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Bones of the Earth

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Next to William Gibson, Michael Swanwick may be the most interesting writer to have emerged from the 1980's cyberpunk movement; he's certainly as fine a literary stylist as Gibson. Judging from the rich vein of Swanwick's work, from cyberpunk to fantasy, and now, time travel, it's possible one could argue that Swanwick may be the better writer. "Bones of the Earth" is one of the finest time travel tales I've ever read. It certainly has the best depiction I've seen of dinosaurs in fiction; it seems far more realistic than the dinosaurs depicted in Michael Crichton's "Jurassic Park" novels. Swanwick combines a gripping time travel tale with a splendid elegy to science as a grand quest in search of knowledge. I am pleased that his most despicable character is a diehard fundamentalist Christian terrorist, whose world view is diametrically opposed to the one subscribed by the scientists - and by Swanwick himself - in this exciting, well-written tale. Without a doubt, "Bones of the Earth" is one of the finest science fiction novels published this year.

Not another time-travel-dinosaur book? Ever since Ray Bradbury's "A Sound of Thunder," fifty years ago, and doubtless even before that, time travelers have been going back to the Mesozoic to mingle with dinosaurs. Well, yes, but this tale is told by Michael Swanwick, and that makes all the difference in the world, any world.

Swanwick is a virtuoso writer, equal to any in the genre. He has taken that hackneyed old theme and crafted something magical and compelling from it. His prose is as clear and prismatic as crystal, his characters are maddeningly complex. As for the paradoxes that bedevil time travel, which most dabblers in the Mesozoic sweep under the moss, Swanwick rolls them all up in a ball and clobbers us with them. He revels in them. He skirts the edge of farce with them, yet he spins us along in a rollicking page-turner of a yarn that ultimately comes to a poignant and deeply logical ending.

He is up to date with all the latest thoughts on dinosaurs and throws in some marvelous ecological speculations for good measure. Go there and breathe the air of the Mesozoic; hear it, feel it, smell it.

After one career as a geologist and another as a professional writer, I do feel competent to review this particular book. I found it extremely satisfying. I cannot recommend it more highly.

Swanwick is a gifted, provocative writer (I loved _The Iron Dragon's Daughter_), but he can also be challenging and not terribly forgiving of the reader; you have to pay attention. Several times in the first third of this book, I nearly gave it up as a bad job. (Even terrific writers have bad days.) But I reconsidered and decided to be patient, and I'm glad I was. I'm a fan of time-travel plots, but the skeins of causality and chronology are incredibly tangled here. The subjects are paleontologists -- bone-hunters -- who have suddenly been invited by the Pentagon, in the year 2012, to join in an intensely secret project to study first-hand the dinosaurs, ranging over a period of several hundred million years, via the time travel technology to which they inexplicably have access. I thought, "What?" Does anyone believe the government, least of all the military, couldn't come up with more important (to them) uses for time travel than pure scientific research? (Patience; all will be revealed.) The author does a brilliant job of letting the major characters develop in wholly believable ways, of showing how a changing combination of personality and circumstances can produce highly varied results. Because everyone exists in several different "plies," different timelines, depending on decisions made or not made. Richard Leyster, not always the most brilliant scientist but a very, very good paleontologist nevertheless, is the most sympathetic. Gertrude Salley, on the other hand, can be positively loathsome in her selfish arrogance and manipulative attitude toward the world -- but she has a purpose in the story, too, and she's not all bad. Griffin, the consummate bureaucrat, is the most complex and to some extent the least understandable -- but that's the kind of person he is. Apart from the fascinatingly complex human interactions which alone would make this a very readable book, Swanwick knows and communicates a great deal about the way science works and how scientists think, plus shrewd speculation about saurian behavior. The jargon and overuse of taxonomy is a bit overwhelming at first -- but this is also deliberate, to immerse the reader in the paleontologists' mental universe. And he also gets in his licks at the religious fanaticism of faith-oriented thinking, so alien to the scientific mind, by convincingly (and chillingly) describing the terrorist activities and mind-set of "deep creationists" -- anti-evolutionists so convinced of their sole access to Truth, they construct a jihad and throw bombs. (Yes, there really are people like that in contemporary American society, plenty of them.) What I first was afraid would represent a narrative failure turned out to be one of this author's most affecting books. Read it.

