- Paperback
- Publisher: Orion (9 Sep 1999)
- ISBN-10: 0575602791
- ISBN-13: 978-0575602793
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 5,742,513 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Did you know you can trade in your old books for an Amazon.co.uk Gift Card to spend on the things you want? Plus, get an extra £5 Gift Certificate when you trade in books worth £10 or more before June 30, 2012. Visit the Books Trade-In Store for more details. |
Product details |
More About the Authors
Discover books, learn about writers, and more.
Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
Kessel's fluent, cinematic and often very funny SF comedy ranges from the late Cretaceous era through first-century AD Jerusalem to America in 2063. In this variant of time travel, each moment can be a separate universe. Thus one particular moment of early Jerusalem has spun off a new timeline where time-travellers saved Jesus, overthrew the Romans and imported future technology--and now run excursions to unspoilt moments where the crucifixion or Caesar's assassination are spectacles for eager tourist audiences. A suave con-man and his lovely daughter are swindling time-tourists with the ancient "badger game", and home in on a naive heir to billions who's smuggling a young dinosaur forwards in time--all this while a Jewish insurrection looms. True love blossoms amid the pratfalls, but gets fouled up before the action shifts to 2063 America. This is the home of time exploitation, featuring multiple versions of Marx, Freud, Jung, Einstein, Gandhi and numerous other historical celebrities abducted from past moments. The ethics of such time-tweaking is dodgy indeed, and provides a serious undertone to a mammoth TV trial whose legal AI is programmed to be swayed up to 20% by on-line public opinion: there are socko surprise-witness performances by Abraham Lincoln and Jesus. Thoroughly enjoyable silliness, which also pricks the conscience and ends as a movie romance should. --David Langford
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Product Description
August Faison and his gorgeous young daughter Genevieve are seasoned swindlers who rove across time in search of new victims to fleece. Now the most precious pigeon of them all has fallen into their laps, in Jerusalem, at the time of Jesus Christ. Dr. Owen Vannice is far too innocent and far too rich for his own good. A fabulously wealthy paleontologist, he finds himself stranded in the Holy City with a rapidly growing baby dinosaur in tow. And Simon is a disillusioned disciple whose master has been kidnapped uptime by colonists from the future. When a desperate act of sabotage brings them all together, their lives are drastically transformed, for Genevieve is falling in love with 'Dr. Nice' against her better judgement, and is even willing to double-cross her father to get him.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
Browse and search another edition of this book.
Browse and search another edition of this book.
First Sentence
As Sloane unlaced the bodice of Genevieve's peasant's dress all she could hear was his breathing, fast and light. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
As Sloane unlaced the bodice of Genevieve's peasant's dress all she could hear was his breathing, fast and light. Read the first page
Explore More
Concordance
Browse Sample PagesConcordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
Tag this product(What's this?)Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organise and find favourite items. |
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
I don't normally like time-travel stories. Authors rarely address well the issue of paradox, which has to be dealt with if you are to have a consistent story universe. Well, Kessel does deal with it. It's hard to know whether he's addressed it well - when thinking about complex things we use language, and languages which have evolved to deal with the concerns of a species that only travels through time at the rate of one second per second lack the tools for dealing simply with it - but he has at least addressed it well enough for it to not bring the story crashing down in a pile of smoking logic and twisted causality.
At its heart is an attempted rip-off and a romance. Genevieve and August are con artists who attempt to steal a dinosaur from Dr. Nice while he stops over in the Middle East around 30 AD on his way home from the Cretaceous. It's a decent set-up for a decent comedy in which con artist and mark fall for each other, are driven apart, and eventually looks like they're getting back together. There's a side story about the obscure biblical character Simon the Zealot fomenting revolution after Jesus went off to the 21st century to present a TV talk show, which could have been cut out entirely and still left a decent novella behind, but which serves well to build the fictional world in our minds.
Overall, it's an enjoyable romantic comedy of the sort that, as the book cover notes, is a staple of Hollywood. Just don't expect much Corruption. Dr. Nice is not corrupted in the book. There's not even any attempt to corrupt him.
At its heart is an attempted rip-off and a romance. Genevieve and August are con artists who attempt to steal a dinosaur from Dr. Nice while he stops over in the Middle East around 30 AD on his way home from the Cretaceous. It's a decent set-up for a decent comedy in which con artist and mark fall for each other, are driven apart, and eventually looks like they're getting back together. There's a side story about the obscure biblical character Simon the Zealot fomenting revolution after Jesus went off to the 21st century to present a TV talk show, which could have been cut out entirely and still left a decent novella behind, but which serves well to build the fictional world in our minds.
