In a lot of ways, this is an excellent novel full of well-conceived characters driven by a slowly disintegrating society. Add suddenly appearing strange event/objects, the Chronoliths, and watch our near-future implode.This is not an action-fueled novel. It is family-driven, obliquely and curiously propelled by the inclusion of old colleagues and the slow social collapse of our world. Think Spin, but not with the stars disappearing. Just add big monoliths that suddenly warp space-time, appearing...

In The Chronoliths, the world is rocked by the sudden arrival of massive obelisks, or "chronoliths," which appear to be a future conqueror's monuments to battles that have not yet occurred. As the chronoliths continue to appear, the world descends into economic and social chaos. Robert Charles Wilson is a brilliant writer and this is standard fare for him: a character story involving normal people caught up in major, world-altering preternatural events.While The Chronoliths has an interesting pr...

This is a fine mix of Big Idea SF with human drama on a much smaller scale. The Big Idea is a conqueror from the future named "Kuin" who is somehow able to send massive monuments to his victories back in time, where they stand invulnerable and ominous over the lands he is destined to conquer. The first ones are in Thailand, but over the next few years they appear all over Asia. Some materialize in relatively unpopulated areas, but some appear in the middle of cities, flattening them with shockwa...

Scott Warden is a man haunted by the past-and soon to be haunted by the future.Time travel - only it is backwardsIn early twenty-first-century Thailand, Scott is an expatriate slacker. Then, one day, he inadvertently witnesses an impossible event: the violent appearance of a 200-foot stone pillar in the forested interior. Its arrival collapses trees for a quarter mile around its base, freezing ice out of the air and emitting a burst of ionizing radiation. It appears to be composed of an exotic f...

I read "Spin" before I got around to this one. It is definitely by the same author: A great "big idea" premise set within the occurrence of a random fantastic phenomenon, and 'real' people (and family) must deal with it. The "Spin" story was much more exciting and developed but the approach was similar. What stood out with "The Chonoliths" was the writing itself. It bordered on poetry in places.Robert Charles Wilson may have found his voice with this one I think.A good read.

In our near future, the chronoliths start arriving out of thin air across the world – enormous, destructive monuments to conquests that, according to the engravings, won’t occur for twenty more years. Scott writes his memoir, telling of his presence at the arrival of the first chronolith in Thailand and the set of extraordinary experiences that keep his life entwined with the mystery and the slim hope of averting global disaster. The chronoliths arrive from the future, and they bring with them a...

On the positive side, this book did have interesting ideas. It unfolded nicely over a span of several years, cataloging changes and effects -- showing economic downturn, how people's way of living changed. There were moments when I was engaged, and interested in what was going to happen next.But I found these moments were few and far between. I couldn't stand the narrator -- the kind of guy who screws up his first marriage, and manages to shakily repair his relationship with his daughter, barrin...

Storyline: 4/5Characters: 3/5Writing Style: 3/5World: 4/5This is one of my favorite science fiction reads thus far this year. Others I've enjoyed about as much include The Mote in God's Eye and Anvil of Stars, though I think The Chronoliths was the best of the three. I would place it on a shelf with "idea" books - a category I very much enjoy. Other, similar books that it shares shelf space with include Philip Jose Farmer's To Your Scattered Bodies Go, John Scalzi's Old Man's War, Vernor Vinge's...

This is the third book I've read by Robert Charles Wilson (along with Spin and its sequel Axis), and he is now on his way to becoming one of my very favorite sci-fi authors.Shortest version: RCW writes the kind of fiction I hope I can write one day. His stories all have big ideas at their heart, but he does rich and deep world-building around them. All the hard work he does imagining the diverse ways people and society would react to those big ideas succeeds at making the ideas seem much more re...

