Subject: REVIEW: THE TRINITY PARADOX by Kevin J. Anderson and Doug Beason

From: [email-masked] (Evelyn C Leeper +1 908 957 2070)
Date: 19 Nov 91 19:19:45 GMT

THE TRINITY PARADOX by Kevin J. Anderson and Doug Beason
                        A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper
			 Copyright 1991 Evelyn C. Leeper

        Elizabeth Devane is an anti-war, anti-nuke activist who sneaks 
   into Los Alamos one night to destroy the government's latest project.  
   (Anderson and Beason seem to think breaking into a secure government 
   installation is easy.)  But whatever the device is--we never really 
   find out--breaking it up sends her back to 1942.  Stuck there, she 
   passes herself off as a mathematician sent to work at Los Alamos.  
   (A facility that screens all out-going mail would take someone with 
   no identification and no paperwork to work on such a sensitive project?)  
   She finds herself caught up in the project and her small attempts at 
   intentional sabotage do less than her carelessness (through an extremely 
   unlikely plot device).

        The problem is, I think, that no one behaves realistically.  
   Devane wouldn't be allowed in to do classified work.  And I think she 
   would also be more knowledgeable about the history of nuclear warfare
   --an anti-nuke activist who doesn't even know what dates the bombs were 
   dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki wouldn't be high enough in the 
   organization to be assigned to break into a facility like Los Alamos.  
   Scientists wouldn't be smuggling letters to the enemy, even out of such 
   noble motives as sharing knowledge.  Americans wouldn't have reacted to 
   events as Anderson and Beason show them.  Germans wouldn't be as 
   careless as they are portrayed.  In general, everyone seems to act as 
   the plot requires, rather than as human nature and history indicate 
   they would.  While reading a time travel/alternate history set at Los 
   Alamos has its enjoyable moments, THE TRINITY PARADOX does not bear 
   close scrutiny.

   %T      THE TRINITY PARADOX
   %A      Kevin J. Anderson and Doug Beason
   %C      New York
   %D      November 1991
   %I      Bantam Spectra
   %O      paperback, US$4.99
   %G      ISBN 0-553-29246-3
   %P      325pp

Evelyn C. Leeper   |   +1 908 957 2070   |   att!mtgzy!ecl or [email-masked]