May 01 2024 7 mins 2
Pure SF pulp, The Fall of Chronopolis (1974) is the fifth novel by British author Barrington J. Bayley. While it superficially resembles a space opera, it is really more of what could be called a "time opera". The Chronotic Empire rules hundreds of years of human history, using powerful time-ships to head off threats from the past and the future. But when officer of the Third Time Fleet, Mond Aton, glimpses the true nature of the "temporal substratum", it begins to change everything...
This episode is a brisk look at the novel which Rhys Hughes called "perhaps the ultimate time travel story", and which was possibly was an influence on the setting of Warhammer 40,000. To catch up with a previous review of Bayley's The Garments of Caean (1976), listen to episode 108.
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