Frankly, I don't think I'm able to say much about it because I don't think I understood it completely. No, I'm sure I didn't.The premise is this: chronoliths are suddenly starting to appear all over Asia and expand in some other regions. They are monuments from an unknown material which praise the victory of one named Kuin in wars which will occur 20 years in the future. Nobody knows who is Kuin, but the world is thrown into chaos, because some of these giants appeared in the middle of cities, d...

At the time I read this book, it was, quite simply, one of the best SF books I had ever read. This book made Wilson my favorite SF author.It starts with an intriguing SF concept: what if a giant pillar appeared in Bangkok, marking the victory of a future warlord? What would be its impact on society? How could such an event come about and why must people in the future send mementos to the past?On this premise, The Chronoliths fully deliver in intrigue, surprise twists and clever, thoughtful SF. B...

Well, I’m settling into life here in my adopted country. Bermuda is an interesting place. Both culturally and ecologically. It’s a very small place, like, 21 square miles. And even though I didn’t think I’d ever have to explain it to anyone - it’s very isolated. I didn’t think I’d have to explain it to anyone because, well, I dunno. I just assumed people knew where it was located (hint: It ain’t in the Caribbean).Regardless, it is sub-tropical. And it’s isolated. This means that it was practical...

A book about mysterious monoliths popping up all over the Earth? In December 2020, how could I resist?About one half of The Chronoliths concerns the title plot, which is a doozy. It begins right away with an uncanny event: a vast, strange monolith sudden appears in Thailand. It's inexplicable in its construction and appearance, but it also bears another puzzle. Text running along the thing proclaim it to commemorate a spectacular victory... taking place in the future. (Hence the name, chronolith...

Excellent read. This was my first book by Wilson, and it looks like he writes in the same vien as Robert Sawyer--what I call Social Sci-fi. Instead of focusing on science or technology itself, Wilson instead writes about the -impact- that tech and related events have on average people's lives. So not only does Wilson create fully-realized characters with depth (and plenty of flaws), he manages to breathe life into the world, society and situations they inhabit. I found the pacing of the novel to...

In 2021, a gigantic memorial appears out of nowhere in the middle of Thailand. The text on the memorial refers to a great battle fought there and a victorious general "Kuin" and gives a date: December 21, 2041 - 20 years in the future. How did the memorial get there? Who is this Kuin? Can he really send objects through time?Robert Charles Wilson's The Chronoliths is a dystopian fiction with elements of time travel (heavily) thrown in. It's a fascinating premise, and the picture Wilson paints of

The Chronoliths (Mass Market Paperback) by Robert Charles WilsonA quick read, but the ride goes on. What if you could change the future by inserting a menssage into the past? Yes, I know it's been done before. But the author does it so well, and leaves enough mystery to make this work very well. Our characters are complex, and the narrative is just disjointed enough to make you believe. You truly do get that sense of impending doom as each monument arrives. And the reactions of the world's popul...

I read this years ago and loved it. I thought it was a great self contained novel that just made internal sense. I've delayed re-reading it for years because I was afraid it wouldn't hold up. But I decided to pull it off the shelf this weekend and try it...Yep. It's still great. Was I as emotionally attached as with other authors? Actually, yes, even if Wilson doesn't capture the emotional payoff they do. But that's within some great thoughts on playing with time and inevitability.One of my favo...

As a people immersed in a unidirectional chronology, we have often dreamed of breaking that barrier and travelling at will throughout time. With those dreams have come the inevitable questions: What happens to us if we alter our own past? If you cause events to occur which prevent your own birth, do you cease to exist? If you do, how could you have travelled into your past to prevent your birth? Thus our linear conception of time is knotted up in an impossible circular logic which many sci-fi wr...

I almost wouldn't classify The Chronoliths as science fiction, even though it takes place in a not-so-distant future where gigantic monuments start appearing all over the world, apparently sent to the past by an enigmatic figure called Kuin. Although these 'Chronoliths' are the driving force of the story, their existence and purpose is never fully explained. What the story is really about is what effect the Chronoliths have on the life of Scott, an (the) average guy. Scott is worrying about find...

