THE WORLD OF THE HOME TIME

TIME'S CHARIOT

by Ben Jeapes. Published 2008 by David Fickling Books

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Background

THE WORLD OF THE HOME TIME

Opinion varies on the world of the Home Time. Some would consider it to be paradise, some regard it as hell and most see it as somewhere in between, in the unlikely event of their thinking about it at all. As Time's Chariot puts it:

"Thousands of years of disunity, war, nationalism, religious differences, all officially done away with, and even if there were still people who would as soon kill each other as look at each other, they could be kept safely apart. So in that regard, planet Earth was united, and it was an achievement worth celebrating."

One thing that most would agree on is that life is crowded. Twenty billion people live on Earth and the available ground space is either unuseable because of the excesses of previous centuries, a designated wilderness area or an ecopolis. Food is grown on undersea farms, vast expanses of reclaimed seabed under forcefield bubbles, so that most people can at least live on the surface and see the sun and sky from time to time. The space nations, the colonies in space descended from the first space explorers to set out from Earth, have long since barred any further mass immigration from their ancestral world; only first-time retirees with wealth and experience to contribute are allowed out. It is an imperfect situation which many would like to see changed, but for most people life isn't too bad if you don't think too hard about it. Your every want is taken care of, from the cradle to the grave, and the full resources of humanity's history are there on demand, though not necessarily in a form that people from previous centuries would recognise:

"The entfeed started automatically on his favourite channel as he went into the shower and he just caught the last few minutes of one of the leading soaps. He loved counting the anachronisms which he could then compare with Su once they got to work. Imperial Romans in motor cars, medieval knights with computers, that sort of thing. Today it was a Victorian lady going off to join a free love commune."

You have no real worries and you hardly have to think. What could be wrong with that?