Fiction – Bad Times

 Written by Chuck Dixon

Chuck Dixon

Chuck Dixon, a master of adventure storytelling, launches a new series of time-travelling thrillers with Cannibal Gold. His heroes, a team of special forces veterans, are hired for an unusual job: to go far back in time to rescue a team of scientists who ventured into a pre-historic environment and missed their return appointment. The Rangers quickly learn that the scientists had been misinformed about whether or not there were humanoid residents in the pre-historic setting. They found themselves facing fierce cannibals in the challenging environment. Not only do they have to get themselves back to The Now, they have to avoid leaving evidence of their presence in the past. Unfortunately, not everything goes according to plan, especially for one of the team.

Dixon pulls out a rip-roaring story. He makes use of the problems of time-travel in making the story suspenseful: the difficulties that can arise from tampering with the past are not just hypothetical in this story. The adventure will keep you reading.

 Written by Chuck Dixon

Blood Red Tide continues the adventures of the time-hopping Rangers who are working for the scientist siblings, Caroline and Morris Tauber. The Taubers had invented the device used in time-traveling, but they had been financed by the mysterious Sir Neal Harnesh. And Harnesh, after the end of the first mission, had kicked the Taubers off the project and took the Tauber Tube (the time machine) and its power source, an illegal nuclear reactor. The Taubers no longer trust Harnesh and want to build a new Tauber Tube of their own. But how to finance it? The gold buried at the site of their first adventure would not be enough to cover all their costs. So they and the Rangers lay plans to make a raiding excursion to the ancient past and collect a legendary Phoenician treasure that had been lost at sea. For the team members that make this trip to the past, the recovery does not go smoothly – capture and sea-battles await them. Along the way, Caroline and Ranger Dwayne develop a powerful attraction.

Even though the team succeeds in gaining their legendary fortune and building their own operations, in the background, they are aware that Harnesh is hard after them. Dixon’s adventures never lose sight of their further goals. When you reach the end of the story, you are so hooked on the team’s situation that you can not wait to find out what happens next.

 Written by Chuck Dixon

Volume 3 of Bad Times, Avenging Angels tackles a breath-taking proposition for time-travel stories. If you really want to reshape the world so you can master it, what crucial events of the past would you change? In this adventure, Team Tauber learns that their mysterious nemesis, Sir Neal Harnesh, has decided to reshape the world by making sure that Jesus of Nazareth never lives to have a ministry or die on the cross. All of the benefits to the world that came from the history of Christianity could be wiped out, leaving it open to the mastery of Harnesh. Team Tauber knows they are the only ones who can prevent this. But they have to conduct their mission without leaving their footprints in history. Caroline and Dwayne face this drastic mission with the added emotional burden of being new parents: they have to protect their son as well, a child who has been affected by the time-traveling of his parents.

I don’t know that any other writer has actually tackled a time-travel story that deals with this hugely important nexus in time. Some stories have referenced time travelers going back in time to observe the crucifixion, but to actually change the event? That takes guts in story-telling. Dixon rises to the challenge he has set for himself.

 Written by Chuck Dixon

In Helldorado, Team Tauber gets very little breathing time after successfully putting the time-line right by preventing the premature elimination of Jesus of Nazareth. A time-traveling ally has told them that they need to return to the time and place of their first adventure, to rescue and bring back his father, their team-mate who had been left behind. Their endeavors are complicated by the kidnapping of Morris Tauber by a new player in the field. Whether the new player is an ally for them or for Harnesh, they cannot tell. But the Rangers plunge back into territory they thought they knew.

The challenge for our heroes this time is crossing far more territory than they had previously. They could not risk catching the attention of Harnesh or their new potential antagonist, so the Rangers would need to be inserted into the past far from their destination. Dixon gives them a whole zoo-full of prehistoric animals to encounter, from sabre-tooth tigers to giant aggressive beavers. Can they make it there and back again without creating serious harm to the time-line? This story pulls you along ruthlessly. You will not want to let go.