All of an Instant has as its premise one of the most original concepts I've ever come across in a book. In the past 10 years I have read two sci fi books that radically rearrange my understanding of a concept.. One was Darwin's Radio by Greg Bear, whose treatment of the means of evolution caused him to be nominated for the 2000 Hugo award and won him the 2000 Nebula award. The other was Richard Garfinkle's 'All of an Instant,' which was not popular and receives very mixed reviews. In comparing the two, 'Darwin's Radio' pushes the envelope in understanding biological facts. 'All of an Instant' pushes the envelope in understanding a concept related to multiple dimensions, specifically time as a dimension. Many of us read enough science to have a framework upon which to constuct a reasonably comfortable understanding of the concepts of Darwin's Radio. The concepts of multidimensionality are not as familiar, and thus, reading in the absence of the pre-constructed framework of fact, it takes some cogitation to come up with our own makeshift framework upon which to hang the events and interpretations of the novel. Yet, 'All of An Instant' is as satisfying a book as one can imagine, and its originality should probably have put it on a par with any book published in 1999.

'All of an Instant' postulates a universe where an almost infinite number of small groups gain access to time travel and all use the power to further their own interests - just as power is usually used in the world that proceeds methodically down a unidirectional timeline at a steady pace, our own. The time-travelers can hop into Earth's timeline at any time from the dawn of Man on into the unimaginably distant future, a hundred thousand and more years from now.

Most readers are familiar with the concept that changing the past will change the present, and probably also with the hypothesis that parallel or alternative paths of history can be created. In 'All of an Instant', there are not so much multiple possible paths as a single extant path for the real world which is the result of all events which occurred in that path to date. Time-travellers continually interfere in the world and change the path. There may be an infinite number of possible paths, but the last event to occur due to interaction of the real world with one of the time-travelling groups selects the new, currently "real" path of history for Earth. Cultures in the real world appear and disappear abruptly at almost every given moment in time as the past is changed and either some culture exists for a period of time in the world's new timeline or never existed - but the groups that war with each other are in another space, so even though a time-travelling group's originating culture may have sadly taken on the status of "never existed" because of some other group's actions, the time-travellers from that non-existent culture yet exist. It usually becomes that group's goal to make its own culture exist once again, and this is, of course, antithetical to the goal of nearly every other group of time-travellers, who are trying to recreate the timeline in which their own cultures existed. Most of these groups plot and scheme to win for themselves the great weapons that exist at some point in the timeline of the current reality in order to defeat the other groups. Their acts to win the weapons whip the timeline of history into yet a new path, winking a million cultures into extinction yet again. The wars between groups go on literally forever in an endlessly changing world.

The concept hardest to grasp from the book is that we all have tails. Not physical tails, but tails in time. Most of us are familiar with Marley's ghost's long chains in Dickens' A Christmas Carol. The more heartless actions one commits, the longer the chains grew. In 'All of an Instant', our tails do not grow with actions, but automatically grow longer the older we get. At the far end of our tail is us as a baby. Where it attaches is us in this moment in time. Our tail in entirity comprises all the events in our life. In 'All of an Instant', weapons of war from The Instant are used to lop enemies' tails off short. This has the effect of limiting a person's memories only as far back as his tail goes. In most cases, if the tail is cut too short, the person becomes totally ineffective in combat because he remembers too little - and, of course, no longer functions well in normal life, either. In one episode of the book, a character's life becomes fractured like glass, all the pieces of his life in shards about him, and he must find a way to escape the thing causing the shattering effect before the piece holding the present becomes fractured to the point that he can no longer think.

Beyond the amazing premise and difficult exposition, the book has at its heart the profound question of whether the elements of humanity that are common to every thinking being can be made to count for more than our selfish self-serving interests. In our world, it rarely happens. In "The Instant," it never happened. Or could it happen? If the entire Instant was threatened, could these warring groups overcome their desperate and hopeless desire to restore the one and only real world to their own vision of "rightness" and instead work together to create a world that all can accept? In the book's mind-bending setting, the author raises a question we should all ask ourselves, and manages to find through a trio of most personable and unusual heros an answer we can wish would serve in our world.

The book is one of the most rewarding I've ever read from several standpoints. Still, I wouldn't recommend 'All of an Instant' to everyone. Someone in the mood for a little light reading should not embark upon the journey - 'All of an Instant' requires thought to understand the concept the author uses as the foundation of his book, and that isn't quite consistent with the idea of a "light read." However, probably the person who enjoys fundamentally unique concepts, novels that comment on important aspects of our society, hopeful books, books that resolve themselves sensationally, and who, beyond all that, also takes some pleasure in knowing they have mastered understanding of an unusual concept, simply must read this book, or be the poorer for it. ( )