John Cramer (1)

This is quite an interesting book - the basic story is about a couple of university researchers have stumbled on a new electromagnetic effect whilst undertaking some research for the woman's doctoral research.

At first her research advisor doesn't see the point of the new directions of research - his company was suffering financially, and he'd just been threatened by on of his contractors over some, er, dubious research he'd undertaken for them but when some of the implications became clear, he reckons this could be the saviour of his company, but the main researchers had other thoughts! Research should be shared, not put into corporate silos but they don't realise the risks they were putting themselves in. First, it was the bugs in the lab and their advisor's office, then the bungled attempt to steal the tech that left one of the researchers and a colleague's children exiled in another universe! The kidnapping of the second researcher and the advisor succeeded but the kidnappers refused to believe the truth...

The story itself worked quite well and the way that Dr Cramer went about describing the research parts of the story were quite good fun too but some parts of the story depend on computer technology and this story, written in 1987, totally misses any mention of the internet (though Cramer ought to have been aware of its predecessor), and some of the terminology used for the computers is just laughable these days so you find yourself jarred out of the story every so often (the story is set in an undefined 'day after tomorrow')… (more)

This book was incredibly fascinating, even though I found some of the hard science fiction a bit confusing. It is well written, the plot is interesting, intriguing and flows superbly from page to page. Some of the theories used in the novel have since come to passes the book was written some years ago, but this does nothing to detract from the intensity of the novel. The characters are fairly well developed, although it is more centered on the scientific experiments rather than too much on the character's backgrounds. It is most certainly well worth the read for the suspense and multiple universes questions it poses and leaves one wondering, what if.… (more)