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A Stone's Throw
A Stone's Discovered in an Alpine glacier in the year 2046, Stone, a Neandertal, is brought back to life by nano-technology and secretly taken to the U.S. to be raised by a Massachusetts family and acclimated to a modern world. Odie, a boy isolated by his extraordinary intellect and debilitating disease, befriends Stone and these two misfits form an unbreakable bond born of their uniqueness. When Odie discovers that Stone can throw a baseball 107 miles per hour, he brings the Neandertal to a Red Sox tryout where he earns a spot in a high-tech training camp. While Stone is being conditioned, further investigation of the Niederjoch Glacier reveals twenty-five more members of his clan entombed in the ice. Thus Stone finds himself pitching to earn enough to free his family and regenerate them. With Odie's aid and acumen, Stone fights against time and a glacier rapidly melting in a world of rising temperatures, against the moralist groups opposed to regenesis, and against a world that is less than welcoming of the singular and unique. A Stone's A story about science and Neandertals and baseball; a story of survival, of friendship, and love.
238 pages, Paperback
First published July 1, 2013
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February 17, 2014
Readers and hominids, what are the bounds that God has set for us? Where are the boundaries beyond which we should not go? These questions are taken straight from the text of this literary work and are a question man should ask himself before everything he does. Even men and women who don't partake in the enlightenment of higher powers know, or should know, there is a certain moral boundary—a line that divides right from wrong. The commonly argued topics of cloning and bringing back once-dead animals, or even people, is the hot topic in this book because our main character, Andy, is a Neanderthal.
These questions are asked from the perspective of activist religious nuts as Andy, brought back after thousands of years of being frozen in ice, tries to live his life without being made a victim by modern humans holding grudges. It really isn't fair, considering he never asked to be brought back and especially considering there are no others "like him" to whom he can relate—no one except Odie, a little boy who shares an interesting talent with the cave man, one that keeps them both in check.
A huge portion of the population does not accept Andy, that is, until his makeshift family finds that he has an uncanny ability to throw at ridiculous speeds with impossible precision, an ability rooted in his previous life. What else would he do but go to the next Red Sox tryouts, sign a contract, and pitch 107-mile-per-hour fastballs? In such a position, perhaps the population will learn to love him and, by making so much money, maybe he won't have to be alone forever. Maybe, just maybe, he will be able to extract some more of his people from the ice, murdered so many years ago, and teach them to live with him in the future.
There were some very awesome ideas in this read. First, the thought of bringing back a primal man, surely disputed as being a no-no, is unique enough, but finding a way to turn him into a famous major league pitcher is just fun. It sounds like an instant kids classic to me. Also, there is a lot of entertaining description of the not-so-distant future and the technologies therein and, from time to time, description of the much more distant hypothetical future. I thought Ken Wisman had great ideas, and I really enjoyed some of Andy's "rememberings"—events where he loses himself in his slowly returning memory and is forced to momentarily relive something from his first life.
In my opinion, this read could definitely make a decent children's movie one day. What I didn't like about the book was the author's style of writing. It has the epic sci-fi drama feel that Bicentennial Man gave me, although, of course, the plot is quite different. The overall story is fantastic and a piece to someday be realized, but I think it could use some work. Near the end, I felt that the story chopped itself up into several different tragedies, which was unfortunate, but it upset me even more when I realized the actual ending was quite good. For the reasons specified above, I would still read a second installation, but my hope is that the author takes this piece and cleans it up, because it can definitely be great.
A http://www.fanboysanonymous.com/ review.
These questions are asked from the perspective of activist religious nuts as Andy, brought back after thousands of years of being frozen in ice, tries to live his life without being made a victim by modern humans holding grudges. It really isn't fair, considering he never asked to be brought back and especially considering there are no others "like him" to whom he can relate—no one except Odie, a little boy who shares an interesting talent with the cave man, one that keeps them both in check.
A huge portion of the population does not accept Andy, that is, until his makeshift family finds that he has an uncanny ability to throw at ridiculous speeds with impossible precision, an ability rooted in his previous life. What else would he do but go to the next Red Sox tryouts, sign a contract, and pitch 107-mile-per-hour fastballs? In such a position, perhaps the population will learn to love him and, by making so much money, maybe he won't have to be alone forever. Maybe, just maybe, he will be able to extract some more of his people from the ice, murdered so many years ago, and teach them to live with him in the future.
There were some very awesome ideas in this read. First, the thought of bringing back a primal man, surely disputed as being a no-no, is unique enough, but finding a way to turn him into a famous major league pitcher is just fun. It sounds like an instant kids classic to me. Also, there is a lot of entertaining description of the not-so-distant future and the technologies therein and, from time to time, description of the much more distant hypothetical future. I thought Ken Wisman had great ideas, and I really enjoyed some of Andy's "rememberings"—events where he loses himself in his slowly returning memory and is forced to momentarily relive something from his first life.
In my opinion, this read could definitely make a decent children's movie one day. What I didn't like about the book was the author's style of writing. It has the epic sci-fi drama feel that Bicentennial Man gave me, although, of course, the plot is quite different. The overall story is fantastic and a piece to someday be realized, but I think it could use some work. Near the end, I felt that the story chopped itself up into several different tragedies, which was unfortunate, but it upset me even more when I realized the actual ending was quite good. For the reasons specified above, I would still read a second installation, but my hope is that the author takes this piece and cleans it up, because it can definitely be great.
A http://www.fanboysanonymous.com/ review.
Displaying 1 of 1 review