Amazon.co.uk: Oracle: Ian Watson: Books

Product Description

Synopsis
Tom Ryan and his sister become embroiled with a Roman centurion, sent forward through time by a top secret probe, the "Oracle". But the British security services want the secret kept, at all costs.

About the Author
Ian Watson was born in 1943. He lectured in Tanzania and Tokyo and taught Future Studies at Birmingham Polytechnic. He began publishing sf with 'Roof Garden Under Saturn' for New Worlds in 1969 but it was with the publication of The Embedding in 1973 that he really established himself as a writer of rare power and vision.

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2 Reviews

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

Slick and intense, 3 Mar 2007

By	Mrs. K. A. Smurthwaite "Kell" (Aberdeen, Scotland) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Oracle (Paperback)

Whenever I pick up a book who's plot involves time travel, I get a bit wary - I read in constant fear of a paradox ruining the story for me, as I'll invariably pick it apart, proving that such-and-such couldn't happen because so-and-so did this, that or the other. It's rare for an author to pull it off without writing him or herself into a corner, but Ian Watson has accomplished it with flair. Not content with planting a first Century Roman Centurion in modern Britain, he also manages to delve deeper, adding politics to the mix and making it an integral part of the plot, even managing to show substantial comparison between events witnessed by the Roman and those happening in modern-day Ireland.

He doesn't faff around with phoney scientific explanations for the sudden appearance of a man from the past either - he gives the reason, but doesn't offer up scientific theory, which makes a refreshing change and also means that as science progresses, there will be fewer holes picked in this novel than in some others (hurrah!).

This would have been awarded 9/10 but for the ending which was rather abrupt and felt like a bit of a cop-out - it felt unfinished, like Watson had more to say but was edited in the final chapters, so a point is retracted. Still, what remains is an intense political thriller with terrorists and a Roman soldier in tow and it's a while since I've read something of this kind that was so good. It's well worth a look.

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Interesting, tightly plotted, time travel thriller, 25 April 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Oracle (Paperback)

This is the first watson book i have read, an entertaining and pleasingly convulted thriller involving time travelling centurions the IRA and a top secret government project to spy into the future. As a pure time travel novel it suffers from too much else being shoehorned into the available space, so that the wonder of such events is perhaps inadequately expressed. Still very enjoyable though, despite the dark Northern Ireland paran