Swanwick is one of my favorite writers working in science fiction/fantasy-- I have been a fan since I read the Iron Dragon's Daughter. His novels often do not cross over into being more popular successes, largely (I believe) due to the complexity of his plots and characters.

I agree with the reviewer who said that Bones of the Earth is the most accessible Swanwick novel to date. However, it still requires some attention and careful reading to get the full rewards of the book, particularly as it relates to the time travel aspects. This is not a bad thing, however, as Swanwick's ability to handle complexity allows him to create one of the best imaginings of time travel available to date in speculative fiction.

Well worth reading.

combines several well-integrated (and rather original) SFnal ideas with some neat scientific speculation, interesting characters, a compelling plot, and a powerfully argued theme about the nature of science and the human urge to do science.

The novel concerns a program to send paleontologists back to the Mesozoic Era to study dinosaurs in their natural environment. As such it is both a dinosaur novel and a time travel novel. Perhaps unexpectedly, the thematic heart of the book is in the time travel aspect, though the dinosaur speculations are worthwhile and fun in themselves. The three main characters are Richard Leyster, a brilliant and studious scientist; Gertrude Salley, brilliant herself but manipulative and unbound by law or rules; and Griffin, the tormented administrator of the Mesozoic time travel program.

One key plot thread concerns a scheme by Christian fundamentalists to sabotage the time travel efforts, which ends up marooning a number of paleontologists in the Late Cretaceous. Griffin and his assistants try to loop back and forth through time to forestall this sabotage, but they are frustrated by the insistence of the sponsors of the time travel program that no paradoxes be created: thus anything they know to have "already happened" they cannot stop from happening. The other key thread involves Salley's attempts to subvert that law -- right at the beginning we see hints that she is trying to cause paradoxes, and her attempts continue, though her motive remains unclear to the reader for some time.

The scenes in the Cretaceous involve some well-handled "primitive survival" scenes, and some fascinating speculation about dinosaur social life and about the real causes of their extinction. The other thread involves some very clever handling of time loops and paradox, and an eventual trip far into the future to meet the Unchanging -- the mysterious beings who have offered the boon of time travel to humans. The resolution is surprising, logical, and achingly sad, or at least bittersweet. Swanwick is convincing treating human curiosity, our love of science. He is convincing treating human reactions to the possibility of fixing our past mistakes. The characters are well-drawn, particularly Griffin and his boss, the Old Man. Leyster and Salley are well done as well but a bit less fully realized -- or perhaps too clearly idealized to fit their parts. The minor characters are interesting, too. I loved the book, and I was quite moved by it.

The challenge for dinosaur fiction is that a human perspective usually provides the best means for communicating the awe that the author feels for the dinosaurs. Unfortunately, to facilitate this perspective, you have to bring the dinosaurs to the present (a la JURASSIC PARK), or you have to travel back in time (i.e., LAND OF THE LOST). In science fiction, time travel is a tricky business. Many writers simply avoid it because it seems so far removed from today's technology. Other authors write time travel stories because time travel paradoxes make for an amusing gimmick.

In BONES OF THE EARTH, Michael Swanwick has handled the time issue deftly. The acquisition and management of time travel is an important part of the story, while still allowing for back-and-forth shenanigans and a survival-in-the-Mesozoic scenario that provides much of the books "action."

Unfortunately, Swanwick hasn't handled his characters so deftly. There's the earnest academic, the cigarette-smoking-man with access to profound secrets, the wambitious woman not above using sex to meet her goals. Swanwick errs further by creating a villain in the form of a ridiculously extremist Bible-thumper, which he than tries to counterbalance by allowing other characters token religious affiliations that turn out to be only relevant in the matter of determining appropriate burial rites.

Though his plot structure rather elegantly handles the many different time settings, it helps that every chapter has a date stamp, especially since several characters appear in each of the major time settings. Still, Swanwick's detectable satisfaction in how he's organized the story lines is irritating in the face of his uninspired characterization. He does make a couple of amusing jabs at scientist culture and academic hierarchies, while also offering up a discussion of leadership and group dynamics that is extremely interesting, even if it does devolve into male fantasy. Finally, Swanwick does a decent job with the dinosaur action sequences -- the "money shots" for a book like this -- making the prehistoric monsters interesting, even if the humans characters observing them are not.

