The Title Sounds like Ludlum, and So Does the Science

The Twin Paradox - Charles Wachter

I received a free copy of Charles Wachter’s The Twin Paradox in return for my honest review. Well, they asked for it. Here's the book: Begin by constructing a skeleton of “the hero’s journey” overlain by a skin of LOTR, stir in heaping helpings of Robert Ludlum’s The Holcroft Coventant, Nancy Freedman’s Joshua Son of None,  and Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park. Coat the entire recipe with pseudo-science too weak to fool a “Star Trek: The Next Generation” fan and sprinkle the result with word-usage errors and desultory research. You got yourself The Twin Paradox. The Holcroft Covenant reference is to Ludlum’s sonnenkinder; children of the Third Reich born in secret to take over the world forty years after Hitler’s demise. Joshua Son of None gave Wachter the idea for cloning a dead world leader decades before Dolly. The reference to Jurassic Park will become clear, and the rest? I’ll explain.

A billionaire scientist collected the DNA of a slew of historical geniuses and grew a high-school class that included ersatz versions of Isaac Newton, MLK, Leonardo da Vinci, Catherine the Great, and Albert Einstein. Which is weird to begin with, ‘cause five is a pretty small graduating class…

Said billionaire, Teegen Ralls, (Warren Buffet meets Elon Musk?) also built himself a huge super-collider in Texas near Corpus Christi, constructed – for unknown reasons – partially on land and partially in the Gulf of Mexico, yet dry land ‘cause of a gigantic seawall. Seems rather stupid to go through that effort when he could have moved inland a few miles and been entirely on land…

Whatever, the compound is a time machine of sorts: when the collider is running, every three minutes outside the loop under the seawall equals ten years inside. It must be magic, though, because no one actually explains this effect.

The kids, of course, get coerced into being inside – a hellhole that bears a striking resemblance to Crichton’s dinosaur theme park – when the machine fires up. They're caught along with a bunch of the most heinous criminals ever to stride the planet (a Russian version of the same cloning program). The rush to escape is, of course, the expected endless string of disasters and near disasters. Naturally, the little geniuses do get out… otherwise there couldn’t be sequels, one of which is already in the works.

My thoughts? Predictable plotting, unlikeable characters, lousy science (guess Wachter’s film degrees didn’t include much STEM), and some irritating goofs. As for the goofs, will someone tell the author that you don’t hit the “breaks” on your vehicle and you don’t “peak out from under” something. Oh, yeah, and Corpus Christi gets an average of 30-plus inches of precipitation a year, far too much to be considered a desert. The deserts in Texas are several hundred miles west. While we’re at it, there is no liquid helium in the Panhandle (it's a gas), not to mention that it would be a pretty difficult feat to build a secret pipeline across six hundred miles of private property (there isn’t any public land to speak of in Texas). 

While we're at it, will someone explain the difference between an oil rig and an offshore platform? Oh, and when the kids cut the helium pipeline cooling the collider's magnets, why didn't that shut the loop down, hmmm? Which raises another question, does Wachter know how cold liquid helium is? Four degrees above absolute zero, which pretty much makes it impossible to pump through a pipe.

I still might have bought this plot via MAJOR willing suspension of disbelief had the compound not been partially in the water. The giant seawall holding back the waters of the Gulf is a McGuffin of its own, necessary only because said water provides  the ultimate danger to the hero and his fellowship on their journey. 

Two stars.

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