HIVE

In Orton’s SF series-starter, a strange sphere that crashes in Colorado turns out to be part of a desperate time-travel strategy.

Only two human survivors, and a British-accented artificial intelligence called Madders, subsist in a Denver-based Eden-17 Biodome survival complex, one of many such fortresses erected by flashy tycoon-inventor David Kirkland (who bears an unflattering resemblance to Elon Musk). Such shelters had been conceived for Mars colonization but were repurposed to save humanity after a series of terrestrial catastrophes—some climate-related, others attributable to Kirkland's own greed and hubris, such as a lethal, rogue swarm of autonomous predator-microdrone bees. In an ultimate gambit to stop the end of the world, Isabel, her ardently devoted erstwhile lover Diego, and Madders use another Kirkland invention—involving time travel and trans-temporal communication—to try to disrupt critical events 35 years ago that put Earth on a doomsday course. Wisely, the author doesn’t spell out exactly how the time-travel caper is supposed to work; however, when a mystery sphere, undetected by NORAD, crashes in the Denver of the past, it triggers anomalies and anachronisms that will rewrite the timeline and redefine the earlier lives of Isabel, Diego and British physicist Matthew Hudson—who, in the future, will serve as the template for Madders (“Crikey Moses. I’m like a dog with two tails”). But will all this move humanity away from the upcoming apocalypse without creating other paradoxes? Numerous SF/pop-culture references are effectively seeded throughout the tale (especially from the 1985 film Back to the Future), and, occasionally, the characters’ banter appealingly has the feel of a rom-com. However, beneath the story’s smart-alecky exterior is a very smart interior, developing character relationships well and guiding hoary SF time-travel conceits in fresh, imaginative, and strangely relatable directions, considering they involve quantum physics and parallel universes. It takes until the third act for the action to really take off, but when it does, readers will likely be hooked by the unresolved cliffhanger finale, leading to the next volume.

A lively start to a time-hopping thriller series that deserves some buzz.