Sneak Preview: Paradox Hour

About Paradox Hour

Paradox Hour is aptly named, a novel that moves the Kirov Series back out to sea, with a proverbial rendezvous with destiny waiting somewhere ahead on the turbulent waters of WWII.
    Throughout the many series installments, the ship’s former Navigator, and now Captain Fedorov, has hinted darkly that he expects they will soon be facing the problem and threat of a time paradox—the imminent first arrival of the ship on July 28, 1941. He reasons that this arrival must happen, for it began the long series of time jumps we have all been reading through, taking the story to some amazing places throughout WWII, and even as far back as 1908.

  If the ship does not go through this time displacement, how could he even be where he is at that moment, the result of that very journey through time? Yet how can there be two ships in the same moment, one at the beginning of this journey, and one at what may be the end? How could there be  duplicates of every member of the cast and crew? That is the paradox, at least as Fedorov sees it, and he fears that time can only solve it by eliminating one ship or another, and this is where a few of those small story seeds the author planted in the narrative long ago now begin to sprout.

   Faithful series readers will remember the strange anomalies that were introduced as the story entered its second “season” with the coming of Altered States. Those file boxes discovered in the archive of Bletchley Park were a mind-bending twist, and dovetailed with haunting memories that began to emerge in the mind of Admiral Tovey when he again encounters this mysterious Russian ship in the North Atlantic. Yet there was something else mentioned in that segment—Alan Turing’s missing watch, which he mysteriously re-discovered deep inside one of those file boxes. There was a clue the author dropped long ago, and one that now comes forward again in this novel, when strange and macabre “incidents” begin to occur aboard Kirov. Are they forerunners to that  moment of insoluble paradox Fedorov fears? This book now leads us down that darkening path.

     As mentioned at the outset, it is largely a naval saga this time out, returning the story to the fertile waters that first spawned the tale. Admiral Lütjens has sailed west into the Atlantic, and Force H does not have the heavy metal to challenge the German battleships, let alone stop them. In hot pursuit comes Admiral Tovey and his allies from 2021, though they are more than 18 hours behind the action as the Hindenburg breaks out into the Atlantic. Since Kirov  shifted to June of 1940, the author has been taking us through a lovingly detailed accounting of those war years, right up to the eve of Operation Barbarossa in May of 1941. Now, with the action heading out to sea, the principle WWII action there was, of course, the hunt for the Bismarck. Yet in this altered world where Kirov now sails, the power of the  Kriegsmarine is many times greater.

     After Hitler summarily cancels the Plan Z naval building program, Admiral Raeder is determined to do something dramatic with the ships he still has. Thus the Hindenburg , and the rest of the German ships that fought in the Med, now move to the Atlantic, and there they plan to rendezvous with the remainder of the German surface fleet, led by Kapitan Karl Topp aboard Tirpitz. Graf Zeppelin, and both Scharnhorst and Gneisenau are also assigned to that battlegroup, so you can see that we have another massive naval battle shaping up, and one that makes the actual Bismarck campaign in May of 1941 look like a small training exercise.

     Yet that operation still underlies something that happens at the heart of this story, a mystery that has been slowly developed ever since Fedorov first discovered the back stairway at that railway inn during his hunt for Gennadi Orlov.  Now the real hard core fans of Schettler’s many time travel books will be in for a treat. Before he first penned the breakthrough novel Kirov, Schettler wrote a quintet of time travel novels he calls the “Meridian Series,”  named after the series opener by that name, which won the Silver Medal for Science Fiction “Book of the Year” in Forward Magazine’s prestigious annual competition. That book grew into a trilogy with Nexus Point and Touchstone, then finally extended to two more novels, the last of which was Golem 7, a time travel naval fiction that featured an alternate history recounting of the hunt for the Bismarck.

