Borrowed Tides

by Paul Levinson

A voyage and an adventure as sublime as any in the history of the universe.

Aaron Schoenfeld has parlayed a Ph.D. in the philosophy of science and a sharp tongue into an improbable second career as director of a project to plan and execute the first interstellar voyage. The trip to Alpha Centauri will take many years and might end up being a one-way journey for the crew.

His old acquaintance Jack Lumet may be the unlikely source of an answer. An anthropologist obsessed with the myths of Native Americans, he once wrote a paper about Wise Oak, an Iroquois sachem who claimed to have ridden a cosmic version of the Hudson, a tidal river that flows both ways, to the stars and back.

In a world where money for space journeys is hard to come by, even a slightly mad theory that suggests a possible shortcut to the stars is an attractive possibility for the people who believe more in humanity's destiny among the stars than they do in safety considerations, minimal risks, or taking no for an answer.

Genres: Science Fiction, Religion, Time Travel

238 pages, Hardcover

First published March 1, 2001

About the author

Paul Levinson, PhD, is an author, professor, singer-songwriter, media commentator, podcaster, and publisher. His first novel, The Silk Code, won the Locus Award for best first science fiction novel of 1999. Entertainment Weekly called his 2006 novel, The Plot to Save Socrates, “challenging fun”. Unburning Alexandria, sequel to The Plot to Save Socrates, was published in 2013. Chronica - the third novel in the Sierra Waters time travel trilogy - followed in 2014. His 1995 award-nominated novelette, "The Chronology Protection Case," was made into a short film, now on Amazon Prime Video. His 2022 alternate history short story about The Beatles, "It's Real Life," was made into a radioplay, streaming free, and an audiobook, in 2023, and it won the Mary Shelley Award for Outstanding Fiction. "It's Real Life" was expanded into a novel, It's Real Life: An Alternate History of The Beatles, and published in 2024. Paul Levinson was President of the Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA), 1998-2001. His nine nonfiction books on the history and future of media have been translated into 15 languages around the world, and have been reviewed in The New York Times, Wired, and major newspapers and magazines. Two shorter books, McLuhan in an Age of Social Media and Fake News in Real Context, were published in 2015-2016, and are frequently updated. Levinson appears on CNN, MSNBC, NPR, and numerous other television and radio shows and podcasts. His 1972 album, Twice Upon a Rhyme, was reissued on CD and remastered vinyl and is available on Bandcamp and iTunes. His first new album since Twice Upon A Rhyme -- Welcome Up: Songs of Space Time -- was released by Old Bear Records on CD and digital, and Light in the Attic Records on vinyl, in 2020. Levinson is Professor of Communication and Media Studies at Fordham University in NYC.

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Reviews

[Ian · Rating 5 out of 5]

In a recent interview we return to the subject that Borrowed Tides is your worst novel. Plot to Save Socrates, The Silk Code,...are your best. I see exactly what is going on here: I have started reading it and, I think it is just as good, but is totally different than the other novels. I would say the other novels, because it is hardcore science fiction that is technical enough, and politically complicated enough, to challenge the mind of the scientist or, political scientist, who has a degree in his field, are more in the realm of suiting the scientific, or political scientist, layman. Whereas, Borrowed Tides is a book that steers away from the "intelligent entertainment" found in the The Plot to Save Socrates and The Silk Code and falls in what I would call, "A drama that accurately explores the politics of what the government is up against in getting humans into space, and details the hard science behind the difficulties humans would have in trying to be in space. It would help any space scientist at NASA, organize in his mind the very problems he or she is up against politically, and scientifically, of getting humans to the stars. I think it is kind of like if Newton wrote fun drama, with clever plots, that kept people on the edge of their seat, people might then read his Principe and say it is his worst work, when in actuality it is the invention of the very physics that landed us on the Moon. Anyone at NASA, I am sure, for the most part, worships the work, as much as they would enjoy his novels if he wrote them. But, the scientific layman would call the monumental milestone his worst work. However, if they were to market the works in separate categories, they would say instead, "Oh yes, I have heard of that. He was a genius. I have also read his novels, and I love them; they have such dynamic plots."

