In the far-flung twenty-ninth century, a supercomputer named Father sees to all of the needs of humanity. From entertainment to occupation, Father controls all aspects of human life, and his charges happily obey in exchange for constant comfort. Cassique is a Fixer, a person assigned to the important task of traveling back in time and setting events in motion to follow the true timeline, cleaning up after over a century of reckless time travel. Failure to do so will result in the Time Hole putting an end to existence as the people of that era know it. But Cassique’s time in the past has changed him, and he begins to harbor doubts about whether life in Father’s sterile, artificial world is worth living. His interactions with figures in the past spell a dangerous turn for Cassique that he views as necessary for mankind.

Time travel fiction always presents an interesting perspective for authors and readers to explore their own world and compare it to both times gone by and the prospect of what lies ahead. The author’s creativity in imagining a world wherein people are simply content in fantasy at the expense of all else might not seem too different from our myriad choices for entertainment, but it is crafted in a very unique and descriptive way. Cassique’s dilemma as a figure dissatisfied with the world he was born into and yearning for a new experience is a timeless sentiment and the perfect foil for a story about meticulous organization and control. Packed with both references to existing history and imagined events and figures in the centuries to come, this is a fascinating and imaginative science fiction tale that blends fact and fiction to weave an entertaining read.

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