    The Meridian Series was all about a team of researchers and scientists operating out of the Lawrence Berkeley Labs, and involved in the design and testing of a machine they called “the Arch” that plays with the universe on the  quantum level, and enables travel in time. That series saw the author taking us to the deserts of Syria and Jordan with Lawrence of Arabia, to the Crusades, then to Egypt at the time of Napoleon’s invasion there, and finally to the famous battle of Tours where Charles Martel faced down the Moors to save Europe and Christendom from being overrun. The last volume was Golem 7,  the naval tale that formed the warp and weave in Schettler’s imagination that eventually led him to write Kirov, simply because he still had “the naval bug” after finishing the Meridian Series.

     Thank god for that!

    Now, 16 volumes later in a series of books that has kept the hard core fans and “crew” of Kirov waiting for each new release, Mister Schettler begins the grand unification of both his time travel universes. Yes Meridian fans, that tantalizing mystery hook that was left at the end of Golem 7 will be revealed here in the  Kirov Series through a plot line the author calls the mystery of the “Keyholders.”  In fact, in Chapter 17 of Paradox Hour, the author presents a slightly revised version of a scene from Golem 7 to introduce a new historical character, then in chapter 18, he reprises segments of the final epilogue in the Meridian Series, where the mystery of that key found in the base of the Selene Horse aboard the Battleship Rodney was first introduced.  That battleship, and the strange,  though completely historical mission Rodney was on in carrying  a store of gold bullion and the Elgin Marbles to safety in Boston, becomes the focus of the action here in Paradox Hour, as it was in the novel Golem 7, though its fate is completely different in each novel. Elena Fairchild is set on retrieving that key, and only readers of the Meridian Series really know just how it went missing, and where it may end up…

Special Announcements: And More to come!

   Author John Schettler has informed us that he is also working on a "secret project," something new he is writing "between Kirov novels." At the moment, it now appears that his two existing time travel universes are about to merge, and move forward into “Season Three” of the Kirov Series. Yes, dear readers, have no fear. There are desperate hours here, but season three is coming. It is coming like the tick of a clock, persistent, inevitable, fated to make its appointed round. There is simply soooooo much more story to be told. The eight books starting with Altered States only covered a year long period beginning June of 1940, and yes, now the real war begins. There is all the great action through 1943 and 1944 yet to come, the heart of the war. (More on this as we continue our author interview in the web site dedicated to Paradox Hour, to be published soon)

   

Tick tock… It’s coming, the alternate history of the war that would not be complete without the crucial years from 1942 to 1944, and it’s going to be an amazing ride. While we cannot yet reveal anything that happens at the end of Paradox Hour, or even whether Kirov survives, you can bet there will be a twist in this next novel that you may not see coming. But while you wait for the early 2015 release of that book, those who have not yet read the Meridian Series would be wise to take a peek, because events first seeded in the final Meridian Series book now begin to bloom in Paradox Hour.

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The novel that started it all now comes full circle, in Paradox Hour!

    The key book you’ll want to read is that great naval campaign that started it all, Golem 7, and because each novel is a standalone story, it is easy to read as a prelude to Paradox Hour without needing to read the other four volumes that preceded it. This book is where the character of Admiral Tovey, so central to the Kirov Series, was first drawn and introduced. And the leader of the German fleet here in Paradox Hour, Admiral Lütjens, is also a prominent character in Golem 7. There are many parallels at play between the two novels, one the beginning seed that eventually led the author to write Kirov, the other the ripened fruit ready to fall on that same fertile ground of his imagination that gave us these sixteen wonderful books.

    In Golem 7, you will meet the Meridian Project research team, discover how they operate in time, and what they learned was happening when two rival groups in the future begin waging “Time War” on one another in an effort to re-write the history in a way that favors their side. Through an ingenious series of widely distributed computer Aps called “Golems,” the researchers can determine where and when an intervention is being made in time. Since their facility in Berkeley was the first operational “time machine,” they remain in a unique position on the continuum to counter-operate against these adversaries in the future.

     In both novels, Admirals Lütjens and Tovey ponder their strategy, and the evolution of naval tactics, and it is interesting to see how Lütjens’ views of aircraft carriers, for example, are affected by the thunder Kirov has brought into the world, not to mention the  exploits of the Stuka pilots aboard Graf Zeppelin and Goeben. Another character from Golem 7 also makes an appearance in Paradox Hour, the intrepid Kapitan Herbert Wohlfarth of U-556. Wohlfarth plays a pivotal role in the alternate history Bismarck campaign, and it is interesting to see how his part has changed here in the world altered by Kirov’s earlier interventions.

