Time Travelers Never Die [Audiobook, MP3 Audio, Unabridged] [MP3 CD]

Jack McDevitt (Author), Paul Boehmer (Narrator)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 25, 2010

When physicist Michael Shelborne mysteriously vanishes, his son Shel discovers that he had constructed a time travel device. Fearing his father may be stranded in time-or worse-Shel enlists Dave Dryden, a linguist, to accompany him on the rescue mission.Their journey through history takes them from the Enlightenment of Renaissance Italy through the American Wild West to the civil rights upheavals of the twentieth century. Along the way, they encounter a diverse cast of historical greats, sometimes in unexpected situations. Yet the elder Shelborne remains elusive.And then Shel violates his agreement with Dave not to visit the future. There he makes a devastating discovery that sends him fleeing back through the ages and changes his life forever.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

McDevitt (Seeker) avoids flashy action scenes in this tale of two friends using a time machine to take a grand tour of history. When Adrian Shel Shelbourne's physicist father disappears and leaves behind a time-travel device, Shel and his friend Dave Dryden, a language expert, search for Shel's father in Galileo's Italy, Selma during the civil rights marches and other famous times and places. Realizing that time resists paradoxes and history can't be changed, the two friends seize the opportunity to live enriching, truly humane lives from Thermopylae to a few minutes in the future. As the paradoxes begin to pile up and their luck in dodging some of history's villains runs out, McDevitt ingeniously handles a tricky denouement that will leave readers satisfied. (Nov.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

When scientist Michael Shelburne vanishes, his son Adrian—Shel to his friends—suspects unusual circumstances but not that his father has discovered the secret of time travel. Figuring it out, however, Shel and friend David Dryden use Michael’s devices to find the missing man in a quest that takes them through Depression-era Philadelphia, Renaissance Italy, the bloody civil rights march at Selma, and the as-yet-unburned library of Alexandria’s collection of the classical Greek dramatists. Eventually they succeed, but Shel’s curiosity spurs him to travel into the future, where he discovers his impending death, and then to search for a way to avoid that fate. That search occupies the book’s latter half and becomes a masterpiece of storytelling and exploration of the paradoxes of time travel. In fact, the whole book ranks very highly in McDevitt’s quarter-century of work distinguished by high intelligence, fine world building, and superb characterization. --Roland Green --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• MP3 CD
• Publisher: Tantor Media; Unabridged,MP3 - Unabridged CD edition (January 25, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1400164338
• ISBN-13: 978-1400164332
• Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 5.4 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (62 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,000,242 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

35 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Tag Team Time Travel, November 30, 2009

By 

John M. Ford "johnDC" (near DC, MD USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Time Travelers Never Die (Kindle Edition)

Michael Shelbourne is a physicist with broad interests in history and literature. We never learn how he comes into possession of three iPod-like "converters" that allow their owners to travel through time, although he presumably had a hand in inventing them. When Michael disappears, the converters fall into the hands of his son Shel and his multilingual friend Dave. After some initial fumbling to learn the tricks of time travel, the two are off into the past. Their initial goal is to find Shel's father, but the agenda expands to include historical sight-seeing, rescue of lost manuscripts, and lucrative art investing. Big fun!

The story has interesting strengths. No time is wasted with pages of invented pseudoscience justifying time travel technology. Technical concerns are limited to keeping the hand-held time machines charged and dry. There is a constraint that each converter can only transport one person--and there are only three of them. (Actually, with time-hopping and fast-fingered borrowing, there can sometimes be more than three.) This leads to situations where one time traveler gets in trouble and another has to get him out. They range from the mundane "my converter is out of juice" through several varieties of converter theft and loss to more complex scenarios where a time jump might create a paradox.

And there are weaknesses. Big ones, unfortunately. The main characters are disappointingly shallow. Shel and Dave have a few moving experiences, such as attending the Selma civil rights march and spending an evening with Ben Franklin's discussion group. These are exceptions. They more often hop into an historical event, watch the highlights, snap a few pictures, and push the big, black go-home button. Much of their onsite behavior is almost comically out-of-touch. They introduce themselves with their real names, shake hands with everybody, and even get to know some historical figures by "taking them to lunch." Nobody seems to think this strange.