[Peter Tillman · Rating 2 out of 5]

Borrowed Tides opens pretty well, with an oddball first expedition to Alpha Centauri based partly on an Iroquois legend. The sfnal premises are laughably wrong-headed -- the stuff of bad TV shows -- but I kept reading, thinking Levinson had something else in mind. Perhaps he did, but the story kept twisting and turning -- odd enough to keep me reading, but not coherent enough to gel. About the only real virtue in BT is that it is short. I finished it, but just barely. 1.5 stars

With admirable succintness, Gerald Jonas outlines why you shouldn't bother with BT. Too bad I didn't read this first:
http://www.nytimes.com/books/01/06/17...

[Peter · Rating 1 out of 5]

When there's sudden evidence for life around Alpha Centuri and a new star drive that might be capable of making the trip in a reasonable time... if they had enough fuel, a small group is sent on a possibly one-way trip hoping a scientific theory might allow them to get back without any extra fuel. Then all sorts of weird stuff happens.

This is not science fiction. This is fantasy on a spaceship. And I don't even mean "they made up a few implausible technologies" (though the author did), or "science doesn't work that way" (although there are examples of that, too). It's not even GOOD fantasy-on-a-spaceship where there's a consistency to all the made-up stuff. It's like everything in this book was written with the idea of, "Wouldn't it be cool if?" with very little thought beyond that. It's hard to discuss without spoilers, so, be warned (though, honestly, I think I'm saving you the trouble).


The weirdness starts early when they mention that one of the stars in the Alpha Centuri system "suddenly seemed to switch posistions" with the other two, bringing planets into focus. Now, at this point, I thought, that must be weird phrasing, because... well, stars don't suddenly switch position, and if they did it would be known worldwide really quickly and lead to a planet-wide sense of WTF THE CLOSEST STARS JUST SUDDENLY REARRANGED THEMSELVES WHILE WE WATCHED! OMG WHAT HAPPENS IF OUR SUN JUST SUDDENLY MOVES A FEW FRACTIONS OF A LIGHTYEAR AND THE EARTH DOESN'T? And the author didn't indicate any worldwide upheaval, so I assumed, okay, maybe he just meant that in the normal course of star movement something came into view that was previously hidden, and he just poorly described it.

Then the world prepares to send a starship entirely with the sole passengers being a philosopher in his 80s and his friend of similar age who's only skill is knowing old Native American legends (including one about star travel). Apparently the rest of the world is slightly less dumb than I initially thought because they quickly decide "Okay, let's throw some scientists on the ship too. But leave the octogenarian with no scientific skills in charge for some reason." (I did say slightly)

So they take a long trip (during which, the stars ALSO suddenly switch position drastically and people's only concern seems to be that this may impact their ability to get home). Soon after, reality starts changing in other ways too, planets appear at first lifeless then with a biosphere, including Earth-like trees. That is, actual varieties that are on Earth.

And I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP, the working theory the author seems to have based this on is, "Quantum mechanics is weird, so maybe babies born in space will be able to alter reality." SPACE MAKES BABIES SUPER-POWERED IS NOT EVEN THE NARRATIVE BASIS OF THE BOOK, IT IS MERELY A THROWAWAY IDEA. It doesn't even get abandoned so much as dropped. "I guess they grow out of it."

Of course, they don't stay on the planet, or even explore it more than a few days. There's also an alien spaceship, but all it does is drive people crazy and they leave it behind with no further impact on the story.

Then the human ship starts going back to Earth. No, they didn't turn around and go home. The ship just starts going. And not just that. IT'S GOING BACKWARDS IN TIME. Records start erasing because the ship's regressed to where they weren't recorded. Dwindling food and fuel supplies start returning. Humans, though, and plants and other living things they're immune. Dead humans are too. Because apparently time-travelling-backwards distinguishes between food and a human corpse. Cans of food (themselves, generally speaking, corpses of living organisms that should be immune the same way) magically restock themselves in the pantry though. Because actually thinking of how this physically happens would require thought, it all is sort of handwaved. They later find a way to keep some records by using a 'genetic algorithm' which apparently defeats backwards time the same way living stuff does despite being implemented on a non-living computer (although how the genetic-algorithm-in-progress managed to survive long enough to be finished is beyond me...). So let's recap, everything is going backwards in time except living humans, living plants and animals, dead humans, and software on computers programmed in a special way, but not dead plants. Then everyone gets worried because they think that maybe when they get back to Earth time will start moving forward again and they'll all be old with all their memories but the kids they had in space will just disappear and no one will believe they ever left despite being old but why are they even old if the kids disappear why is time obscenely selective about the stuff it's going to erase and oh my god this book makes no sense at all.

