Short Science Fiction Story Review – John Grant – Chasing Charlemagne.

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Spoiler alerts 2015 Mammoth / Robinson’s Press A clever time travel tale with a genuinely startling premise. Time travellers from the 25th century who set out to explore the Dark Ages have failed to return home or send back reports. The narrator is sent to the next early period of recorded history to gain access to monastic records and seek clues to the mystery. He discovers changes in the calendar have meant 300 years of history between the 7th and 10th centuries AD never happened. The distortion in time means that delicate pinpoint accuracy calculations that time travellers depend on have thrown them off target and possibly into deep space where the Earth is no longer located. Charlemagne, it seems, never existed. An intriguing Matrix variation explored through quiet scholarship with some intriguing looks at the future too. Arthur Chappell