As a kid during the Cold War Era, it was common to see my whole class of fellow students diving under our desks during a practice drill for anticipated nuclear destruction. Was I the only one to question the logic of this drill? Would we survive under our desks if everything was vaporized? This short novel presents the next step. Waking up after the blast as one of the few survivors and trying to evaluate what has happened. The author enables us to crawl around the mind of this survivor as he pieces together his today and tomorrow almost 200 years after he fell asleep. The copy that I received needed some additional editorial help. I thank the author and LibraryThing for a complimentary copy. ( )

Interesting start to a story about a man who wakes up almost 200 years in earth's future. He doesn't know why he is there or what has happened to the world. So far he has spend a lot of time regretting his life choices and I am interested in where the author is going to go with the rest of the story. ( )

When I read [Robert King's] [Time Ahead] my first thought was Rip van Winkle. The idea of falling to sleep and waking up in another time. As I read on I realized that I missed the existentialism that was so present in my younger years. Reading this was like a breath of fresh air for me. This may sound odd since it is a dark and depressing view to most people. The style [King] wrote it was truly engaging and there were points when the irony made me laugh out loud. This type of writing is very rare to come across and even more having it done well. ( )

The story is a whole jumble of depressing cliches about the worst in mankind. Even the protagonist is not even remotely likable . Some more editing would have helped, but would not have rescued the disorganized narrative . ( )

It is hard to pin down what the message being conveyed in Time Ahead by Robert King is exactly. Is it the feeling of loss, squandered time, human technology gone astray, or false promises of religion? I am inclined to believe that it is all of these, and these messages are conveyed in a very short read. Set in 2187, this is a modern day rendition of the Rip Van Winkle story, where our lone character wakes after a 182 year slumber. The world is bereft of oil, the sky is a blue haze of radiation, and the cities are left in rubble, with a handful of humans left to live in squalor and with little hope, while the genetic mutation called transhumans have left them to slowly die out. This is stated to be the first part in many installations of the Memoirs of Being series, and it has left me yearning to read the the next chapters. As dystopian tales go, this particular story could actually come true in my mind, and that is what chills me to the bone. It is well crafted, yet abstract-and leaves little room for hope for the future of the character. I highly recommend this series, as it may possibly be a guide to what our future here on earth holds.

This book was given to me through the LibraryThing member's giveaway program in exchange for an honest review. ( )