First Edition: Yes
First Printing/Impression: Yes
Publisher: Gollancz
Year Published: 2004
Price Clipped: No
Book Condition: Fine
Dust Jacket Condition: Fine & Protected
Synopsis:
Castaways in time Rudyard Kipling, Aristotle, Edison and Alexander the Great must combat a far-future extraterrestrial playing God with human destiny. John Patefield, a brutal, cheerfully amoral British army staff officer on the north-west frontier, 1885, possesses an idol plundered from the great religious leader Shri Ramakrishna. One morning he and his men assault a rebel position, Patefield going over the top holding the idol high. And a squadron of tanks from the 21st century comes rolling over the hill.
All this is witnessed by two journalists: Rudyard Kipling and his American colleague Josh White, who secretly summons Thomas Edison to investigate the new arrivals from the future. By the time Edison gets there, Patefield has spun a line about how these super-warriors from the future could march out of India and bring down the Emperor Queen herself. Indian soldiers quickly shed their loyalty to the Raj. Once again Patefield raises his purloined idol. And a phalanx of Macedonian warriors bursts onto the scene. This time, the scene itself shifts. Meet Alexander: just 30, wilful, impulsive, difficult, powerful, his empire already overstretched, his troops rebelling. Patefield concocts a scheme. Perhaps the time castaways should assist Alexander in his conquests. Meanwhile, Josh our hero is in Athens with Aristotle, and the great philosopher is as astonished as anyone to discover that his students, a group from all over, are not human at all. And neither is Patefield, who is a rogue member of the advanced alien presence on earth investigating human love of war. Can history be restored?
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