Synopsis
Professor Lyle Peripart's world makes perfect sense, until he is recruited by an odd industrialist and begins to see evidence of alternative universes all around him, including one in which the United States surrendered to the USSR back in the 1970s
Reviews
Have you ever had a clear memory of an event that was directly at odds with what someone else remembers? Have you and your spouse ever argued over where you first met or when you first kissed? In this latest novel by the Hugo- and Nebula-nominated author of Earth Made of Glass and Mother of Storms, conflicting memories abound, because here there are millions, perhaps billions of alternate universes, each only slightly different from those that lie closest to it. Throughout history, it seems, people have tended to slip back and forth between adjacent universes. Now, however, the slippage is drastically increasing. A young woman calls home and, halfway through the call, discovers that her mother no longer knows her. When she leaves the phone booth, the entire history of the world has changed radically. An astronomer on a job interview spends the day with a mysterious billionaire before meeting his historian girlfriend for dinner, only to find that she believes that she's spent much of the day with him. At the restaurant someone attempts to murder the astronomer, but his girlfriend, suddenly transformed into a gun-toting secret agent, shoots the attacker. At least that's how he remembers it, but the body on the floor isn't the person he saw shot. Barnes has great fun fooling around with a variety of unexpected alternate universes in this clever scientific adventure novel. Occasionally the momentum slows as various characters explain the physics behind what's going on, but in general this is a well-paced book, full of nicely drawn characters and a number of tantalizing mysteries that should greatly appeal to fans of alternate historical fiction.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
College professor Lyle Peripart, the descendant of American expatriates, tries to ignore the various Reichs that rule the world following the Axis victory in WWII over a century ago, until the powerful industrialist Geoffrey Iphwin, interested in Lyle's clever statistical analyses, hires him. After the interview, he's beaten and interrogated by the fearsome female Gestapo operative, Billie Beardbut her questions are baffling. Stranger still, it emerges that Lyle managed to be in two places at once: while he was being interviewed, he was also flying to Saigon with his fianc, Helen Perdita. Shrugging, Lyle joins Helen in Saigon, where a fat German tourist tries to assassinate him. Helen, suddenly packing a pistol, blasts the assailantwho turns out to be Billie Beard! Moreover, Helen now denies she can shoot, and claims she saw Lyle killed. In the history she remembers, the Allies won WWII, but America lost a nuclear war in the 1980s. Confused?...From the author of Earth Made of Glass (1998), etc, a virtuoso piece of probability-juggling that mostly adds upuntil that dreadfully anticlimactic non-ending brings you back to, er, reality with a thump. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
When astronomy professor Lyle Peripart agrees to work for ConTech and its owner, the enigmatic Geoffrey Iphwin, he discovers that his memories of the past do not match those of his colleagues?and that no one can pinpoint the location or remember the history of a country once called America. The author of Earth Made of Glass (LJ 4/14/98) exercises his talent for turning the "facts" of quantum physics into the stuff of high adventure and intrigue in this fast-paced, exuberant exploration of parallel worlds. A good choice for sf collections.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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