As I’ve said before, E-Reads is very selective about publishing original fiction, but we were thrilled when Damien Broderick, the award-winning Australian writer, and co-author Rory Barnes offered us The Hunger of Time. Broderick appears in so many “Best of” anthologies that he should consider changing his middle name to “Best of.” His bio states that he coined the term “virtual reality” in a 1982 novel, when the only reality was the kind that skins your knees when you fall on the sidewalk. I haven’t researched the claim but that’s good enough for me.

In The Hunger of Time Broderick and Barnes have created a mad scientist who seems to have read too much H. G. Wells, and, like Wells’s Time Traveler, protagonist Hugh’s time machine works – sort of. That is, it’s accurate to the power of two, or maybe three, or maybe ten. I suppose that when you’re one step ahead of a pandemic and the Pox Cops, you can’t get too fine about these leaps into the Singularity.

Broderick and Barnes can add another “Best of” to their credits. The Hunger of Time is one of the best originals E-Reads has ever published.

– Richard Curtis