#1 Time Wars
After Victor Milan completely burned down Steele, we need to run back into the loving embrace of J.D. Masters/Simon Hawke. This time, we will be staring his most famous series Time Wars. The Ivanhoe Gambit, this Friday, 5 PM eastern. Don't miss out, or you'll have to invent Minus Time!
@Brockway can I get a pin, please?
Robin Hood huh
No shit
Simon Hawke loves ideas. Including ones he already had
It's weird to have the knight with a tommy gun, right? Like, are they going back to Prohibition Era and then to Medieval times?
Gellaho: I am glad to be done
Also Gellaho: Brand new book series
I was glad to be done with S.L. Hunter's/Victor Milan's hatchet job. I didn't buy these books for decoration
I bought them because I'm insane
Half an hour until TimeWars: The Ivanhoe Gambit. Feast your eyes on this "thrilling" preview.
I missed out on Steele, so I'm excited about TimeWars
Let's see how good a writer Simon Hawke was five years before Steele
It's almost incomprehensible
As a first action our hero, Lucas Priest, flees
I just want to say, before we get properly into it. This premise is dumb. Why did they not test to see if time travel would fuck with stuff?
They just assumed
I'm trying to understand this. Their tour of duty is only measured in the present, I guess
We've immediately been thrown into flashback
To be fair, I'd run too
Do we know why the US army is helping Attila the hun?
Like, what's the benefit of doing that?
They fight their wars in the past
Yeah, but why?
Wait like, it's time slavery?
So, did our new hero have to rape and pillage?
Oh, wait, I regret I asked
Yeah hes just throwing out how he raped peasants and burned villages like "ugh, Mondays right?"
This is so fucking stupid
It's worse than steele
They realise the "prosperity" from having a "wartime economic standard" comes from making shit, right?
Also pillaging loot
In older wars
Which is something you don't have to do if you send your soldiers back to the past
Ok we disagree, but we get along well enough to have negotiations. I'm sure they could have found a better solution than war, but another time.
That's clearly not what wartime economic standard refers to
These SATs are "service aptitude tests." I have no idea what implant education is
Yeah, you can make off with the booty
But it's different
They seem to make a lot of uniforms. Otherwise 2613 seems pretty boring
I sort of feel like maybe, this premise wasn't well thought out
Jesse worries me
Time travel is always bound to have huge plotholes but that's why you typical don't delve too hard into the rules beyond what's strictly necessary to know. The more you spend thinking about it the worse it is
The only way this can make sense is that this is the bullshit reason they give for TimeWar, but later, they reveal the REAL reason
Which will also be stupid I'm certain
Women be choppin'!
Our second rape mention. This is a pleasant read so far.
I'm guessing the chronoplate is how time travel is achieved, but that's not explained
Wait does the vomit just stay there?
Yeah, those lost people are just covered in puke
You'd think eventually they'd at least have rules equivalent to a public pool. No time traveling for 20 minutes after eating fellas.
In the space between spaces, there's the Vomit Zone
Hey, does the puke between time violate conservation of energy?
Stranded in a sea of vomit
So, those two get drunk and talk about nothing. Then the flashback ends. Priest goes back to the same bar
Jesse got stuck in the vomit zone
So like, if a guy gets lost off of earth and in another dimension, that's like a ton of matter just disappearing from the universe, is no one else concerned about the implications of that?
Also, I think they have a solution to their radioactive waste disposal problem.
I don't know that no one is, but I promise Hawke isn't.
It feels like he wanted to write the forever war but back in time.
I don't have the patience to parse this
Okay, so how many soldiers are fighting how many wars at the same time?
It's like Ready Player One for old guys who watch the History Channel all day.
So you die of old age in minutes of real time.
All of them
Okay, but how many soldiers?
Also, Simon Hawke has a rape fantasy thing and it's gonna come up again.
How many people are employed by the time military in combat roles?
If you fight in the Roman age, come back but then go fight in the Napoleonic age, how many times can we deploy you? I think it's infinite.
Does napoleon ever realize he has a bunch of extra future people in his army?
Do they age in the past?
Also, I dont get any of it so far. Was he trying to stop Hannibal?
Wait yes
Yeah so his buddy aged ten years in the past during five minutes passing in real time.
Sorry I had trouble parsing that
That sounds like a pretty shit job
I kind of kept zoning out
This is already so fucking stupid
Also, you'd die of old age before the week ends
Also if they sail with Lord Nelson, is the Time Army also the Time Navy?
Everyone would age out in a few days present and the battles of the past would be heaving with excess future bodies.
So I'm questioning the point of this novel
Like, why was it written?
I want to understand the economy of the 2600s US
Lucas, his buddy Robert Benjamin Johnson, a corporal named Hooker, and some guy named Finn Delaney are going on their own to 12th century England. I guess this is unusual
Cos time travel is cool as shit
Robin Hood fanfiction
Clearly not, this book is boring as fuck
And if they finish they get to be done. Considering there are 11 more books, I don't see how that'll work
I can't not picture the referee in stripes and carrying a whistle.
