The Smithsonian Institution: A Novel

Rating:
Summary: A clever entertainment
Review: A clever "museum-based" book is Gore Vidal's 1998 novel, The Smithsonian Institution. In this fictional invention, set in 1939, Vidal imagines a Smithsonian where the exhibits come to life each day at closing time, and where the museum staff is working with the exhibit characters and real-life scientists, such as Oppenheimer and Einstein, to develop the atomic bomb. Into all this steps T., a teenage boy from St. Alban's School who has absentmindedly scribbled the key equation for the bomb in the margins of his algebra final. When the exhibits come to life, T. joins them in their time. Thus, his first after-hours wandering finds him in an old west exhibit, where he is nearly roasted alive by a group of native americans (The woman who rescues him, who, it turns out, is Mrs. Grover Cleveland, calls him "Veal" for the remainder of the story). In the course of his work, T. discovers a means successfully to time-travel. (A previous, unsuccessful, attempt at time travel by Smithsonian staff rescued Lincoln from Ford's Theatre the moment he was struck with the bullet, with the result that a slightly addled Lincoln now presides in the bowels of the musuem as curator of ceramics). T. takes on himself to alter events so that the world wars do not happen; he prevents wars in Europe, but succeeds in moving Pearl Harbor forward by two years. As always, Vidal is incapable of writing a dull sentence, and this short (260 pgs.) novel marvelously combines great humor, clever conundrums, and serious questions. Vidal has no sacred cows, so some part of his impressions of historical figures and events is sure to offend any reader. Very enjoyable!

Rating:
Summary: A clever entertainment
Review: A clever "museum-based" book is Gore Vidal's 1998 novel, The Smithsonian Institution. In this fictional invention, set in 1939, Vidal imagines a Smithsonian where the exhibits come to life each day at closing time, and where the museum staff is working with the exhibit characters and real-life scientists, such as Oppenheimer and Einstein, to develop the atomic bomb. Into all this steps T., a teenage boy from St. Alban's School who has absentmindedly scribbled the key equation for the bomb in the margins of his algebra final. When the exhibits come to life, T. joins them in their time. Thus, his first after-hours wandering finds him in an old west exhibit, where he is nearly roasted alive by a group of native americans (The woman who rescues him, who, it turns out, is Mrs. Grover Cleveland, calls him "Veal" for the remainder of the story). In the course of his work, T. discovers a means successfully to time-travel. (A previous, unsuccessful, attempt at time travel by Smithsonian staff rescued Lincoln from Ford's Theatre the moment he was struck with the bullet, with the result that a slightly addled Lincoln now presides in the bowels of the musuem as curator of ceramics). T. takes on himself to alter events so that the world wars do not happen; he prevents wars in Europe, but succeeds in moving Pearl Harbor forward by two years. As always, Vidal is incapable of writing a dull sentence, and this short (260 pgs.) novel marvelously combines great humor, clever conundrums, and serious questions. Vidal has no sacred cows, so some part of his impressions of historical figures and events is sure to offend any reader. Very enjoyable!

Rating:
Summary: Historical Fiction or Science Fiction?
Review: Centering around a main character named T., The Smithsonian Institution is part science fiction and part historical fact. T. is a child blessed with a gift for mathematics, and is enlisted by the government to help with the Manhattan project in the early 1940's. T. soon finds himself immersed in a world of greater fantasy than reality. He is hamming it up with Abe Lincoln, and discussing physics theories with Albert Einstein. As he searches for a way to end the war and create a nuclear bomb, T. finds that stranger things than normal are happening at the Smithsonian. T. soon finds himself consumed with time travel and changing history to stop a war that he knows will have a deadly outcome for himself. Gore Vidal has written a wildly entertaining book but it is not for the unimaginative. The reader must be willing to follow Vidal on his sidetracks and accept whatever strange conclusion they may have without using the historical reality available for judgement. Anyone who enjoys history and science fiction will enjoy this book, as long as it is not looked to for strict historical accuracy.

Rating:
Summary: Beware This Whimsical Vidal
Review: Coming after the "Back to the Future" movie trilogy, with its perfectly placed conundrums and insanely ingenious plot twists, and after Stephen Fry's capricious "Making History," another good, fully thought-out alternative history, this Gore Vidal opus rather pales in comparison. Vidal tackles Big Physics, but gets immediately lazy and is unable and/or unwilling to flesh out the math and the scientific concepts. So we're left with a hodge-podge of famous characters, past presidents mostly, who behave arbitrarily and a plot that turns arbitrarily. What's the point? I don't know - "life's a silly game" maybe? This could have been an excellent book to give to your teenage son (if for no other reason than that it shows a kid doing something other than staring dumbly at his computer) but the graphic sex is probably something most parents wouldn't feel comfortable passing on to their "impressionable" offspring.

Rating:
Summary: Can paperback fiction get any worse?
Review: I bought this book on tape to pass the time on a road trip. Frankly, it would have been a more useful expenditure of my time to count breaks in the cornfields of South Dakota. Its prose was painful from nearly the first paragraph. The time travel was unconvincing and the plot well, plodded. Worst book I've read in years.

Rating:
Summary: My "take to bed" book
Review: I didn't expect a clever,involving story that is a great summing up of the strange history of our empire. Every night, I looked forward to reading myself to sleep with this wonderful novel. When I was a boy, I loved fantasy and science fiction, but 99.9% of it is wretched junk for precocious kids or slow-normal adults just up from comic books. This novel employs the devices and conventions of that genre, and drives along with the power of a brilliant, original mind. I was sorry to have it end.

Rating:
Summary: My "take to bed" book
Review: I didn't expect a clever,involving story that is a great summing up of the strange history of our empire. Every night, I looked forward to reading myself to sleep with this wonderful novel. When I was a boy, I loved fantasy and science fiction, but 99.9% of it is wretched junk for precocious kids or slow-normal adults just up from comic books. This novel employs the devices and conventions of that genre, and drives along with the power of a brilliant, original mind. I was sorry to have it end.

Rating:
Summary: Time Travel - Interesting Premise
Review: I found the idea of time travel through the Smithsonian Institution intriging and the book started out at a fast pace. However, about half way through it, the story slowed and I had to force myself to finish it.

Rating:
Summary: Time Travel Made (awfully) Easy!
Review: I only read this book because it was recommended by a friend -- ooh, she really owes me one, now! The science? was a joke. Leave it to GV to invent a protagonist brighter than Einstein. Want to move to a different century (and shoot, change world history while you're at it)? Just dial a knob or two and, poof, there you are. The whole book was a joke. One of the worst novels I've read in a long while.

Rating:
Summary: Time Travel Made (awfully) Easy!
Review: I only read this book because it was recommended by a friend -- ooh, she really owes me one, now! The science? was a joke. Leave it to GV to invent a protagonist brighter than Einstein. Want to move to a different century (and shoot, change world history while you're at it)? Just dial a knob or two and, poof, there you are. The whole book was a joke. One of the worst novels I've read in a long while.