Branch Point

Rating:
Summary: so good I got carsick trying to finish it on the train!
Review: "Branch Point" is what the series "Sliders" *ought* to have been. This is the cleverest treatment of time-travel and its inherent paradoxes that I've ever read, and the narrator's dry wit makes this book a sheer pleasure to read.

Rating:
Summary: Poorly written, poor character development
Review: 3 youths are sent back from 2062 to 1962 to stop Kennedy's mistake in allowing nuclear war. Plot is thin. Individual characters are not developed.One main character (out of 3) dies, and this occupies 2 small paragraphs. Wordy, yet little substance. Complete waste of money.

Rating:
Summary: Non-scientific speculative fiction at its best
Review: Crafting a book to be both idealistic and pessimistic seems like a tall order but Branch Point wrangles with both extreme outlooks. The human race's inability to escape the lure of nuclear destruction pervades this book-in Clee's vision, once we were armed ourselves with these weapons, we were doomed to use them But the notes of hope and grace that her characters express give the book the feel of an idealistic manifesto. Quite a nice balancing act. The addition of historical personages does not distract from the overall picture as in so many books. The private personas of the Kennedy brothers are deftly handled and help flesh out the stresses of the Cuban missile crisis. Although this is clearly the realm of science fiction, there is no science in the book. Scientists create a time machine, full stop. If you want to know how time machines work, pick another book. If you want see what people determined to prevent the earth's destruction do with such an invention, then pick up Branch Point.

Rating:
Summary: A romp
Review: Ever have the fantasy of going back in time and fixing something from history? My own favorite is trying to prevent the Civil War. Branch Point takes that idea and gives it a twist -- the heroes prevent the nuclear war that (in their alternate future) came from the Cuban Missile Crisis, but then had to keep doing it again and again as the world insisted repeatedly on obliterating itself.

This book, like Overshoot, is probably of more interest to Boomers than younger folks, as much of its appeal comes from the heroes living through the '60s, early and late. I mean, what person now in his or her '40s did not, as a child, want to meet and talk with Jack Kennedy? The treatment of Kennedy, incidentally, is in considerable depth, depicting a realistic outgrowth of his less delightful characteristics as well as the Camelot image. The characters of Jeffrey and of the narrator's Russian lover also come clear and deep.

One of the twists to the story is when the last jump is made, and the last preventive fix is in place, and the book ends -- and you realize where YOU are living, compared to where the heroine now is. Less serious than Overshoot, Branch Point moves faster and is more of a lark.

Rating:
Summary: Sophmoric
Review: I can only imagine Mona Clee as a 19 year old idealistic liberal (nothing wrong with that) with a masters in history. One of her characters lives into her 90's, but her depth of personality, sense of history as lived, and experience never passes that of your average college student.

Clee's grasp of recorded history is sound, but historic figures are painted with a casual brush, and fictional characters are two dimensional. I never did figure out what Daria was doing there, except to serve as a place holder.

Rating:
Summary: Great book!
Review: I loved this book. I especially liked Clee's keen grasp of recent history. I even learned a couple of things. Without giving anything away, I can say that the history courses I took (during the height of the cold war) never mentioned those particular Russian forts. If you are interested in recent social history or alternate history/time travel this book should interest you. It is well-written and the first line of the book is one of the best hooks I've ever read. I just wish I could get a hardback copy.

Rating:
Summary: A feast for time-travel/alternate-world junkies!
Review: I'll read any novel involving time travel or alternate worlds, but this one's at the top of my list. The depth of historical detail is impressive -- Clee certainly did her homework. As a San Franciscan, I thoroughly enjoyed how the final "branch point" in the book (no spoilers!) made use of a little-known but pivotal event in California history. The characters were vivid and believable (especially the narrator, Anna), the pacing of the story just brisk enough, and the book wound up with a very satisfying ending.

Rating:
Summary: Provocative and Scary
Review: In "Branch Point," two young heroines and a hero live in the year 2062, in a parallel universe. In their universe, President John F. Kennedy severely miscalculated during the Cuban Missile Crisis. There was a catastrophic nuclear war in this universe, and pretty much all surface life was killed off, except for some lichens. The only human survivors are left inside an underground complex, which is simply called The Bunker. Fortunately, this bunker contains some real scientific geniuses, and they are eventually able to create a time machine. They use this time machine to send the three young people back to 1962, where they talk some sense into JFK. This conversation causes a "branch point," which makes the home universe of the three young people forever inaccessible to them, but at least creates a universe where there was no nuclear war. This new universe, incidentally, looks exactly like ours -- until the next time they need the time machine. They use the time machine to prevent war several times, and the branch points they exploit involve Bobby Kennedy's assassination in 1968, and in Russia, Boris Yeltsin's election by acclaim in 1991. Then, in 2013, there's another crisis looming...

Mona Clee has written a book for us about the most important things. Most of us, when we hear the phrase "the most important things," automatically think of some homey image of raising a family in the suburbs, or possibly a religious belief you hold dear, or, if you're incredibly far-seeing, maybe a charitable organization for feeding impoverished children across the world. Mona Clee helps us to see that we're missing the big picture by thinking this way. The most important thing to worry about is nuclear war. None of the other things we imagine to be important will even exist if there's a nuclear war. In her book, the heros have a time machine to help prevent a nuclear war. Do you have a time machine? (If you do, please e-mail me). If you don't, you need to think about the message Mona Clee is presenting here. Human nature is not going to change. Therefore, nuclear war is almost certainly inevitable. If it ever happens, then we all need to start thinking about the basics. Think about growing your own food indoors, think about shelter. And if you have free time, you might want to spend some of it looking at oncology sites on the internet, just to be safe... Just to drive home the reality of what Mona Clee is talking about -- if you can find a copy, look for a video called "Threads," which was a BBC made-for-television movie about nuclear war, made in 1985 by Barry Hines. It's so graphic, it makes "The Day After" look like "The Sound of Music" by comparison.

Mona Clee's book is both terrifying and entertaining. Sometimes the characters can be a little flighty, and unattractively immature, but I don't think that's very significant. Her main goal is clearly to get her readers thinking about nuclear war. Well, as you can see from this review, her book worked on me. Two thumbs up.

Rating:
Summary: Fantastic!
Review: Mona is a wildly inventive author, and this book proves it. Like Overshoot, a powerful cautionary tale with incredible plot twists and turns. Great speculative alternate history.

Rating:
Summary: Lots of Fun! Highly Recommended!
Review: This is a time travel/alternate worlds book that is highly entertaining. The cover plug is right on about "beautiful, poetic prose" but the writing style is also very accessible and draws you right into the story. The book has a serious side in addition to the humor and to Clee's vivid re-creation of several period in recent (and not so recent) history. I hate books that are obviously written with sequels in mind, and this isn't one of them. Hopefully there will be one -- I spotted one place where I think Clee left the door open for a second book, not as free of the spectre of nuclear war as the one surviving main character would have wished.