World Without End

Molly Cochran and Warren Murphy turn their creativity to another long-lasting legend: the lost continent of Atlantis.
In a radical departure from common theory, Cochran and Murphy place the lost continent in the middle of the Bermuda Triangle and populate it with gods - or rather the people whom time and myth-making transformed into Zeus, Hades, and the other gods of the Greek pantheon.
Trapped in the turmoil and panic of Atlantis's destruction is a modern-day man, Sam Smith. In the 1990s, he finds himself the target of an international network of people bent on destroying anyone who has found a clue to the location of the lost continent and the secrets of the Atlanteans.
A heartbeat ahead of an assassination attempt, Sam is mysteriously transported into the past, where his knowledge of the future makes him a pawn in the power struggle between Zeus and Hades. Before long, Sam gains knowledge far more dangerous than that of Atlantis's fate - he finds the true secret of the gods' powers, a secret almost older than time itself.
The wheel of time is turning. Atlantis must die. But what of the present? Has Sam Smith learned enough to thwart the cataclysm that awaits at the end of this millennium?

Combining myth with modern adventure (as they did in The Forever King, 1992), and fantasy with science fiction, Cochran and Murphy imagine the fall of Atlantis. The heroes and rulers of that ancient continent, they postulate, inspired classical Greek mythology. In the present, salvage diver Sam Smith finds unusually ancient relics that lead him to a fellowship of psychics, and to mysteries that include his ties to a decades-old psychic experiment and the question of his true parentage. Some of the mysteries are explained when Sam finds himself back in time and in Atlantis, where he meets Zeus, Athena, Hades and others-and where he learns about a bloodline started by an extraterrestrial "Stranger." Much is left unexplained, however, and the two story threads-one set in the present, the other in Atlantis-are knotted together awkwardly. But the characters are lively, the writing is brisk and the authors' ideas-some because they're innovative and others because they're out of fashion-seem always fresh and unexpected.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.