Description
Product Description
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.
Amazon.com 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
From Publishers Weekly
Politics blends neatly with spirituality in Levinson’s provocative second novel (after The Silk Road), about the first manned interstellar flight to a planet in the Alpha Centauri star system. Two septuagenarians, first acquainted in childhood, head the crew: Aaron Schoenfeld, whom the U.S. president has chosen on the strength of his philosophical arguments for space exploration, and Jack Lumet, an anthropologist who has incorporated the mystical teachings of Iroquois Indians into his worldview. It is Lumet’s insights into the Indians’ beliefs regarding the cyclical nature of travel on river currents extrapolated to a cosmic level that enable a final American commitment to the trip. In order to maintain continued support of space exploration, a live crew that will be able to return must undertake this voyage. Once underway the other seven members of the crew face personal conflicts regarding the validity of the theoretical constructs adapted from spiritual sources. These doubts culminate in an attempted mutiny. None of the events leading up to the revolt fall into genre clichs, as all of the characters are well drawn and their motivations are believable. But the real surprises come on reaching the star system after eight years of travel. The author has created an ingenious narrative that loops back on itself like a Mbius strip. Readers will enjoy working through the unexpected paradoxes the characters find themselves in and watching how each character individually chooses to resolve the shared predicament during the journey homeward.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
In the mid-21st century, a ship bound for Alpha Centauri sets o
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