Appel, Allen
Entry updated 16 December 2023. Tagged: Author.
(1945- ) US photographer and author whose Alex Balfour Time-Travel sequence – whose first four titles are Time after Time (1985), Twice Upon a Time (1988), Till the End of Time (1990) and In Time of War (2003) – hovers, as do so many tales of this sort, between sf and fantasy. The protagonist's visits (first to the Russian Revolution; then to the time of Mark Twain and General Custer, dealing en passant with the ethnic cleansing of Native Americans; then to Hiroshima, whose destruction he does not prevent, and which the Japanese people have coming to them; and finally to the American Civil War), are without sf explanation beyond a vague reference to the protagonist's genetic tendency to slide through time; but in the third tale Balfour's opportunity to intervene in the 1945 catastrophe (see World War Two) engages him potentially in the sort of time-track manipulation generally conceded to be an sf trope. What distinguishes the books from many others is their intense focus on the ethical dilemmas that must face any adult protagonist given the chance to manipulate time-tracks, to kill a butterfly and change the world.
The sequence is self-published [see Checklist below] from its fifth volume – the fourth by internal chronology, written in 1991 but rejected by Appel's then publisher – The Sea of Time (2012 ebook), in which Balfour's past destination is the doomed Titanic. [JC/RK/DRL]
Allen R Appel
born Bethlehem, Pennsylvania: 6 January 1945
works
series
Alex Balfour
- Time after Time (New York: Carroll and Graf, 1985) [Alex Balfour: hb/Tom McKeveny]
- Twice Upon a Time (New York: Carroll and Graf, 1988) [Alex Balfour: hb/Tom McKeveny]
- Till the End of Time (New York: Doubleday, 1990) [Alex Balfour: hb/Irving Freeman]
- In Time of War (New York: Carroll and Graf, 2003) [Alex Balfour: hb/]
- The Sea of Time (Scotts Valley, California: CreateSpace, 2012) [ebook: written 1991 but rejected by publisher: Alex Balfour: na/]
- The Test of Time (Scotts Valley, California: CreateSpace, 2015) [Alex Balfour: pb/]
individual titles
- Hellhound (New York: Avon Books, 1994) with Craig Roberts [Technothriller: pb/]
- In Time of War (New York: Carroll and Graf, 2003) [Alex Balfour: hb/]
links
previous versions of this entry