The shallowness extends to the plot. Too many promising subplots never lift off. We see many of Dave's romantic troubles without seeing how they resolve. Lost Greek plays are released into modern times, but we learn little about the public's reaction. Long-time Jack McDevitt fans--and I count myself one--often divide his work into two groups. There are cleverly-written, big-idea stories like A Talent For War and The Engines of God that engage readers in solving a mystery, either scientific or historic. And there are a few directionless meanders like Eternity Road that just don't go anywhere. I must regrettably place Time Travelers Never Die in the second category. It is a tapestry loosely weaved, with many stray threads.

That said, Jack McDevitt fans should read this book and will enjoy it. First-timers should first read one of his stronger works. And both types of reader should contrast this book with David Gerrold's The Man Who Folded Himself to see how a concept-driven time travel story can be done well.

34 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Maybe the most pointless and boring time travel novel ever?, December 30, 2009

By 

James Tepper (Boonton Township, NJ United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Time Travelers Never Die (Hardcover)

Well, the title of my review and one star rating pretty much tells how much I liked the book. What was wrong with it? Almost everything. I am a fan of Jack McDevitt's Priscilla Hutchins ("The Academy Novels") space operas. They were exciting, contained good "hard" science fiction, and were greatly enhanced and made more believable by the military verisimilitude deriving from McDevitt's military and tactical background.

"Time Travelers Never Die" has none of this. There is no science in the fiction. The time machines are little portable devices invented by Shel's [the principal protagonist] father who has gone missing in time but there is no attempt at even the briefest explanation of how they work, how they were invented etc. And when one of them all of a sudden stops working, the inventor father is completely unable to even attempt a diagnosis or repair. Oh really? This is compounded by totally flat characters, no action, nothing original, nada. Just an endless travelogue of two buddies looking through time for Shel's dad. And the travelogue is totally sterile - barren of any local flavor or culture. Every place is like every other place - only the names have changed. There is nothing to distinguish Shakespeare's 16 century England from the Alexandria of 149 B.C. In several places from the Library of Alexandria through the Revolutionary war our heroes show several 21st century photographs of Shel's father, as well as a modern digital camera and cell phone to some extremely well-known and intelligent historical figures. Our ancestors don't seem to have any problem with lame explanations as to what these artifacts are or how they come to be in existence. Talk about suspension of disbelief! I was literally laughing out loud.

There are other huge holes in the plot and logic structure of the novel (e.g., Dad gets stuck in time but doesn't think to leave a note, sign or other artifact that his son would be sure to find in the present explaining his absence - see "Timeline") and in the behavior of the two main characters. Their choices of places and times to visit (and omissions of such) boggles the mind I guess Golgotha around 33 A.D. was too mundane. After all who cares if there really was a Jesus and/or if he was really the son of God etc. But a Babe Ruth baseball game was really important. Who built the pyramids and how, why and when? What happened to the Mayans? And so on. Our two heroes were much more interested in visiting with late Renaissance European artists, poets and the like, but nothing of interest or substance emerges.

I found the entire book boring and pointless, and, as I said in the review title, I think this was the most boring time travel story I have ever read. I am not usually so harsh in my reviews but there was really nothing to recommend here at all. My advice if you're looking for time travel/historical fiction is to read "Guns of the South" by Turtledove, Crichton's "Timeline" and/or Baxter's "The Time Ships" and give McDevitt's latest a big pass.

JM Tepper

16 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars OK time travel story, nothing great, November 7, 2009

By 

Adam Grent (Baltimore, MD) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Time Travelers Never Die (Kindle Edition)

Being a big fan of time travel stories I had high hopes for this novel. While quite readable, I think it felt like an OK short story idea that had been padded out a bit too far. Time travel seems a little too easy and the characters meet a new famous person every page or so on average (seriously) and any there is no real tension or sense of danger. Definitely not up to the standards of McDevitt's other works.