by John Varley
First published 1988
Investigator Bill Smith arrives at the wreckage of two commercial aircraft that collided in midair. The crash site holds the usual debris and bodies, but Smith notices troubling inconsistencies in the evidence. Passenger manifests don't match the remains. Key components seem altered. As Smith digs deeper into the disaster, he stumbles upon an impossible truth: a group of time travelers from Earth's distant future orchestrated the collision. These visitors from tomorrow have been secretly harvesting people from doomed flights, replacing passengers with corpses from their own dying world. Smith must navigate the paradoxes of temporal interference while confronting travelers whose very presence threatens to unravel the timeline. The investigation forces him to question everything he knows about causality and fate as past and future collide in ways that could destroy both eras.
Genres: science-fiction, mystery, time-travel, thriller
Vibes: fast-paced, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: investigative-protagonist, time-travel
Period: Millennium
249 pages · Mass Market Paperback · Ace Books