Borrowed Tides - Softcover

Levinson, Paul

2.87

61 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0812561511 ISBN 13: 9780812561517

Publisher: Tor Science Fiction, 2002

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A voyage and an adventure as sublime as any in the history of the universe.

Aaron Schoenfeld has parlayed a Ph.D. in the philosophy of science and a sharp tongue into an improbable second career as director of a project to plan and execute the first interstellar voyage. The trip to Alpha Centauri will take many years and might end up being a one-way journey for the crew.

His old acquaintance Jack Lumet may be the unlikely source of an answer. An anthropologist obsessed with the myths of Native Americans, he once wrote a paper about Wise Oak, an Iroquois sachem who claimed to have ridden a cosmic version of the Hudson, a tidal river that flows both ways, to the stars and back.

In a world where money for space journeys is hard to come by, even a slightly mad theory that suggests a possible shortcut to the stars is an attractive possibility for the people who believe more in humanity's destiny among the stars than they do in safety considerations, minimal risks, or taking no for an answer.

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Review:

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

About the Author:

Paul Levinson, PhD, is Professor of Communication & Media Studies at Fordham University in NYC. His science fiction novels include The Silk Code (winner of Locus Award for Best First Science Fiction Novel of 1999), Borrowed Tides (2001), The Consciousness Plague (2002), The Pixel Eye (2003), The Plot To Save Socrates (2006), Unburning Alexandria (2013), and Chronica (2014) - the last three of which are also known as the Sierra Waters trilogy, and are historical fiction as well as science fiction. His stories and novels have been nominated for Hugo, Nebula, Sturgeon, Edgar, Prometheus, and Audie Awards. His nonfiction books, including The Soft Edge (1997), Digital McLuhan (1999), Realspace (2003), Cellphone (2004), and New New Media (2009; 2nd edition, 2012), have been translated into twelve languages. He co-edited Touching the Face of the Cosmos: On the Intersection of Space Travel and Religion in 2016. He appears on CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, the Discovery Channel, National Geographic, the History Channel, NPR, and numerous TV and radio programs. His 1972 LP, Twice Upon a Rhyme, was re-issued in 2010. He was President of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, 1998-2001. He reviews television in his InfiniteRegress.tv blog, and was listed in The Chronicle of Higher Education's "Top 10 Academic Twitterers" in 2009.

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