Strange Attractors

I adored William Sleator's books as a kid. I missed this one the first time around, though, since it was published in 1990, when I was nearly out of my teens and had long since moved on to other things. But, hey, it's never too late to revisit old childhood friends, right?

This one features recent high school graduate Max, who takes an educational trip to a science lab and comes home with a case of one-day amnesia and a strange object in his pocket. From there, he gets caught up in an adventure involving time travel, alternate timelines, and chaos theory, as two different versions of the same people each try to use him against their alternate-universe duplicates. (Unfortunately, none of them have goatees, so it's difficult for him to show more tell which set are the evil ones.)

The writing is definitely aimed at younger readers (maybe young teens and tweens), and the story is pretty contrived. Plus, what it does with the chaos theory stuff is... fanciful. But it's also kind of clever, and I enjoyed it way more than I expected to. Reading it just gave me this giant hit of pleasurable nostalgia, taking me right back to memories of being held completely enthralled as Sleator introduced me to all kinds of brain-bending science fictional ideas for the very first time. (Indeed, I think Sleator's The Green Futures of Tycho was the first place I ever encountered the idea of alternate timelines, and it just melted my little elementary school brain. In the good way.) show less

WILLIAM SLEATOR IS THE MAN! When I see his books I just can't help myself. I bought Strange Attractors at a library discard booksale.

Now that we've gotten that out of the way, this book is about a teen named Max who visits the lab of a physicist on a class trip. But he wakes up the next day with no memory of the previous day and the visit to the lab.

It turns out, the physicist from the lab has invented a phaser that can transport people and objects around in time. The problem is, if you go into the past and mess around, it screws up the timeline of the world and splits off into two timelines. Now, there are alternate-universe versions of the physicist (Sylvan) and his teenage daughter (Eve) that have a phaser and are trying to usurp show more their place on earth and send them back billions of years, when the earth was made of molten lava. Each scientist/daughter pair are doing their best into manipulating Max into helping them. The real Sylvan and Eve are probably right, but the fake Sylvan and Eve are so, so sexy. Max isn't sure who to trust.

The main drawback to it is that, while the science and ideas are interesting enough to intrigue older teens and adults, it is written at a low level, perhaps for young teens. Especially at the beginning, the characterization and dialogue is contrived and corny. But it gets really good at the end.

Great story, totally worth a read, but I wish it was aimed at older readers. show less

A little too tame for teens, but the main character has just graduated from high school, and there are situations where our boy has to decline drugs, so it's not really a juvenile. Mostly adventure, not much complexity. Not enough provocative ideas about the ramifications of the premise - that is to say, it touched on, but didn't explore, the big What If...?" that is the hallmark of better SF. I was going to give it two stars, but the last few pages gave me something to think about & a bit of a thrill. I wish I'd read it years ago, when less cynical and widely-read."

Max finds himself in possession of a time travel device which is being eagerly sought by both the scientist who invented it and his alter ego from a different time line.