If they can produce a prefab hut why are they roasting pheasant.
You think someone would figure out the scam and do something to stop them right?
Like, you will never make your whole week
Haaaaaawke!
I forgot to mention, people can live to be hundreds of years old due to drugs
Wow, that sounds like a great deal, no way it ends up being fucking nightmarish
Bald as an egg, wrinkled as a prune and as mean as a bear with hemorrhoids
Can you go awol in the past?
An army of short dudes
Wow he's spending a lot of time on logistical details I can't even begin to give a shit about
Uh, oh
Oh, yeah, it's the height that's going to give them away. Not their inability to speak the language.
If you read a time travel book and think "but people on average were shorter how will they answer that" you suck and I hate you
Oh, no
Hmmmmm
I just, what? So they compete in the past instead of warring in the present. Directly interfering. But then fix the collateral damage?
They got the government tracking chips
Why not fight in the far future? Or VR?
Why not rip off robot jox?
This is LARP ULTIMATE TOURNAMENT
It would be way more fun
How does this industry profit. Oh man I am all questions
That's what I keep asking!
I refuse to believe no one could figure out how to disapear into another time period. Every new phone that comes out gets jailbroken before it even hits the shelves
Also it would make for a more interesting story
How many times can you steal diamonds from the past before De Beers doesn't have any
A ref has gone rogue
Oh, cool actual plot
Also what?
It's not even loot, I want to know how this "wartime economy" causes "prosperity"
The joke is we all live better than an English king from back then
This has to be simons fantasy
Oh, boy, sure seems like travelling back to the past to kill people is a dumb fucking idea!
North of England in October, no heating, all food is boiled or roasted. Hmm.
How has nothing like this happened before? Has no one tried?
Haha, I shall change the course of a mediocre period of dull history. Go turn Africa into a technological Superpower before colonialism
So, the plan is to kill that guy and replace him with this ref. Then this ref will follow history and let himself get killed
Ok. Or.....just go a bit further back
Okay, they have anti-aging drugs, and time travel technology, but they can't fake a fucking corpse?
This feels like about the point I'd crumple up the draft and decide not to finish this one
Robin Hood fan fiction
Heart of Darkness, in tiiiiiiiiiime
What are the tanks?
Cryo tanks
They're keeping these four on ice and replacing them with these bozos
I guess you can't give someone a scar with plastic surgery
All this set up to write about robin hood
They are taking actual robin hood out of the timeline with their shit?
Why not just write about robin hood?
I don't know enough about Robin Hood to understand why this is supposed to be significant
That's involves far too few ideas
Main character of the historical novel ivanhoe
Can they go back in time to a point where all of this made sense?
They interrogated the merry men
So all these fictional characters were real?
I guess. He eventually meets Dracula
But that's five books from now
Wow
Wild these got published
Like, vampire Dracula, or the dude he was based on?
I don't think the author understands the difference
Ivanhoe was written in like the industrial age or something
Hawke didn't do anything super creative with the ability to write about literally any period in history being fucked with
He eventually does in his latest series
Nysteel is back, baby
Hahahaha he loves the nysteel
It's his signature
Im just do confused about all of this
Every decision made so far feels like a bad one
He meets Bram Stoker, Dracula, Sherlock Holmes, and Author Conan Doyle in that book
Wait what who. Is Lucas returning to England with a suit of armour made of Nysteel, pretending to be Robin Hood?
That is a literary crime.
Wait the fuck?
You know it's good to read something like this, which is actually incomprehensible, then go read something you've been struggling to finish.
So they have modern tech in ancient times and time travel. So there are no stakes from this point onwards.
I feel like he packs five paragraphs of exposition into ever two paragraphs somehow
Why is it suddenly a problem that they killed a guy, when it wasn't a problem when they killed millions of guys?
And all of it is on the logistics of time travel
Which is boring and dumb
You take that back.
I'm skipping over a whole lot of historic and folklore summary. Hopefully it's not important
12th century crusades. I wonder what Hawkes take on that is.
Isn't that just the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen?
Bobby, who is Robin Hood, has gotten involved in an archery tournament. I guess to prove that he is Robin Hood. Anyway, magic science arrow
Wait is he cheating. Fuck him.
Seems legit
Of course he's cheating, how the hell is he supposed to live up to a legendary archer otherwise
You don't want the people in the past to get your magnetic arrow
Practice?
They could have avoided that situation by giving him 2 magnet arrows.
When?
Anywhen!
This is *a time travel story
Yeah, but he ages in real time, and the rules are not clear at all
Also, who gives a shit? It's TimeWars, not a gentleman's competition.
My inner child objects to robin hood being dumped in a tank and replaced by a cheating imposter
You've got the technology, so use it
I guarantee it isnt
I understand that, but you can just concentrate on any of the other terribly stupid and wrong details.
