Reading The Gone World both annoyed and frustrated me. The premise is that during the Reagan Administration, the “Star Wars” initiative resulted in two amazing breakthroughs: Deep Space and Deep Time. The U.S. was able to secretly send spacecraft across the galaxy (Deep Space) and send time travelers into the future (Deep Time). So far, so good. But time travelers return to the present with reports that a disaster called the Terminus destroys Earth and everything on it. Special Agent Shannon Moss investigates murders related to the disappearance of spaceships and suffers a grave injury when she travels into the future. Tom Sweterlitsch needs to learn that sometimes Less is More. The plot gyrates to different time periods. Characters morph into doppelgängers shaky divergent futures as the Terminus draws closer and closer. Everything becomes unglued and doom approaches. There’s a pretty good novel hiding in the 388 pages of The Gone World. But it would take a good editor to fix all the confusion in this SF novel. GRADE: C-