If you haven’t been around on Facebook or Twitter, you might not be privy to the stuffers we’ve been offering for the stockings on your ears.  Our friend at Martha’s Bookshelf, who recently reviewed Graham Storrs’ TimeSplash, just hosted a giveaway of the same, whose results you can see here.  And in the same giving spirit, reviewer Nerfreader, who covered TimeSplash in November, is currently giving away three copies of the book, narrated by the lovely Emma Newman.  And there’s a bonus: the winners also receive access to the mp3 of the prequel short story, “Party Time,” read by the author himself.

Go and enter already!

Mr Storrs also took the time to answer some questions for Nerfreader.  An excerpt:

“Party Time” reminds us that side effects can be more important than the original action. While listening, I thought of the movie Primer, which also follows brilliantly destructive PhD students. Can any good come from time travel or is it something students should be dissuaded from pursuing? Its discovery doesn’t seem to have improved the TimeSplash world.

In film and literature, there is hardly a single instance where time travel actually turns out well. You’d think that would be a warning to us all, yet people keep on trying to make it happen! There are physicists who believe that the Universe must somehow forbid paradoxes from happening, even if time travel was allowed (no matter how hard you try, when you pull that gun on your grandmother, something will stop you). I’m sure there is a great comedy novel in there somewhere. But, even if Stephen Hawking now believes that time travel might just be possible, the mind-bending technologies and staggering energies involved mean it won’t be happening any time soon – unless somebody comes back and shows us how. The thing is, humankind has explored just about everything within reach and we crave that next big adventure. The only places left to go now are Time and Space. And I don’t think any amount of dissuading will stop people trying to go there.

The full interview can be read here.  Thanks to Martha and Nerfreader!