Subgenre: Hard Science Fiction, Time Travel
About Borrowed Tides:
The first starship to Alpha Centauri in 2029 uses a new technology which
can move it through deep space at almost half the speed of light. But
it requires an enormous amount of fuel, and can only carry enough for a
one-way trip. A philosopher of science and his childhood friend, an
anthropologist with a specialty in Native American culture, have a
daringly bizarre plan, and talk the government into putting them in
charge of the Light Through starship voyage.
Excerpt:
The
white birches and slender oaks were the corner's last stand. They fell in the
Spring of 1964 to bulldozers and brusque men—a construction crew clearing the
last of the lot on Bronx Park East for the high-rise that Aaron Schoenfeld
would soon be inhabiting.
Aaron
surveyed the rubble with mixed emotions. His apartment would have a terrace
that jutted way out over the park—"a view straight to the Hudson,"
his father had been telling everyone. There would be two bathrooms—no more
waiting for his sister to stop staring at her face in the mirror. He liked all
that. But he didn't like what happened to the trees.
"The
people who used to live here said there were moon spirits in those pale
trees," a quiet voice said to Aaron. He turned to see a kid with burnt-brown
eyes.
"People?"
Aaron didn't usually have conversations with kids this young. The kid looked to
be about ten or eleven, three or so years younger than Aaron. The kid sounded
much older.
"Yeah,
Indians," the kid said. "Years of Indian history are being wiped out
here."
"How
do you know there were Indians right here? I don't see any teepees."
Aaron
was instantly sorry he'd said that. He could see the kid struggling with
whether to walk away from him or share his secrets. And something about the
kid's intensity made Aaron want to hear more.
The
kid reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a few pieces of chipped,
flinty stone. "Arrowheads," he said, "made by the people whose
main lands were in Pelham Bay. I found them right here."
"How'd
you know to look here?" Aaron asked. "I mean, even before this
construction, it was just a—"
"I
could see the signs," the kid said. "I live right down the
block." He pointed to a small semi-detached house, with a big off-white
hibiscus in front that looked like it had been watered by every mutt in the
neighborhood. "This place was my backyard. I spend a lot of time
here."
"Did
you tell anyone about the arrowheads?"
"Who'm
I gonna tell?" The kid gestured to the construction crew, just about
packed up and ready to leave for the day. "I tried to talk to the foreman
once, but he laughed in my face. Why should anyone pay any attention to what I
say?"
"Well,
I am," Aaron said, surprising himself and extending his hand. "I'm
Aaron Schoenfeld."
The
kid shook it with a tight grip. "Jack Lumet." He smiled for the first
time. Aaron could tell this was a rarity.
"The
only reason you're even listening to me is that you're not much older than I am," Jack said.
"You're
a smart kid," Aaron said.
"It's
not that I'm against tall buildings or stuff like that," Jack said.
"I just wish they could build these things where they don't hurt what's
already here."
Aaron
thought about the birches. He thought about a Spring afternoon years earlier,
when he was four or five, and saw a crew building part of the Bronx River
Parkway. He'd cried when he saw them blast away a field of buttercups.
"Don't
worry—they'll plant new ones," his father had said.
But
new ones—deliberately planted ones—weren't the same. They lacked something of
wildflowers.
So
Aaron understood that day what Jack Lumet was saying.
But he also knew that he was very much
looking forward to seeing the Hudson from his terrace, looking forward to the
clearer view of the stars that he imagined his new outpost would provide. And
if his high-rise weren't built here, then where else? Everywhere you looked,
there was something that people wanted to keep, didn't want to build over.
In the spring of 1964, wildflowers were
still in long supply in the Bronx.
Amazon
About Paul Levinson:
Paul Levinson, PhD, is Professor of Communication & Media Studies at Fordham University in NYC. His science fiction novels include The Silk Code (winner of Locus Award for Best First Science Fiction Novel of 1999, author’s cut ebook 2012), Borrowed Tides (2001), The Consciousness Plague (2002, 2013), The Pixel Eye (2003, 2014), The Plot To Save Socrates (2006, 2012), Unburning Alexandria (2013), and Chronica
(2014) - the last three of which are also known as the Sierra Waters trilogy, and are historical as well as science fiction. His nonfiction books, including The Soft Edge (1997), Digital McLuhan (1999), Realspace (2003), Cellphone (2004), and New New Media (2009; 2nd edition, 2012), have been translated into twelve languages. He appears on CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, the Discovery Channel, National Geographic, the History Channel, NPR, and numerous TV and radio programs. His 1972 LP, Twice Upon a Rhyme, was re-issued in 2010. He was President of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, 1998-2001. He reviews television in his InfiniteRegress.tv blog, and was listed in The Chronicle of Higher Education's "Top 10 Academic Twitterers" in 2009.
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