History Literature / TheWaySeries

* LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters: Including lots of named bit characters who only appear a couple of times.

* TheGreatPoliticsMessUp: In the novel's version of the twenty-first century, the United States enters a nuclear war with the Soviet Union. Also, The Berlin Wall still seems to be up, due to West German personnel on the Stone.

* PowerTrio: The ''Zampolits'' have Belozersky as Id, Vielgorsky as Ego and Yazykov as Superego.

The series centers around an asteroid called the Stone that suddenly appears on the galactic scene and enters orbit around Earth. However, as the NATO scientists who explore the Stone soon discover, the human-built facilities inside the Stone may not have come from ''their'' future, but that of an alternate Earth. The libraries in the Stone tell of a nuclear war that has yet to occur in their time, leaving said scientists the task of changing the course of their own future.

* ''Legacy ''(1995, a {{prequel}} to Eon)

* IWantMyJetPack: Patricia says the second chamber, “just doesn’t look that much like the future.” She’s somewhat justified in this case, though, since the second chamber architecture was built to resemble twentieth-century earth; technology in other parts of the Stone is more advanced.

* AlternateHistory: Patricia ended up in a world where AlexanderTheGreat survived his illness and lived to old age - changing the whole of history.

* {{NATO}}: Helped the U.S. gain control over the Stone before the USSR.

* AppliedPhlebotinum: Patricia has a device that measures the value of Pi. The problem is Pi is a constant - the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. Unless someone back on earth discovered that Pi ''isn't'' a constant (and what an upending of Mathematics THAT would be...), there's no reason for such a device to exist.
** AlienGeometries: The circumference/diameter ratio is only a constant in Euclidean geometry. Some seriously warped spacetime is encountered at various points, and variation in the value of that ratio is a valid (if awkward) way of measuring how warped it is.

* IdiotBall: Wise, JamesBond-ish Olmy, - uploading a [[spoiler:Jart]] into his brain and thinking he can contain it.

** AlienGeometries: Pi only has its familiar value of 3.141592653589... in Euclidean geometry. Some seriously warped spacetime is encountered at various points, and variation in the value of Pi is a valid (if awkward) way of measuring how warped it is.

Oh, and the descendants of humanity are still living in the asteroid, down a corridor in the last chamber that extends '''beyond''' the end of the asteroid. And they've been waiting a lot time to come back home...

* WhatHappenedtoTheMouse: Once the traitor is uncovered, that particular plot pretty much goes away. You never find out what happens to the traitor.

* UnableToCry: Olmy is engineered not to cry, but says when he actually watched The Death happen it was the first time he ever ''wanted'' to.

* TheGodsMustBeLazy: Whatever the powers that run the universe are, they send [[spoiler: Mirsky]] to go tell everyone that The Way is interfering.

* RagnarokProofing: [[spoiler: Axis City does send someone along now and then to check up on things in the city, but when the library's computer is programmed to handle the repair of a man who had half his head shot off on the offchance that medical services doesn't come when it has been summoned - ''that's some serious contingency programming''.]]

* SpaceAmish: Played with in The Naderites. They keep themselves a tech bracket a little above the 20th century, but below the rest of Axis City.

* AlternateHistory: Patricia ended up in a world where AlexanderTheGreat survived his illness and lived to old age - changing the whole history.

* DeathIsCheap: Axis City citizens are granted two times brought back from the dead, and after that they spend eterity in city memory, a computer network which people don't seem to mind living in and can still communicate with those who are still corporeal.

* Eon (1985)
* Eternity (1988)
* Legacy (1995, a {{prequel}} to Eon)
* The Way of All Ghosts (1999, a short story)