     The mystery that ended the Meridian Series all had to do with the discovery that the original Meridian, or time line native to the main characters, was found to be an altered state. In fact, Part VIII of Golem 7 is where the now familiar title “Altered States” first appeared. There the main characters uncover some strange events involving Wohlfarth’s attack on a British convoy, and a mysterious undersea explosion. Strangely enough, this is something the author plucked right from the historical record of that attack, an event that actually occurred. It baffled the Admiralty when reported in 1941, and stands as a perplexing and dangerous anomaly to the Meridian Project team in Golem 7, as they sort through the haystack of events surrounding the sinking of the Bismarck. The conclusion the Meridian team comes to, that their own native world may have been an altered timeline, is the same disturbing realization that Fedorov and Director Kamenski will discuss as they tackle the problem of the impending paradox Fedorov has been worried about.

     All of this has to do with the haunting revelation made by Elena Fairchild at the end of Crescendo of Doom, that the signals from the future received by the Watch—the voices that had been guiding and warning them—have suddenly gone quiet.  Fairchild’s admonition concerning some terrible calamity in the future is the somber note that book ended on, and though Karpov’s hunt for Ivan Volkov steals the leadoff spot in the opening of Paradox Hour, that topic is taken up again in Part III. Was this calamity actually witnessed by the crew of Kirov after they shifted to that bleak future and discovered the blackened ruins of Halifax? Or was it something more…?

    As Golem 7 concludes, the project team makes this same discovery in an engaging segment where they literally call the future adversaries in the Time War on the carpet, and demand they end hostilities. But something happens at the very end of Golem 7 that has stood unanswered for many years now, while the author was busy entertaining us with the Kirov Series. It is this story thread that he now takes up again, using it to weave both time travel epics together to explore that perplexing mystery.

     Like two ends of a circle in time, Golem 7 and Paradox Hour now define one another, arising mutually, like Yin and Yang. You will even note the same story telling method, and the author’s unique  “voice” and prose style—all developed in the novel Golem 7, and carried through to the Kirov Series. You can clearly see how Kirov emerged and took shape in Schettler’s mind at the end of the Meridian Series, as the seed begets the stem, stalk, leaf, and flower.

    Think of Golem 7 as a prelude to events that will now begin to unfold in Paradox Hour, and continue on in “Season 3” of the Kirov Series. You can “grok” this next book in the Kirov Series easily enough, even if you haven’t read any of the Meridian books, but when Chapter 17 of Paradox Hour introduces what appears to be just another historical figure aboard the battleship Rodney, readers of Golem 7 will smile inwardly and know what is going on. In fact, you will also know much more about those mysterious voices from the future Elena Fairchild has talked about. And for Meridian Series fans, in Paradox Hour, you will soon learn much more about the ending of that series, and that final system alert that went off in the very last paragraph of Golem 7. That long unanswered “hook” will finally begin to spin out in the engaging prose that has kept us all spellbound these last two years, as the Kirov Series made and rewrote history, the longest running Alternate History Time travel adventure ever penned.

   For those who have not yet read Golem 7, the Writing Shop is now releasing a special revised and edited version of that novel available now on Amazon. So start your new year with this great naval chase, and then get ready for more of the same when Paradox Hour leads us into the stormy waters of the Atlantic, and another massive naval duel where the future and past collide in a battle that may decide far more than the fate of operations at sea in WWII.

GET YOUR COPY OF GOLEM 7 HERE! 

And don't miss the Kindle Countdown Deal starting Dec 29 at 8:00 am thru 11:00pm on Dec 31st, where you can get this book for as little as $1.99

     On behalf of the author, and from everyone affiliated with the Writing Shop Press, we wish you a Happy New Year, with many thanks for your loyalty and support of the amazing Kirov Series, by John Schettler.