Unambitious time-travel SF that doesn’t push many boundaries—except those of the Macedonian Empire.
A student and his professor stumble across the secret of time travel and journey back to the era of Alexander the Great to try to rewrite history.
In 2026, American college student Derek assists professor Kibble with a high-speed spinning gizmo for processing honey and inadvertently discovers the secret to moving backward in time. Soon the pair have a unit that’s large enough to accommodate passengers and can be carried on a helicopter. Things are looking dire on the geopolitical scene, as a nuclear war looms involving Iran, Russia, China, and Western democracies. Derek and Kibble decide to rewrite history and create a unified, pro-freedom European superpower in the past to align with the United States. The key, determines Kibble, is Alexander the Great, who died at the age of 32 of a fluke illness in 323 B.C.E. after conquering and uniting much of the known world—which all came undone without him. Along with researcher Lex, the team travels to ancient Macedonia and explains everything to a sympathetic Alexander (who improbably takes the existence of time travelers in stride). He minds his health and uses the helicopter and guns imported from 2026 to firm up his empire and survive. But when the Americans return to the future, they find a dystopian police state. With more trips, including one back to the North American continent of 60,000 B.C.E., can the heroes do a reset good enough to make truth, justice, and the American way prevail? In Ray Bradbury’s 1952 story “A Sound of Thunder,” a careless time traveler steps on a butterfly eons ago and completely changes Earth’s history; Busby, who previously wrote Lost in Time: Trapped in a Prehistoric World (2019), has his characters in this SF adventure practically stomp metaphorical butterflies beneath their feet. For a while, it seems as if readers will get a darker tale akin to Ursula K. Le Guin’s 1971 novel The Lathe of Heaven, in which repeated godlike meddling makes reality more twisted and worse, but ultimately this is a utopian fantasy. However, it’s one that’s hampered by simplistic language and dialogue (“What I say around here goes. My word is the law!”), broad-brush characterizations, and naïve science.
Unambitious time-travel SF that doesn’t push many boundaries—except those of the Macedonian Empire.Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-79605-754-6
Page Count: 182
Publisher: Xlibris Corp
Review Posted Online: May 11, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.
A man walks out of a bar and his life becomes a kaleidoscope of altered states in this science-fiction thriller.
Crouch opens on a family in a warm, resonant domestic moment with three well-developed characters. At home in Chicago’s Logan Square, Jason Dessen dices an onion while his wife, Daniela, sips wine and chats on the phone. Their son, Charlie, an appealing 15-year-old, sketches on a pad. Still, an undertone of regret hovers over the couple, a preoccupation with roads not taken, a theme the book will literally explore, in multifarious ways. To start, both Jason and Daniela abandoned careers that might have soared, Jason as a physicist, Daniela as an artist. When Charlie was born, he suffered a major illness. Jason was forced to abandon promising research to teach undergraduates at a small college. Daniela turned from having gallery shows to teaching private art lessons to middle school students. On this bracing October evening, Jason visits a local bar to pay homage to Ryan Holder, a former college roommate who just received a major award for his work in neuroscience, an honor that rankles Jason, who, Ryan says, gave up on his career. Smarting from the comment, Jason suffers “a sucker punch” as he heads home that leaves him “standing on the precipice.” From behind Jason, a man with a “ghost white” face, “red, pursed lips," and "horrifying eyes” points a gun at Jason and forces him to drive an SUV, following preset navigational directions. At their destination, the abductor forces Jason to strip naked, beats him, then leads him into a vast, abandoned power plant. Here, Jason meets men and women who insist they want to help him. Attempting to escape, Jason opens a door that leads him into a series of dark, strange, yet eerily familiar encounters that sometimes strain credibility, especially in the tale's final moments.
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.Pub Date: July 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-90422-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
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The impossibility of pigeon-holding Ray Bradbury as a science fiction writer is once again emphasized in this charming philosophical study of adolescence. Douglas Spaulding at twelve is suddenly excitingly aware of the world around him, of the magic and wonder and understanding that had passed him by. His neighbors take on new dimensions. Death and old age as universal factors of living shock him to the depths. A country summer becomes something that must be seized and recorded with every passing hour. A friend who has been all-compassing moves from town; it is almost more than he can bear — and he turns to his small brother with unexpected attachment. The dandelion wine becomes a symbol of successive events, week by week. This is not a novel. Rather is it a blend of nostalgic recall — very definitely an adult remembering, interpreting, philosophizing over the brief period of awakening that belongs to adolescence, and episodes about incidents, often horrors, related to other people in the town. There's a succession of murders of young women; there's a newcomer, an old lady, who learns through the children not to cling to her past; there's a strange love affair between an elderly spinster and a young newspaper man; there's an ancient whose vivid reliving of his past brings history to life for the boy listeners. Douglas is now a central figure, now a participant, and frequently merely a passer-by in the lives of his elders. This demands rather special handling and understanding. The poignant quality of Bradbury's writing, the evocative elements that will capture others than his usual audience, combine to make this an unusual reading experience.
Pub Date: March 26, 1975
ISBN: 0380977265
Page Count: 290
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: March 20, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1975
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