When fourteen-year-old genius Artemis Fowl realizes that the only cure for his mother’s case of Spelltropy lies in a species of lemur that Artemis made extinct eight years ago, there is only one solution: Grab your 80-year-old, elfin-police-captain-friend Holly Short and trick her into traveling back in time to stop your formerly evil, ten-year-old self from killing off the last of the all-cure lemurs.

Author Eoin Colfer does a masterful job presenting a single nonbranching, static timeline, complete with three consistent causal loops (further described in our tag notes for this story). But really, Eoin, you missed the shuttle on “the kiss”! With the help of N°1, Artemis can time travel, so if you're intent on his first romantic kiss coming from Holly Short, couldn’t N°1 have brought Holly’s actual fourteen-year-old self into the story? Might have even presented an opportunity for a fourth causal loop: Fourteen-year-old Holly kissees fourteen-year-old Artemis, but only because fifteen-year-old Artemis had already told thirteen-year-old Holly that they would enjoy it.
Michael Main
Oh, bless my bum-flap. You’re time travelers.

Tags

(14)

Variants

(4)
  1. The Time Paradox by Eoin Colfer (Hyperion Books for Children, July 2008).
  2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . written by Eoin Colfer
  3. alternative, more widely known, title.
    Artemis Fowl and the Time Paradox by Eoin Colfer (Puffin, August 2008).
  4. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . written by Eoin Colfer
  5. audio reading.
    Artemis Fowl and the Time Paradox by Eoin Colfer (Listening Library, July 2010) [publication date from Amazon UK].
  6. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . written by David Wyatt
    . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . narrated by Nathaniel Parker
  7. audio reading.
    Artemis Fowl and the Time Paradox by Eoin Colfer (Penguin Books Ltd, July 2014).
  8. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . written by David Wyatt
    . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . narrated by Gary O’Brien

Indexer Notes

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  1. Release—Both the UK and the US first releases list only 2008 as the publication date on the copyright page. However, the ISFDB documents the US release as being in July and the UK release as being in August. Several sites list an originally scheduled UK date of 10 June 2008, but we’re sticking with the US as the debut release.
  2. Title—Not even the publishers can get the title straight. The 2008 UK hardback has the title Artemis Fowl and the Time Paradox on the cover, the spine, and the title page. The 2008 US hardback has simply the large words Artemis Fowl followed by The Time Paradox in a smaller font. Because of the author’s European home base, and the originally scheduled earlier UK release date, we use Artemis Fowl and the Time Paradox as the canonical handle, despite the earlier actual release of the US edition (which we list as Artemis Fowl: The Time Paradox).
  3. Cover—The US edition, which we count as the debut release, appeared with two covers. We avoided that duplicity by selecting the UK cover as the main image for the ITTDB listing.
  4. Controversy—I found it disquieting that Holly, an 80-year-old Elf police captain, gives 14-year-old Artemis his first romantic kiss. In the story, this is not questioned or examined, partly because unpredictable effects of time travel have de-aged Holly’s body to perhaps 18 while Artemis has grown older to a similar age. But mentally, they are still their original ages, and even if Artemis doesn’t admit it to himself, he is still an inexperienced teen while Holly is still an adult in a position of authority and responsibility.