City Beyond Time Tales of the Fall of Metachronopolis eBook John C Wright
Download As PDF : City Beyond Time Tales of the Fall of Metachronopolis eBook John C Wright 
Metachronopolis is the golden city beyond time. Ruled by the Masters of Time, who can travel freely throughout the multitudinous time lines of Man's history, the city is a shining society of heroes and horrors. For the arrogant Masters, who steal famous men and women out of the past and bring them to the eternal city for their amusement, are not only beyond time, but beyond remorse and retribution too.
CITY BEYOND TIME Tales of the Fall of Metachronopolis is John C. Wright's mind-bending and astonishingly brilliant take on time travel. In making use of a centuries-spanning perspective similar to his highly-regarded AWAKE IN THE NIGHT LAND, Wright expertly weaves a larger tale out of a series of smaller ones. Part anthology and part novel, CITY BEYOND TIME is fascinating, melancholy, frightening, and a true masterpiece of story-telling. DRM-free.
John C. Wright is the author of THE GOLDEN AGE and AWAKE IN THE NIGHT LAND. He has been described as one of the most important and audacious authors in science fiction today. In a recent poll of more than a thousand science fiction readers, he was chosen as the sixth-greatest living science fiction writer.
City Beyond Time Tales of the Fall of Metachronopolis eBook John C Wright
I loved this book. The collection of tales was a delight to read and hearkened back to the fun of the old time Sci-Fi. I ordered this collection because I had read the story "The Plural of Helen of Troy" from this collection for the 2015 Hugos. I loved the story, loved the twists and I hope it wins the Hugo for Best Novella. All of the stories in this collection are excellent, but I still favor the one that led me to it.The rest of the review is my notes for the Hugo nomination novella : The Plural of Helen of Troy
The backwards in time storytelling reminiscent of Memento worked, as there was a reason for it beyond just being a storytelling trick. The characters were very enjoyable, especially as Wright kept unraveling the layers of the story. Even the simple conversation with the first Helen took on new meaning as the story progressed. Wright’s strength in this story (and also in Pale Reams of Shade) are in the unraveling of the onion, revealing with time throughout the story — longer stories are better suited for Mr. Wright’s skills.
The premise was great (a better version of Enterprise’s temporal cold war), and as a Protestant, I would say I saw shades of purgatory in the story (near the end). And as far as the purgatory goes, I liked this presentation. One of the sad realities of our mechanistic/utilitarian world seems to be that even in our fiction we don’t have room for the ineffable and hopeful, and so even stories about people fighting for a better world (all of them) leaves the world sterile and without heart — not even a simple concept of good vs evil is allowed. Wright’s Jake is like David Dunn from Unbreakable, there is a hole in his heart, a sense of loss that comes out in his jaded interactions with the world, and this is because the purpose and meaning of life has been taken them.
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City Beyond Time Tales of the Fall of Metachronopolis eBook John C Wright Reviews
This was my introduction to John C. Wright, and I've since read his Golden Oecumene trilogy, as well as a few other short stories. This collection was incredibly smart and thought-provoking, with a fascinating world and interesting, compelling characters.
Wright made me think of time travel in a new way, and he does this by thoroughly exploring not only the logical and illogical consequences of time-travel, but also the spiritual and moral consequences of the act. If you can use time travel to erase your mistakes, what does that mean for right and wrong? Why not commit whatever terrible act you think of on a whim if you can always go back and undo it ... if you want to. The stories are all excellent, with a lot of suspenseful and haunting tales. The first one, Murder in Metachronopolis, is probably my favorite. I only wish there were even more stories in this book.
Wright fully deserves high praise for writing a set of very inventive, intelligent stories that thoroughly examine the inner effects of time travel just as much as the temporal ones. These stories made me excited to read science fiction again. Great stories, and I hope we see more from him in this vein. And someone call Hollywood and put Jake Frontino on the big screen!
I normally don't go in for time travel stories - I can't get over the logical flaws in causality that inevitably crop up, despite the author's best efforts, and the stories that abandon all pretense of sequencing, plot, and flow are often just plain unreadable. Wright's stories though, aren't just about time travel - like the majority of his works, this collection is really about deep wonder, deep sadness and deep sense of loss, but also hope, as you come to realize that the world he's illustrating, the one his characters inhabit, is merely a shadow of the world as it should be - a better world, accessible only by trial and redemption. That sense, which is akin to the sense you get from a close reading of Tolkien, of C.S. Lewis and Lord Dunsany, is something Wright excels at. Obviously, since Wright's conversion to Catholicism this feature takes on a strong presence, but if you look back across his body of work, it's always been there, even in his days as an avowed atheist. In City Beyond Time, the Time Wardens - a group of pulpy antagonists (and I mean this as a complement) who come off as a cross between Moorcock's Lords of Chaos and Dancers at the End of Time and Doctor Who's Time Lords, in their arrogance, decadence, callousness and sense of eventual doom - reign supreme, playing with historical figures and ordinary people and fantastical super-science (SCIENCE!) like toys. Some of these people plucked from the timestream are also tools. How one such tool survives, reacts to, and against his masters forms the connecting thread between all of the stories.
Now, without the Hugo-nominated "Plural of Helen of Troy" this collection would come across merely as an atmospheric, clever set of science-fiction gumshoe noir pulp pieces. "Helen" kicks is the incredible payoff - it may be the single best time travel story I've ever read next to H.G. Wells original - as complicated as it gets - yeah, you'll probably need to reread a few sections a few times - (imagine a Rick and Morty plot without the nihilism and depressing existentialism!). Without spoiling it, let's just say that the full cruelty of the Time Wardens gets put on display, one of the most famous women of history and her star-crossed lover get (multiple) chances at making things right or even worse, and a hard boiled detective gets a glimpse at a better future. Go see for yourself.
I loved this book. The collection of tales was a delight to read and hearkened back to the fun of the old time Sci-Fi. I ordered this collection because I had read the story "The Plural of Helen of Troy" from this collection for the 2015 Hugos. I loved the story, loved the twists and I hope it wins the Hugo for Best Novella. All of the stories in this collection are excellent, but I still favor the one that led me to it.
The rest of the review is my notes for the Hugo nomination novella The Plural of Helen of Troy
The backwards in time storytelling reminiscent of Memento worked, as there was a reason for it beyond just being a storytelling trick. The characters were very enjoyable, especially as Wright kept unraveling the layers of the story. Even the simple conversation with the first Helen took on new meaning as the story progressed. Wright’s strength in this story (and also in Pale Reams of Shade) are in the unraveling of the onion, revealing with time throughout the story — longer stories are better suited for Mr. Wright’s skills.
The premise was great (a better version of Enterprise’s temporal cold war), and as a Protestant, I would say I saw shades of purgatory in the story (near the end). And as far as the purgatory goes, I liked this presentation. One of the sad realities of our mechanistic/utilitarian world seems to be that even in our fiction we don’t have room for the ineffable and hopeful, and so even stories about people fighting for a better world (all of them) leaves the world sterile and without heart — not even a simple concept of good vs evil is allowed. Wright’s Jake is like David Dunn from Unbreakable, there is a hole in his heart, a sense of loss that comes out in his jaded interactions with the world, and this is because the purpose and meaning of life has been taken them.
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