Time CrimeH. Beam PiperOmniClassics · Literature
Time Crime
H. Beam PiperA suspicious slave purchase exposes crime across parallel histories.
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About the book
On an alternate Earth, the purchase of enslaved people for a plantation reveals an anomaly: their language and origins do not fit the world in which they have appeared. The discovery points toward traffickers moving victims between parallel timelines, a crime that threatens the secrecy on which paratime travel depends. The Paratime Police must trace a network whose operations exploit both technological advantage and societies accustomed to slavery. Investigation expands from the immediate evidence into questions of commercial complicity, political pressure, and control of privileged knowledge. Piper combines procedural detail with an elaborate system of alternate historical development. The story's tension comes from pursuing organized exploitation while the investigators themselves work within a civilization built on unequal access to other worlds.
- Trafficking and exploitation
- Parallel histories
- Institutional secrecy
Why read it
Read it for an investigation that makes the rules of alternate-world travel central to both the crime and its pursuit.
English text