This thought-provoking collection not only takes us into the past and the future, but also explores what might happen if we attempt to manipulate time to our own advantage.
These stories show what happen once you start to meddle with time and the paradoxes that might arise. It also raises questions about whether we understand time, and how we perceive it. Once we move outside the present day, can we ever return or do we move into an alternate

In 1795 a convict ship leaves England for New South Wales in Australia. Nearing its destination, it encounters a savage storm but, miraculously, their battered ship stays afloat and limps into Sydney Harbour. Here, the convicts rebel, overpower the crew and make their escape, destroying the ship in the process. Fleeing the sinking vessel with only the clothes on their backs, the survivors struggle ashore.

Among the escaped convicts, seething

The Dictator of Earth and his retinue have been banished into deep space on a 1,000-year voyage of no return to Alpha Centauri. The spacecraft has been completely automated to prevent tampering with the controls, and in any case, all of the original inhabitants of the craft will be long-dead by the time they reach their new home. Only their descendants will survive to propagate this brave new world. Or will they? A grand space adventure!

Darrell Schweitzer interviews seventeen science fiction writers. Included are scintillating conversations with: George R. R. Martin, James Morrow, Jack Dann, Geoffrey A. Landis, Joe W. Haldeman, Zoran Zivkovic, Esther M. Friesner, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Harry Turtledove, Gregory Frost, Tom Purdom, D. G. Compton, Robert J. Sawyer, Charles Stross, Brian Herbert, Kevin J. Anderson, and Howard Waldrop.