Fiction, Science Fiction

Bones of the Earth

Name: Bones of the Earth
Author: Michael Swanwick
ISBN: 9780380812899

by Michael Swanwick

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Overview

"Paleontologist Richard Leyster has achieved professional nirvana: a position with the Smithsonian Museum plus a groundbreaking dinosaur fossil site he can research, publish on, and learn from for years to come. There is nothing that could lure him away - until a disturbingly secretive stranger named Griffin enters Leyster's office with an ice cooler and a job offer. In the cooler is the head of a freshly killed Stegosaurus." "Griffin has been entrusted with an extraordinary gift, an impossible technology on loan to humanity from unknown beings for an undisclosed purpose. Time travel has become a reality millions of years before it rationally could be. With it, Richard Leyster and his colleagues can make their most cherished fantasy come true. They can study the dinosaurs up close, in their own time and milieu." "Now, suddenly, individual lives can turn back on themselves. People can meet, shake hands, and converse with their younger versions at various crossroads in time. One wrong word, a single misguided act, could be disastrous to the project and to the world. But Griffin must make sure everything that is supposed to happen does happen - no matter who is destined to be hurt...or die." And then there's Dr. Gertrude Salley - passionate, fearless, and brutally ambitious - a genius rebel in the tight community of "bone men" and women. Alternately both Leyster's and Griffin's chief rival, trusted colleague, despised nemesis, and inscrutable lover at various junctures throughout time, Salley is relentlessly driven to screw with the working mechanisms of natural law, audaciously trespassing in forbidden areas, pushing paradox to the edge no matter what the consequences may be. And, when they concern the largest, most savage creatures that ever lived, the consequences may be terrifying indeed.

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Editorials

From Barnes & Noble

The Barnes & Noble Review
Hugo and Nebula Award winner Michael Swanwick has created a fascinating tale of every paleontologist's fantasy -- traveling back in time to study dinosaurs in the flesh! But the technology allowing time travel is a gift that comes with rules that must not be broken. It is vitally important that a time paradox never occurs, or the world could disastrously unravel. But who made the rules in the first place?

This, along with other fascinating questions and characters, made Bones of the Earth well worth my time to read. The character of Griffin in particular intrigued me: a rather sad man who knows who he will become and can do nothing to stop it.

It's not often that I am so into a book that I can't wait to get home to start reading it again, but Bones of the Earth was like that for me. Even now, after I've finished, the scientific theories discussed in the story churn around in my mind. I truly can't say enough good things about this book. And for those who want to learn more about Swanwick and his other works, his web site, www.michaelswanwick.com, is a great place to start. (C.A.)

Kirkus Reviews

Into paleontologist Richard Leyster's Smithsonian office walks Harry Griffin with a cooler and a job offer. The job's hedged about with peculiar and restrictive conditions. And in the cooler is a head: not a fossil, but that of a real stegosaur! Seems that mysterious beings from the far future, the Unchanging, are offering a limited form of time travel to humanity: namely, access to the Mesozoic. Those, like Griffin, who travel in time can and do meet themselves, but paradox-the deliberate repudiation of a known historical record-is forbidden. If a major paradox occurs, the Unchanging will retroactively withdraw their offer. Leyster accepts the job but, not surprisingly, encounters complications: the enigmatic person who runs the security and police side of the operation, the Old Man, is an older version of Griffin himself; a fellow paleontologist, Gertrude Salley, develops an insane hostility towards Leyster; Creationist terrorists, whose moles permeate the operation, smuggle a bomb into Leyster's equipment, stranding him and his team in the Cretaceous. Salley meets an older version of herself, Gertrude, who seems to know what's really going on; with Griffin, they pledge to persuade the Unchanging to mount a rescue mission to retrieve Leyster. But to do that, they'll have to travel further into the future than anyone has yet penetrated-and deal with another whole slew of surprises. Oddly structured and curiously undramatic. Still, Swanwick's redevelopment of his Hugo Award winner, "Scherzo with Tyrannosaur," bulges with intelligent speculation and intriguing plot twists: fans of the author, the original short story, dinosaur buffs, and time-travel aficionados will pounce.