Selected Shorts and Other Methods of Time Travel

Time-travel tourism gets an in-depth exploration in this unsatisfyingly bland debut collection. Working from the basic premise that the first time-travel business was established in 2052, Blue World founder Goodberg offers up 37 episodes, ranging from one-page vignettes to full-fledged stories, exploring alternate time lines, grandfather paradoxes, human-alien relations, and get-rich-quick schemes, often with clever twists and unexpected results. While the concept has potential and the world-building is extensive, the actual results vary from barely satisfactory to downright baffling. The individual stories often lack solid resolution or character depth, suffer from weak writing, and relying on Twilight Zone–style surprise endings. Unrelated pithy sayings and pointed social commentaries separate the stories. It all adds up to a mildly entertaining assortment of mostly mediocre shorts that never really takes off. (Feb.)