Overall, it's an enjoyable romantic comedy of the sort that, as the book cover notes, is a staple of Hollywood. Just don't expect much Corruption. Dr. Nice is not corrupted in the book. There's not even any attempt to corrupt him.
Format:Hardcover
According to the "many worlds" theory, as every moment passes, virtually identical universes split off - as a coin falls heads up in one universe and tails up in another, for example. With every decision or divergence, the universes split off in BOTH directions - there is a world where the coin fell heads up, and one where it was tails, and both exist side-by-side but separated forever by the dichotomy of that choice.
John Kessel has combined this idea with time travel, to allow his neo-Victorian society of the 2060s to exploit versions of the past in a different branch of time for profit, without risking our own version of history.
The narrative is split between a few main characters; Genevieve the con artist, Owen the fantastically rich, naif palaeontologist, and Simon the Apostle. Their various plans and misadventures collude (inevitably) to bring them together for a dramatic climax in the basement of a huge hotel in Jerusalem in AD44.
The denouement following the violent confrontation of all three main characters involves trial by TV, bitter recrimination, merciless merchandising of tragedy for profit, and a new deceit with a surprising result and a rather unexpected ending.
Sometimes it is quite hard to divine the thoughts of the protagonists, particularly Genevieve, around whose switching loyalties the plot revolves to some extent.
However, this doesn't distract from the comic yet strangely plausible world created by the advent of time-travel, where Jesus Christ is a chat-show hero in 2068, and the energy crisis is solved by pumping oil from a different universe where it hasn't been used up because humans never started pumping it there.
Though the ending seems a little implausible emotionally, and perhaps a little rushed, the concept of exploiting other quantum multiverses and our own historical ancestors has been explored and presented very convincingly, along with a reasonably plausible view of a society quite like our own, but with new (or recycled) moral values akin to those preached in Victorian England.
I can recommend this for light reading and interesting social comment.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
10 reviews
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Storytelling at its best
12 Jun 1997
Format:Hardcover
John Kessel knows how to tell a story. Countless
science fiction books make it into the bookstores
only because of some cool idea, or because they tie in to a popular TV series or movie, or because the author's name guarantees sales, or because some big dinosaur is ripping across the cover.
science fiction books make it into the bookstores
only because of some cool idea, or because they tie in to a popular TV series or movie, or because the author's name guarantees sales, or because some big dinosaur is ripping across the cover.
Not so with _Corrupting Doctor Nice_. The best
fiction--and this novel is surely some of the best
fiction--tells a _story_, one which engages the reader's interest; delights with plot complications, humor, and tension; and satisfies with a resolution that fulfills all the promises made by the developing plot.
Kessel's book does just that, and does it with dinosaurs and time travel, too. The "coolness factor" which makes good science fiction good science fiction is intimately blended with the brilliant storytelling which makes good fiction good fiction.
Buy the book, read it, and remember why you came to love fiction in the first place.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Dino's for Dinner
15 May 2000
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
If travel through different ages and parallel dimensions were a possibility would we hesitate to exploit them? John Kessel's imaginative and plain old funny "Corrupting Dr. Nice" depicts a world (well, several) in which cars are driven with gas pumped from other dimensions, messiahs are plucked from 1st century Jerusalem to appear on talk shows, tourists from the 21st Century swarm around ancient Rome, and dinosaurs are cloned to provide the ultimate steak dinner. With Doctor Nice, the earnest but naive palentologist, his security software which keeps making him preform acts of heroism, and any number of rouges and con-artists, this book is engaging and thought-provoking. In a Sci-Fi tradition which includes Douglas Adams and Kurt Vonnegut.
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful
a good time-travel story
3 Sep 2000
Format:Paperback
The story surrounds the scientific realization of time travel in the 21st century. Humans can travel to the past in any number of "unburned" parallel universes during historical periods where the "historicals" have not yet been exposed to the "futurians." Alternatively, travelers can go back to a well-established moment universe where the historicals have gotten used to the futurians coming and going. A revolt occurs during a well-established universe, 40 C.E. A good story follows and mostly takes place back in the future.
The main plot is a common thread with a new twist. A grifter and her father travel to various times and scam clueless tourists from the futre. Soon, she falls for one of the men she intends to scam, a naive, almost perfect paleontologist who has taken a young dinosaur from the past for study. This part of the story is somewhat obvious. It reminds me of a movie. I can see this going to the big screen easily. The bigger story in the background surrounds the ethics of time-travel.
There is a parallel between the unethical behavior of the scam-artists, the paleontologist's removing the dinosaur from the past, and the corporation who owns the time-travel machines.
I kept wondering how this story would end. Any book that makes me guess what's going to happen in the last few pages gets 4 stars from me.
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
