Falcon is a science-fiction Gamebook series by Mark Smith and Jamie Thomson, featuring a special agent codenamed Falcon who is a psychic member of the Time Police in the year 3033. You are graded in each book on how well you maintain the timeline, or at least a Close-Enough Timeline if everyone would otherwise have died.
In the year 3033, mankind mostly lives for fun. Few people work, and fewer still have to. One thing very heavily monitored, however, is time, which is policed by TIME, the Temporal Investigative and Monitoring Executive, one of the most important agencies in the Space Federation.
Yes, the Space Federation. Earth shares the galaxy with several species, and most have agreed that since Time Travel is possible, then having a planet be RetGoned would be a bad thing.
There are six books in the series, consisting of:
- 1. The Renegade Lord
- 2. Mechanon
- 3. The Rack of Baal
- 4. Lost in Time
- 5. The Dying Sun
- 6. At the End of Time
Falcon provides examples of:
- Archenemy: Yelov, through most of the books.
- Artificial Intelligence: CAIN (Cybernetic Artificial Intelligence Nexus), your onboard computer.
- Bittersweet Ending: Falcon, by then promoted to the head of his agency, disobeys orders in the last book to save his best friend, and gets demoted back to agent. He muses he'd rather do this anyway.
- Close-Enough Timeline: TIME prefers its agents to prevent deviations altogether, but will accept certain compromises.
- Crossover: During The Homeward Journey through The Multiverse in the fourth book, one of the dimensions Falcon visits is Orb, and Falcon can even acquire a magic talisman that No Sells mind control. Pity it nevers comes up again in later books. Maybe it ran out of magic?
- Da Chief: Yelov, Jobanque, and you in the fifth book.
- Physical God: "Cosmic Being" Baal, antagonist of the third book. Falcon and TIME employ Technobabble and use quotes around "god-like", "Demon-Lord" and other descriptions, but have no true explanation as to what Baal is or why.
- Psychic Powers: All TIME agents require them, to sense the eddies and flow of the Void Between the Worlds. In addition, Falcon can use Power of Will and Thinkstrike.
- Sealed Evil in a Can: Baal, who was sealed in "The Rack" by the Precursors. The plot of the book has Falcon putting the pieces back together to imprison Baal in it once again.
- Time Paradox: Usually just erase you from the timeline, and possibly Earth.
- Time Police: TIME, of course.
- Time Travel: Comes with the job.
