologically devastasted Earth. I know, we've seen all this before, but it never fails to impress me, it's sooo possible... 3. The characters, most of them. Except of the fact that most of the good guys were women and most of the bad guys men. This is not very credible (and it's a woman saying this). The bad parts: 1. The fact that the book was basically split into two distinct parts: the first half and the second half. They were connected through the actions, but the characters are entirely different. Except for Clio and Harper Teeg (the bad guy) there was nobody from the first half of the book which appeared in the second. It was kind of difficult to get used to some people just to have them replaced afterwards by another ones. The ones in the second half of the book were better, though. 2. Too much sexuality! The beggining of the second half, the part in the quarries, rambled on and on about how Clio was forced to give sexual favours in order to survive. It may have been true, but I hate it when a SF book spends too much time on this. And what about her relationship with Hillis? I didn't get the point there. It never seemed real to me, and it seemed entirely pointless. What did it matter whether she loved him or not? It was not connected to the action in any way, it had no influence on it. 3. Harper Teeg: the main bad guy. I have always thought that as a writer, one should be able to create a credible negative character without making him mad. I mean, he could have had other reasons for his actions than his delusions of grandor and fixation with Clio (sex again...). Other than that, it was enjoyable reading.
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