This is a great read by a great writer. I haven't enjoyed an SF author playing with time and space this much since reading Stephen Baxter. Not only is the book a real thriller, it is full of people who seem real enough to be familiar to you. Beyond a mind-bending plot with some speculative nine-dimensional physics to pull you in, where in the future effects the past in order to bring about a certain future, it is also an amazingly accurate study of human beings and various cultures and their rea...

Really creative sci-fi is rare these days, and The Chronoliths is one of those rare pleasures. "Software designer Scott Warden is living with his family in early twenty-first century Thailand after his latest contract has ended. He and his friend Hitch Paley are among the first to find an enormous monolith which appears out of nowhere in the jungle. On closer examination, it is found to be a monument made of a mysterious, indestructible substance. It bears an inscription commemorating a military...

Robert Charles Wilson is a competent writer who produces few of those wincing moments—too common in science fiction—when the prose slips into clumsy phrasing or slides into cliché and worn-out convention. As with all of Wilson's books, the story is clever too, building on a worthwhile premise with well-managed plotting. My trouble is always with Wilson's narrators. I guess their voices have SOME distinction. They don't sound like mouthpieces exactly, but, ultimately, as they become familiar, the...

I really enjoyed this book. This is my third Robert Charles Wilson book after Spin (which I liked immensely) and Axis (which I was a bit disappointed by). I like how the author can completely disrupt the entire Earth's society and yet still present relatable characters. There was a bit of hand-waving about the mechanics of the chronoliths, especially regarding (view spoiler)[cause and effect (hide spoiler)].Overall, this made me eager to seek out other books by Wilson (even if I'm going to skip

Good writing. Good story idea and interesting concepts are toyed with. The only downsides are (1) the main character, Scott, is carefree and emotionless about everything which led me to not care for him, and (2) there is a lot of human minutiae which, while well written, does not add much to the story. I wish RCW had replaced this stuff with more information about the senders of the chronoliths. Still, I liked this book and I continue to think of RCW as one of the most talented SF writers.

I read this book in less than 24 hours. I normally only manage to read books that quickly when I am on holiday, so you can see how compelling a read this one was.How great too that it's only 301 pages long. So many books these days seem unnecessarily long but this is just the perfect length.

I started reading this in 1997 and quietly slipped into a coma from which I've only recently awakened.

“The Kuin was—well, it beggars description”. The future is written. Deal with it. Future tyrant Kuin trolls the past by sending sky-high stone monuments to his many victories twenty years back in time and humanity reacts as calmly as you’d expect. That’s the macro backstory, and it’s certainly not neglected, but Wilson places equal emphasis on the micro human impact of such a boffo concept. This is a novel about fate. Much of the noir fiction I read is also about fate although that tends to be t...

I was so impressed with Wilson's Darwinia, that I read this one immediately afterwards - and it is also great. The concept of the self-fulfilling chronoliths is interesting enough, but not as strong as the concepts in Darwinia. However, what really impressed me was the fully developed and sympathetic character of Scott Warden, as he does what he needs to, in order take care of himself and his loved ones in a gradually declining society. I found his pursuit of the missing Kait especially gripping...

Monuments commemorating military victories begin to appear around the world. Mysteriously they commemorate dates in the future and reference unknown individuals. An amazing premise. In execution not exactly what I was anticipating, but certainly entertaining and a good read. Perhaps more about time’s effect on a man’s life as opposed to a really inextricable focus on the aforementioned premise.

This was an entertaining read with some interesting ideas, and I think the storytelling was first rate. I enjoyed reading about how the global unrest at the center of the plot developed over the years, and how people all over the world were yielding to pessimism and a feeling of inevitability. Throughout the book, the author sets up a few cunning traps and keeps the reader wondering about what the major plot twist will be. I entertained various possible scenarios; and was fairly confident that o...