Really Good Story

• Date: 30.07.2009
• Book: Time Machines Repaired While-U-Wait
• Author: plappen

Review

Time Machines Repaired While-U-Wait, K.A. Bedford, 2008, ISBN 9781894063425


In a near future Western Australia where time machines for personal use can be bought out of a catalog, Aloysius "Spider" Webb is a time machine repairman. He was a member of the Western Australia police, until he was forced to leave under very unpleasant circumstances.

He spends most of his time dealing with idiot customers who don’t bother to read the instruction manual, or are upset because they can’t travel to some major event in history, and change things. The Department of Time and Space (DOTAS) has rules about such things, and the ability to enforce them. His boss is a thoroughly dislikable person who everyone calls Dickhead, right to his face.

Things get interesting when, one day, a time machine arrives with another time machine inside it. In that second time machine is a female murder victim. DOTAS comes and slaps a Top Secret sign on everything. Things get even more interesting when Spider finds a future version of himself, brutally murdered. Iris Street, the local police Inspector, is called in. She and Spider had a brief, but torrid, affair while he was a cop. It was part of the reason for his abrupt departure.

Spider meets several other future versions of himself, including a ninja type at the end of time. There is one spaceship of "good guys" holding out against the "bad guys," led by Spider’s boss, Dickhead. There are also alien beings called vores, who are literally eating the universe from the outside. Back in the present, Spider, Iris and another future version of Spider deal with the aftermath of a woman who, six years previously, uploaded a video to the internet of her suicide by self-immolation. It was in retaliation for her husband having an affair with Clea Fassbinder (the dead woman in the time machine).

This will certainly give the reader a mental workout. The plot may get a little gory, and convoluted, but it is a really good story, and is very much worth reading.