Very early on in Ben Elton's Time and Time Again, a Cambridge professor asks High Stanton, the protagonist, a difficult multi-part question: "If you could change one thing in history, if you had the opportunity to go back into the past, to one place and one time and change one thing, where would you go? What would you do?" While a great deal of popular culture has pondered the implications of time travel and changing history, Elton's approach feels fresh and distinct. Not only is his attention to historical detail impeccable, but his characters provide more original answers to the familiar question posed at the beginning of the novel. Instead of settling on the popular "kill Hitler" scenario, Elton has his characters trace the 20th century's woes back further, to the First World War.
After the usual pseudo-scientific rigmarole--albeit with fairly clear rules and a surprising cameo from Sir Isaac Newton--Stanton is transported back to Istanbul in 1914 with a few high-tech gadgets and a plan to save generations of soldiers and civilians from decades of war. Time and Time Again has more tricks up its sleeve than the average time travel novel, including a mind-bending twist that would make M. Night Shyamalan blush with envy. Although Elton (Blind Faith) places a great deal of emphasis on the detailed workings of his "what if" premise, Time and Time Again is most successful when it loses its slightly predictable sci-fi trappings in favor of lovely evocations of a world on the brink of vast change. --Hank Stephenson, bookseller, Flyleaf Books