Wesley Britton's Blog - Posts Tagged "time-travel"

The Grandfather Paradox: A Time Travel Story
Steven Burgauer
Publisher: Battleground Press
Published: January 17, 2017
ISBN: 978-1542454476
ASIN: B01MR40744
https://www.amazon.com/Grandfather-Pa...

Reviewer: Dr. Wesley Britton

In 2016, I had the pleasure of reviewing two of Steven Burgauer’s novels, the World War II set Nazi Saboteurs on the Bayou and the story of a Neanderthal family in Night of the Eleventh Sun. Both books were very different in both style and substance. And neither is really comparable to the achievement of The Grandfather Paradox.

For one matter, both of Burgauer’s previous stories were fairly well locked into specific places and times. Not so The Grandfather Paradox. While the book’s subtitle signals a time travel adventure, it takes some time, as it were, for this element of the story to be introduced. In fact, the book is really two books sandwiched together.

The book opens with Andu Nehrengel captaining a spaceship exploring a remote part of the galaxy. Then his crew mutinies and forces him off the ship in a small runabout which crash-lands on an alien planet. There, Andu has to survive attacks by large carnivorous alien bird-beasts before he meets three beautiful female human clones who are also marooned on the planet. Andu learns the clones are the lone survivors of a Mormon ship that had been set out to find a new home for the church. On the clones’ ship, Andu learns much more which leads him and one of the beautiful clones to leap through both space and time to, in part, find the gene that will correct a deadly virus Andu is carrying.

Along the way, readers who like hard science in their science fiction are rewarded with in-depth theoretical discussions that make cloning, time travel, and space exploration understandable and plausible. For some, perhaps the physics lessons might seem to bog down the story. For me, I felt I was being educated while going along with the fantastic and very unpredictable events. After all, the whole thing starts light years from earth before taking us to a steamboat on the Mississippi River where a young Mark Twain becomes a central character. Then Burgauer takes us to the 1862 battle of Shiloh where Andu searches for the ancestor with the untainted genetics he needs.

Part two of the book is very much centered on Henry Morgan’s—the name Andu uses in 1861—friendship with Twain as Burgauer pretty much retells the 19th century author’s early biography, lifting whole passages from Twain’s writings, especially Life on the Mississippi. While the book remains very descriptive and detailed, everything is far different from what came before. But Burgauer weaves everything together in a complex tapestry of actual history along with speculative science fiction.

The book’s title comes from a concept argued as far back as 1931 about any historical inconsistencies that might occur if someone went back in time and killed their own grandparent, ostensibly resulting in the demise of the time traveler. The entire idea of time travel has been debated logically as to what implications might arise from any changes to known chronology, and a good overview of the literature and debates on the “grandparent paradox” can be found at:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandfa...

Of course, Burgauer’s take isn’t to kill anyone in the past but rather to get uncorrupted DNA from an ancestor to save one of his descendants. The result is a very engaging, often philosophical epic crammed to the gills with twists and turns that span both centuries and light years. Highly recommended.

This review first appeared at BookPleasures.com on Jan. 25, 2016 at:
goo.gl/yFgL92

Mark Twain & The River of Timeless Temptation
John Kerr
Publisher: Old Man River Press (March 15, 2017)
Sold by: Amazon Digital Services LLC
ASIN: B06XF37J6H
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06XF37J6H


Reviewed by: Dr. Wesley Britton

As if the life and work of the historical Mark Twain doesn’t provide enough fodder for countless literary and film adaptations, Samuel Clemens has been used by a seemingly endless parade of authors, artists, and filmmakers who send him to more and more fantastic places where he has more than improbable adventures. In comics, Twain was teamed with Nikola Tesla to defeat the evil plans of Thomas Edison, and in Star Trek: The Next Generation, Twain took on the crew of the time-travelling crew of the Enterprise. In the stop-action claymation Adventures of Mark Twain (1985), along with a number of his characters, Twain, split into two parts, captained a fantastic airship to travel to Halley’s Comet. In 1971, Philip Jose Farmer transported Twain to Riverworld in The Fabulous Riverboat where Twain battled, among other formerly dead souls, England’s King John. There are many novels in which Twain lives in alternate realities as when Sesh Heri sent Twain, Harry Houdini, and Nikola Tesla on a journey to Mars in 1893. And that’s just a short list of Twain’s appearances in sci fi projects. Just last month, he figured prominently in The Grandfather Paradox: A Time Travel Story by Steven Burgauer.

Now, John Kerr joins this Twain/sci fi/fantasy mash-up procession by having Twain in the watchful gaze of young Satan, the nephew of Lucifer. The devil’s nephew, calling himself Mr. Brown, is the narrator of the story as he takes “Sammy” around space in time in the quest to get Clemens to sign on the dotted line and give the demonic family his soul. Brown claims to be the one giving Clemens inspirations and story ideas, beginning with the author’s breakthrough short story, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County. The demon has few compliments for Clemens, noting the writer’s many annoying personal complaints and shifting perspectives on moral issues and philosophical ideas. It’s interesting Brown would be so focused on Twain as Lucifer’s minions are constantly busy manipulating the world, especially geopolitical concerns.

In the opening chapters, for example, Twain has been transported to Central America before the Civil War where several actual historic figures, William Walker and Cornelius Vanderbilt, vie for power in Nicaragua. While still on the San Juan river in that country, Brown takes Twain further back in time where they are captured by a young Captain Horatio Nelson, then pirate Henry Morgan, and then Christopher Columbus. Along the way, Brown is constantly worried about violating his uncle’s Prime Directive, that of not altering the existing timeline. It’s often Twain who complicates this matter because of his confusing comments and anachronistic observations uttered in front of figures from the past, unintentionally suggesting actions that Brown knows these personages must not take.

Then, the book abruptly shifts gears and presents Twain’s original account of his actual Nicaragua trip which he described in a series of letters to the Alta California newspaper in 1867. These letters came out in book form in 1940 titled Travels with Mr. Brown, the inspiration for Kerr’s fantasy. The original Mr. Brown is largely considered an imaginary character who Twain described as a boring, irritating travel companion. Beside the time travel passages, much of Kerr’s material is lifted directly from Twain, merely given a different narrative slant. Notably, Kerr’s Mr. Brown is obviously speaking from a contemporary point-of-view, mentioning the internet, K-Marts, Walmart, and Woodstock. Still, while Kerr admits “any plagiarism is entirely intentional,” one wonders if he has the permission to publish so much of Twain’s original work.

The first half of Timeless Temptation is clever and quirky, even if readers are left hanging in terms of what Mark Twain’s future with Mr. Brown and Satan will be. For Twainians and those interested in forgotten chapters of American literature, the book might prompt curiosity about a part of the Twain canon that’s rarely discussed or read. In short, this odd book is for a niche market willing to accept some unorthodox spins on the biography of Mark Twain.

This review first appeared at BookPleasures.com on March 8, 2017 at:
goo.gl/kvMxGm