This is a genuinely interesting novel. The set up is delightful science fiction: a rich entrepreneur figures out you can dive into Jupiter’s Eye to travel back in time. It’s something to do with cosmic strings. Awesomely they aren’t going back into the past to see dinosaurs, they want to determine if the so-called universal constants of gravity and the speed of light are genuinely constant, or if their having changed over time accounts for problems in the maths of physics and why they can’t get their faster than light ships to work .
The dinosaurs they encounter are a mere distraction for a handful of researchers to deal with. An awesome distraction. These are cool, feathered dinosaurs (proto-feathers), with intelligence and personality – not just mighty killing machines. There are very enjoyable action sequences with dinosaur battles; they shoot a lot of them in the head (it’s okay, time is like a river) and receive relatively few serious injuries which is a little surprising.
It’s a very science heavy book; the author has a broad spread of interests through physics and paeleontology which gives some vivid insights into cosmic science and fringe theory. I loved that. Each chapter ends with a brief discussion of the theories used and a list of links for further reading and reference. But the science dominates the dialogue for pages at a time instead of allowing for character development – there’s the tough one, the science lady, the weird kid who runs off to live with the dinosaurs (I like him) and some even tougher military men.
The science is fascinating, and it’s worth getting through the dialogue to the next brilliant description of dinosaur behaviour. If you like dinosaurs, you’ll enjoy this as much as I did. I downloaded the sequel today.
On Friday we returned to a favourite venue – 
I sat in silence. The watch, that horrible grisly thing that would not leave me, pursued me through the house, lay on the arm of the Chesterfield. Its vile anatomy seemed as if it were a broken spur of wrist protruding from the deep red flesh of the upholstered chair. Though it did not tick conventionally, as a clock of man might, I felt its uncanny hands pound through my pulse and the fabric of the house. I sat in silence. Around me the walls thrummed with dark animation. Shudders ran through the wallpaper, lifting the flowery relief images in waves of menacing faces.
These weeks are vanishing at a terrifying rate, and yet have that strange endless quality to them too. It’s confusing. The week before last, which was filled with splendid improv shows and wonders now feels like it was months and months ago. I blame work. And relativity. Frankly I’m exhausted, despite last week only being a four day effort. There should be a limit to how much frustration, bad communication and failures in decision making can be fitted into a single week. The organisation I work for has an unlimited ability to fail itself and its employees. Good skillz.
As you may have noticed dear reader I’ve been moaning about work a lot lately. Sorry about that. It’s the usual problem that work gets in the way of real life and that always pisses me off. When it takes up even more than its allotted 37 hours per week (plus travel time) that really does grab my goat and punch it in the gander. There’s been a slight lull (the consequence of actually being listened to for once [moan moan moan]) and so I got to take some emergency time off before I went insane.
