Time Travelers Never Die (Hardcover)

~ (Author)

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.

Product Description

"The logical heir to Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke" (Stephen King) takes readers on a science fiction adventure tour through time.

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 the aid of Dave MacElroy, 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 20th 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.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: Ace Hardcover (November 3, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0441017630
• ISBN-13: 978-0441017638
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.4 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #19,293 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

  Popular in this category: (What's this?)

  #3 in

  Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Authors, A-Z > ( M ) > McDevitt, Jack

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 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

Amazon Verified Purchase

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 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.

15 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Entertaining tale, November 8, 2009

By	M. Detlefsen - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Amazon Verified Purchase

I've read all of Jack McDevitt's work, and this is another solid novel. It does tend to drag a bit in spots when enumerating all the places to which they traveled. After finishing it, I'm still trying to figure out what the "devastating discovery" referred to in the description is referring to.

The Kindle edition is marred by what is all too common these days: many typographical errors, notably the seemingly random insertion of spaces into words, sometimes several occurrences per page.

A good read, though, I enjoyed it.

12 of 16 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

Amazon Verified Purchase

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.