A good time travel novel - particularly one involving dinosaurs - is quite rare and it was a real treat to read "Bones of the Earth." Time travel can be a hard subject to tackle successfully, and so much in the popular media about dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals is wrong; it is wonderful to see a science fiction author do a good job with both.

The novel begins with a scene where the protagonist, paleontologist Dr. Richard Leyster, is working in his office at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C. Into his office comes a stranger by the name of Griffin, bearing with him an intriguing proposal; he is to set aside his duties at what essentially is his dream job (or so he thought) and work for him on a top secret project, a project Griffin cannot reveal any information at the time about and any information Leyster uncovers working for them cannot be published. Leyster at first of course refuses. Griffin leaves Leyster's office, having placed an Igloo cooler on his desk. After Griffin left, Leyster opens it and is astounded by what he finds; the head of a very freshly killed stegosaur. After verifying that it was real Leyster does make contact again with Griffin and agrees to work on his project.

The project is indeed a most impressive one, with Griffin apparently the chief administrator for am ambitious effort to study the Mesozoic from the earliest Triassic to the end of the Cretaceous, shortly before whatever event ended the reign of the dinosaurs, pterosaurs, and the various prehistoric marine reptile species. The organization manages a number of stations throughout the Mesozoic and undertakes extensive studies of the fauna of the era, uncovering a wealth of information and many new species.

Unfortunately a lot of mystery surrounds both time travel and the organization that Leyster is now working for. Both the origin of time travel and the very nature of how it works are closely guarded secrets. Leyster cannot openly publish his research, and indeed the very existence of time travel and that people have seen living dinosaurs must remain a secret from the public (though we find later that in the future it does become public knowledge and Leyster and others are free to publish their findings at that point).

Even more mysteriously there are many rules and regulations regarding time travel. Much effort is made to prevent paradoxes from forming, as apparently one can change the past to a degree, causing immense problems in the future. Griffin and his associates work hard to prevent such paradoxes from forming, a difficult task considering that researchers are recruited from the future to work on the project, working alongside with what are to them often legends, aware of books that the people of Leyster's time haven't even written yet. Sometimes there are teams where some of the researches weren't even born yet in the current time frame of the oldest members of a particular team, having come from that far into the future. There are even occasions when future versions of present day people meet and even work together, though Griffin and his subordinates keep a very tight rein on this.

There are a number of other interesting characters in the book, including notably Dr. Getrude Salley, a rather complicated individual that who while clearly loving paleontology also has a regrettable history of doing some reprehensible things to advance her research and get into the limelight. Leyster and her we find have a very complex history together, one that stretches through time and space. There is also the Old Man, an enigmatic character (whose identity is revealed later in the book), a strange, shadowy man who knows everything about the project and has ultimate authority, coming and going on whims and on projects that no one, not even Griffin, understands.

A lot happens in the book. I think the best section was when an expedition led by Leyster becomes stranded in the late Cretaceous, with Leyster and his team of graduate students having to survive in the hostile wilderness. Even while fighting for their lives and struggling to come up with some of the most basic necessities of life they still remain scientists at heart and make some amazing discoveries.

The end of the book and the ultimate origin of time travel I found to be quite surprising, though I am not sure I entirely liked it; I am still digesting it.

Although I am no scientist, I am an enthusiastic amateur and I found for the most part the science in the book was pretty good. He posits the existence of several species that we do not know from the fossil record, including a basal spinosaur that was popularly called a "fisher" (and subject to nest parasitism by an allosaur, an interesting though unsupported theory), _Geistosaurus_ (a mute hadrosaur, hadrosaurs being the famous "duck-billed" dinosaurs that are now believed by many to have been quite vocal animals), and several interesting late Cretaceous forms such as the marsh hopper (a small, vaguely raccoon-like animal that lived along river banks) and tree-divers (hand-sized crocodile relatives that had membranes that stretched between their limbs, enabling them to glide). Also included were a few I thought he did make up at first until I researched them, such as _Stygivenator_ (a highly derived late Cretaceous tyrannosaurid species, smaller than most tyrannosaurs). One problem I had though was with Swanwick depicting some dinosaurs that were not feathered as adults possessing young covered in down (such as the allosaur in the story). By my understanding of such things this is not possible, as the type of body covering a species has as a juvenile will be the same it has as an adult, and that while there were feathered dinosaurs there were no dinosaurs that were feathered while young and not feathered when mature.

An interesting book, I recommend it.

