Across Realtime

Fifty years ago, back in 1997, the Pace Authority eliminated war. In one smashing worldwide coup, the Authority removed missiles, armies, goverments, entire citiex - everything that could oppose peace.

The Peace Authority's weapon was - and still is - the "bobble," a unique spherical state of stasis that can encapsulate an object in an impenetrable force field. Nothing can get in our out of a bobble, not even light or air; it's a prison - perfect, even beautiful. And permanent.

Since the "peace war," all high technology has been banned, and civilization has fallen into a semi-feudal state. What has replaced war is tyranny, but as Peace Authority Director Hamilton Avery would add, it is a benign tyranny, isn't it? A small price to pay for permanent peace.

Only old-timers like Paul Naismith, the reclusive leader of the Tinker underground, can recall a time before the Authority's reign. A mathematical genius, he's spent 50 years secretly developing his own extraordinary, illegal, technology, far surpassing that of the Authority, hoping to strike back some day. But nothing can defeat the Authority's bobbler.

Until now.

Something is happening to the bobbles . . . something that the theory said could never occur. And it means Paul can launch his revolution. He has a 16-year-old vagabond for help - a natural genius as brilliant as himself - plus the network of Tinker misfits, and a secret about the bobbles the Authority does not guess.

He also has a traitor in his midst. . . .

Comprising THE PEACE WAR and MAROONED IN REALTIME, ACROSS REALTIME melds brilliant hard-science and all-too-possible social speculation into a gripping depiction of a revolution against "peace," a revolution that will continue beyond Earth's time . . . on a near-deserted Earth 50 million years in the future . . . among a small group of survivors faced with a murder that only someone - one of their own number - skilled with a bobbler could commit.