Description:
Paul Levinson's second novel, Borrowed Tides, is an enjoyable read. It has all of the qualities that a good one-chapter-a-night-before-bed novel should have: it's engrossing, educational, and thought provoking without being too heavy. The characters, who are traveling from Mars to Alpha Centauri on humankind's first interstellar voyage with only enough fuel for a one-way trip, are both believable and likeable. And although many of the ideas Levinson deals with--the paradoxes inherent in time travel, the group dynamics of a small crew isolated for a long period of time on a space ship, the applicability of quantum mechanical principles to macroscopic objects, children with special powers--are not new, and could even be considered trite, his handling of them is interesting enough to make revisiting them worthwhile. Levinson's erudition is apparent throughout the novel, and his allusions to Native American legend, the Bible, computer science, political theory, and Western physics and philosophy suggest that he is well versed in each of these disparate fields. Thus, like his first, this novel will be appreciated by hard-core technophiles and more well-rounded science fiction lovers as well. --Diana Gitig
|