Sonic burst implies a sound. Wouldn't that be noticeable?
No, it was like this:
Are we supposed to be rooting for this guy?
"Oh no, I have lost my ridiculous advantage, now I only have my super armour"
You're losing track of renegate ref they have to bring in, or else he'll fuck up all of history.
Despite the fact that they've been fucking up history systematically for a living for quite some time
Yeah but they could just go back to wednesday and not let him into the time machine.
Look, there are a lot of things they could do
The best thing would be to not do any of this TimeWars stuff
I'm really becoming attached to this group of unlikable fuckups.
So they put a future sonic device in the lance, but still made it out of wood
I am willing to accept the best way to resolve modern global conflict is time LARPING.
Why not nysteel?
Is he just using the word sonic because he remembered it from a doctor who episode he saw once?
Atomic Lance.
So like, has anyone written about using time travel to vacation. Like a time travel agency?
I'm pretty sure there's been short stories I've read in anthologies
There would definitely be time travel sex tourism
I half-skimmed and caught up and I'm really disappointed that with the best future cheat Hawke could think of for an arrow is a button activated magnet
Not in middle ages England. Unless it's a fetish.
There was a bad movie called "A Sound of Thunder"
It's based on a short story
I think that was Ray Bradbury, wasn't it?
But like, I'm talking one where shit doesn't go catastrophically wrong
I don't need this level of self-aware humor. You have not earned it
This tournament is unending
No, they found a more strenuous way.
They found a shittier way to wage war
"We still do this in the future, only now sometimes people get lost for eternity in the Puke Dimension."
This Lucas Priest is a real nice guy
Just a living hell
This guy has never read a book or an episode of a show without somehow getting 6 books out of it.
Hmmm
Do you guys feel like Simon Hawke has issues with women?
So he still uses that word in his internal monologue, huh?
Jewess (n) - a term used exclusively by antisemites
I don't think he's probably an active anti semite from that. He may just have had a sheltered upbringing. God I hope.
Do we do that for other religions? Hinduess.
Multiple twists. The second best knight is a lady and has future armor
Boob massage in front of your little brother. Ok.
One page ago, Hawke said she looked boyish. There are probably a dozen other adjectives that would be a better prelude to this reveal.
This is the kind of book I read as a kid and couldn't give a shit who was who.
I had to read this a couple times to be sure that the red knight and de la Croix are the same person.
That's what I'm experiencing. The scene is described as though it holds three characters.
Apparently Robin Hood is a drunk and Maid Marion's manwhore
More than all the other problems with this book, I'm most bothered he chose to spell it Marion and not "Marian".
This Finn Delaney guy seems to have a bad grasp on the time travel thing
Oh fuck it all then.
Just fucking airstrike him.
Fuck you Hawke I hate you.
Shit, I forgot we're pretending these fictional characters are real.
In a classic sitcom mishap, the lady pretending to be a man has caught the eye of another lady
OK, maybe more aggressive than that
Contrived to procure. The best words Simon Hawke ever wrote down together.
Whoa.
Another scene with 2 characters that sounds like there are 10.
Also, yikes.
I'm going to play hard to get more often.
Goat Spores
Who wants to bet Hawke thinks a lady can't rape a man?
Goat spores?
Somebody say rape?
nobody said rape
We only expressed disgust for it.
As an imperitive, I mean.
So gross. You can rape the girl, but not the boy. Creep.
Hawke does this thing where nothing happens for a long time and then starts rapid firing off story
Hawkes sexual harm preoccupation is genuinely disturbing.
Classic weird descriptions from Hawke
Hawke has never spoken to a woman, much less had sex with one.
She's working for that rogue ref
And stop calling her boyish. Your description was closer to "mannish", but that's gross so don't say that either.
Do you feel that he writes like he thinks a more manly man will judge him? Like maybe his dad threw his stories out as a kid, "Forget these silly things Simon we're Brick knockers son"
It does make sense as overcompensation or being closeted. I'd feel bad making fun if it's the latter.
Maybe years later they found closure. On his father's deathbed
"Ah Simon, it were I that were wrong, for where I see beauty in a knocked brick you have it in your clever words. Oh my Simon. That'll do"
"Sorry son. But seriously, why was Steele absent for most of his own books?"
So we're back to this stupid tournament. May I present electric sword
And horse fart
Fucking cheater. I'm on the villains side.
half an amp isn't, like, a huge amount.
Half an amp is almost certainly fatal.
"Ah Simon I must ask, what does a barely 16 years old 20 year old look like son? Simon get out your sisters room mate"
https://www.asc.ohio-state.edu/physics/p616/safety/fatal_current.html
This is some Hardy Boys-esque denial of danger
"What was with the human dick thing? I told you I was sorry about the accident at the zoo when you were a kid."
"Above 200 milliamps, the muscular contractions are so severe that the heart is forcibly clamped during the shock. This clamping protects the heart from going into ventricular fibrillation, and the victim's chances for survival are good."
He actually made it too high.