"Bones of the Earth" is the first novel I've read from Michael Swanwick. It is a real treat for time travel and/or dinosaurs genre lovers!
It is not an easy book to read. Lots of dinosaurs' species names (yet most of them followed by a succinct description included as part of the dialogue) and a complicated space-time frame (similar in some aspects to the one used in "The Time-traveler's Wife" by Audrey Niffenegger), may dishearten some readers.
I strongly recommend carefully reading the first chapters and you'll be captivated for good!

The story starts with a mysterious visit to a well known paleontologist in our near future. His is gifted with a stegosaur's head. That's more than enough to hook him in whatever project without minding the risks.
A time-travel cavalcade starts from there on, flowing from present to past to future. Political intrigues arise. Ruthless competence among scientists adds to the plot. To increase the fun if this is possible, every two pages a new dino show its head or tail.

Mr. Swanwick plays with time-travel paradoxes very intelligently, in a way I haven't seen before. He also postulates, thru his characters obviously, some interesting theories about dinosaurs' communication and how this accelerates their extinction.

Gripping and thought provoking, time-travelers do not miss this trip!
Reviewed by Max Yofre.

Dinosaurs seem to hold an almost unnatural fascination for a great many people, from children thrill-frightened by T. Rex to paleontologists who devote their lives to determining the real facts about these former rulers of the Earth. And it is just such a determined researcher who is offered a life-time dream: the ability to go back in time and actually see the objects of his study in action. But there are a few strings attached to the offer: time travel is a secret, and he can't divulge any of his findings to the world at large, nor can he, by either action or word, be the cause of a time-wrecking paradox.

A good premise for a novel, and Swanwick does a good job of developing both the situation and his major characters. Thematically, Swanwick looks at the reasons people work beyond that of merely surviving, and the lengths some people will go to, including murder, due to their obsessions with some form of `belief' system (in this case, the major players are the Creationists and federal bureaucrats). It is the conflict between belief systems that leads to the major story action, leaving a party of scientists stranded in the far past and forced to learn how to survive in this environment without most of today's technological marvels, while another group works to rescue the party by working into the very far future - which has its own surprises.

But there are a few problems here. For anyone other than a paleontologist who is highly familiar with the various classes and species of dinosaurs, a lot of the description of these animals will seem to be couched in almost impenetrable scientific terms (quick, off the top of your head, what's a `hadrosaur'?). Then too, the long period when the existence of time travel was supposedly kept secret, even though there are literally hundreds of people who are engaging in it, stretched my `suspension of disbelief' quotient. The use of cell phones in the distant past also bothered me - how is such a network initiated and controlled without all the infrastructure of wireless systems? Close attention must be paid to the various time-line trip directions and actions, else the conclusion of the book will make little sense - and time-altering paradoxes are known for creating mind- warping headaches.

In the end, though, the above problems are comparatively minor when compared to the strength of his characters and the multiple ideas, such as a new theory about both the social organization of dinosaurs and the reasons for their extinction, that Swanwick presents. A thinking man's book, written in a field replete with mass-market blockbusters most of which don't even know what science is. It's nice to able to read something that doesn't insult your intelligence and still tells an engaging story. It's easy to see why this book was nominated for the 2003 Hugo Award, and in fact I think this book is better than the book that won, Robert J. Sawyer's Hominids (though not as good as another nominee, China Mieville's The Scar).

--- Reviewed by Patrick Shepherd (hyperpat)

Some reviewers have enjoyed the chapters of this book dealing with dinosaurs, but not the book as a whole. I have to say that felt very differently reading it myself. In fact, there were times when I felt that the book was a bit more about biology than I would like, and not enough about time travel. Be that as it may, I can honestly say that I enjoyed Swanwick's weaving together of these two subjects.

There are definitely some points in the book where the nonlinear flow of events is a bit disorienting, but this quickly passes and only makes the time-travel aspect of the story more interesting. In fact, without these twists and turns, Bones of the Earth would have been just a story about biologists studying exotic wildlife - perhaps worth reading, but perhaps not.

Finally, I simply do not buy the complaints about this story's ending (which I will not describe here). It's not as if it invalidates the time and effort the reader invests in Bones. Rather, I think that Swanwick has taken a legitimate approach to illustrating the consequences of using (and misusing) time travel.

Bones of the Earth is fun and interesting. Give it a try!