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[starreview]
Classification: Past Time Travel
Corrupting Dr. Nice has a fantastic premise. Imagine that time travel is easily available and incurs very few complications. Even more interestingly, it is possible to travel to MUs – Moment Universes, which are like copies of our universe at a given point in time, and do anything we want without any fear of changing the future or creating paradoxes.
This means that effectively we have the ultimate “What If?” scenario generator: it is possible to travel to a certain point in time and behave in some way, and afterwards go to the same moment – only in a different Moment Universe – and act differently. Imagine: going back in time and killing Brutus when he tries to murder Ceasar in one universe, helping Brutus in another universe, and killing both in a third.
The book’s protagonist is Dr. Owen Vannice, a billionaire paleontologist. Owen is trying to smuggle a dinosaur to the year 2062. But things do not go well: he gets entangled with two con artists (a father and daughter) who trick people in different time periods. But that’s not all: one of these falls in love with Owen.
Until this point, I’m sure the book sounds good – no? Then why did I give it a low ranking?
Several reasons. For starters, the story is utterly filled with logic inconsistencies. The author constantly contradicts himself, and the most annoying thing is that the author simply avoids certain “problems” with his theories – he doesn’t even bother finding solutions for them… simply ignores them altogether. How can one take seriously a time travel novel which doesn’t even raise the possibility of traveling to the future? Or ignores the possibility of meeting yourself in the past? Or meeting time travelers from the future, who come to the present to visit YOUR Moment Universe?
Although reading sci-fi novels requires a certain suspension of belief, this is going to far. It was bad enough that it had a strong impact on my enjoying this novel.
But there’s more: instead of focusing on the interesting aspects of the premise, the book focused on the love affair of the main character. I know how to enjoy a good love story (particularly a good time travel story – see “The Time Traveler’s Wife”) – but this was just plain boring. The fact that I couldn’t stand any of the main characters didn’t really help this either.
Another wasted idea in the book: the kidnapping of historical figures and bringing them to the present. This is actually a really good premise. How would Abraham Lincoln react when he sees modern day America? What would Thomas Edison say about computers? The possibilities are endless. But what does the novel do with this premise: Mozart becomes a pop star, Jesus starts a talk show, Abraham Lincoln becomes a PR representative.. It’s as if these historical figures just wanted to drop everything, leave their families (and timeline), and come to the future to do silly tasks. Utterly ridiculous – completely unbelievable.
In summary: An excellent premise – but the book is bad. If you really find the premise interesting, read Joshua Dann’s Timeshare trilogy… it wasn’t a masterpiece, but certainly much better than this. Otherwise, avoid this book. It’s a shame, because it could have been really, really good.
Link to the book’s details on Amazon.com
