<SF history lesson>Most science fiction–explicitly including the fantasy-based subsets/sister genres–revolves around one or two scientific concepts that don’t exist in the present or violate some known physical law. Faster than light travel is perhaps the most common example of the latter while non-human intelligences are good examples of the former. In the first decades of SF, say until just after WWII, most of the concepts were so new that more complex literary aspects such as, oh, plot and character development were secondary or irrelevant. Think Doc Smith and the Lensmen series.
Asimov, Heinlein, Clarke, Kornbluth, and Bester were leaders of the first major evolution in the field, looking not just at technical innovation but at how those innovations might impact society and individuals. How does a galactic empire manage tens of thousands of worlds to which it communicates only slowly and sporadically? Where do religion and advertising fit in a world of science? And, of course, many other such questions.
Finally science fiction reached a level of development, beginning with the British New Wave, where technology became the secondary factor and just a different setting for exploring the human heart and its interactions. Though not all authors have made the jump, or at least some haven’t bothered, content to put some pet personal idea on display.</SF history lesson>
James Hogan struggled, coming not long after the New Wavers, with this change. Thrice Upon a Time, a very early novel of his first published in 1980, shows clear signs of it. Large tracts of the book are little more than expositions of scientific discussion, on the nature of time and the universe–he even includes an illustration of how one of his characters has come to perceive this. All of the characters are tissue-thin except Murdoch Ross, our protagonist, and even he only becomes more interesting around the midpoint of the story.
I can almost see Hogan getting all excited one night at the dinner table, trying to explain his theory about time, based on some then-unexplained result of an (unmentioned in the book) science experiment that could possibly give rise to a method of communicating with the past. Then thinking, in the wake of Three Mile Island and other incidents, what if something with a nuclear reactor went seriously wrong? Here’s my story hook to tell about my time machine!
In the end Thrice is somewhat interesting because his ideas are interesting but the literature (literary?) aspects of the book never really do come together. Long peaens to the beauty of Scottish countryside and a romantic subplot aside, in the end Hogan never really finds a way to do more than ask the biggest question of all posed by a time machine that can change the past: Who has the right to decide what changes will be made?
not recommended
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