Time Loves a Hero by Allen Steele

First published as Chronospace in 2001; published digitally by Open Road Media on May 19, 2015

Time Loves a Hero was originally published as Chronospace. In the introduction to this edition, Allen Steele explains that Time Loves a Hero was his original title, and that the title change was made by an editor who thought it would attract fans of Oceanspace, his previous novel. Frankly, I think Chronospace is a better title but Steele doesn’t, so there you have it.

One of the pleasures of Time Loves a Hero is that a central character is a lifelong science fiction fan, which gives him a chance to mention stories and authors and magazines that will evoke a sense of nostalgia in readers who are lifelong science fiction fans. Gregory Benford is even a character in the novel, although in a unique way (about which, I will say no more).

The central character, at least in the chapters that take place in 1998, is Zach Murphy, sometimes known as David Murphy. In the chapters that take place 300+ years later, the central characters are time travelers (chrononauts) who are studying the Hindenburg disaster by taking the places of two passengers who died in the explosion. As all devoted sf readers know, the risk of time travel is that history will be changed by seemingly inconsequential actions. The potential creation of a time paradox and the ensuing creation of new or alternative timelines becomes the novel’s focus.

Since Murphy begins the novel as a NASA astrophysicist and is suddenly working as a paranormal researcher, apparently without noticing the transition, it is clear to the reader that something has happened to Murphy's time stream. We learn what happened, at least in broad terms, in the novel’s second half.

The story is engaging and fun, although it takes a left turn at some point in a way that makes the resolution a bit too easy. Actually, things are left unresolved to a large extent, which is the novel’s only real disappointment. Time travel novels are always a little disappointing (unless Connie Willis writes them) because the paradox is difficult to address in a convincingly, but Steele handles it well enough to make Time Loves a Hero one of the better efforts in the time travel branch of science fiction.

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