ONCE UPON A TIME TRAVELER:

Quantum Leap meets Stargate in this exciting–but thoroughly Bible-based–sci-fi romp through time.

Marcus Journey and Scott McNeal are supertalented physicists on the verge of making the scientific discovery of the century. Working with cutting-edge methods, the pair uses extremely powerful superconductors to tear holes in space, creating rifts, or portals, that allow for travel to other places and, more importantly, other times. On the other side of the world, Dr. Colin Patterson makes a startling archaeological discovery. In a cave in Peru, Patterson finds relics from a long-dead race of giants–a pile of human bones that evidences a massacre of epic proportions and a mysterious ancient construction site with frightening powers. Light eventually weaves these two threads together in a fantastic but believable tapestry. Even though the author’s narrative jumps between time and place–both in the contemporary world and in the distant past–he manages the quick shifts with remarkable dexterity, never losing the reader. Light’s handle on the sci-fi genre is sure, and he dazzles us with his technological detail and daring leaps of fancy. However, the reader gets an inkling that the book is not standard science-fiction fare on the first page, when Light dedicates his novel to the “glory and blessing” of Jesus Christ. The suspicion grows when McNeal, addressing a crowd of students, offers an “objective” defense of the so-called “young earth” theory–which corroborates the biblical narrative in suggesting that the earth is thousands, and not billions, of years old. (He later uses the Genesis story of creation to describe how some starlight could have been present at God’s creation of the world.) As it turns out, much of the science in Light’s novel is fueled by Christian doctrine and hence, for many, highly questionable. By book’s end, we realize that Journey has become a time-traveling missionary, going back into the past to save souls for Jesus. It’s all well and good–unless readers don’t like their science-fiction steeped in conservative Christianity.

Highly imaginative proselytism.