It's worse than no sense because there's virtually no plot, the entire book is them first traveling to a place, looking around, finding something weird and deciding space makes babies temporarily gods then abandoning an alien starship and spending eight years traveling home WORRYING about what might happen when they get back, sometimes trying a few things but to no effect. When they do get back, well, that's a whole other kettle of crap, but it doesn't last long because the book's just about over anyway. The whole book is just an exercise in "isn't this a cool idea, even if it doesn't make sense?" And it's not a cool idea just because it doesn't make sense, it's got no basis in science or even a good reason for the fantasy it's just a random thing the author thought might be cool, he could just as easily decide that everybody in space turned into talking snowmen and they're worried about melting if they get too close to the sun. If literally anything can happen, who the $!@$ cares WHAT happens? There's not even any narrative thread running through things that I can see. One character gets sick from a mysterious ailment and dies... why? I see no story reason for it at all. It could just as easily be to point out the difficulties of space travel as it could be the author decided halfway through writing that there were too many characters and unceremoniously dropped one.

And above all of this... nobody even reacts to anything in a reasonable way. I mean, if all this crazy stuff happened that upended pretty much all of scientific thinking, it might at least be interesting to watch characters react to it realistically! I'd at least expect some nervous breakdowns about how the universe turns out to be a fundamentally nonsensical place. Instead it's all, "Huh, the stars moved. Weird. Look, that dead planet's now thriving and it's got Earth trees on it. Wonder what that's about. Guess we might as well take our four-year-old kid down to the planet where we lost contact with our scientist." It's not even just the weird stuff too, these are like a handful of people who spend years together and it never once feels like it. At one point one character comments about how another character's aging well, because it's the first time we've seen them since a time-jump, but... these people presumably see each other every single day, why would they suddenly start talking like they hadn't seen each other in a while?

I find it hard to find any redeeming qualities at all, except that some of the individual pieces aren't necessarily bad, it's just they're all thrown into a stewpot with no thought about how they go together or relate to each other. By before the halfway point I was pretty much hate-reading it just to see how awful and ridiculous it could get. Very, as it turns out, so I hope I've saved you the trouble if you're in my shoes.

When googling the title after I picked up this in a bundle of other (hopefully higher-quality) ebooks, one of the first things I stumbled upon was a fragment of a reference to an interview where it looked like the author said it was their worst book. All though reading this, I thought, "Okay, maybe I shouldn't write the author off entirely, anyone can do a bad book." Heck, this book (somehow) got published by some editors who normally have a good eye, maybe it was just a bad book for everyone involved, and some of the other books by the author had intriguing premises or titles. When I was done, I tried to find the interview to justify that hope, only to find one with the author complaining that other people sometimes said it was his worst, but that he thought it was fine. Well, if this isn't his worst book, then I have no desire to read any of the others.

[Jeni · Rating 2 out of 5]

A true science fiction novel, but felt it was written in an awkward style that was difficult to follow at times. Despite the very interesting premises, it was told mostly in a very dry, dissappointing and slow-paced style.

[Keith · Rating 3 out of 5]

Starts out promising but (literally) never goes anywhere.

[Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don’t know what to make of Paul Levinson’s Borrowed Tides. Levinson can do hard science, but some of the elements of this book are so farfetched that I think I must be missing something. We have our first crewed voyage to Alpha Centauri. Fine. Of course, there is not enough fuel for the return trip unless they can catch a gravitational slingshot (here called a boomerang) that one crewmember believes in because it is part of Native American mythology. The ship’s captain is qualified only because he has a Ph.D. in the philosophy of science. Sure. When they arrive, they find a habitable planet that does strange things to the mind—rendering one of the crew mute for unexplained reasons. The planet also morphs through its geological evolution much too rapidly. As Jack Lumet, an anthropologist specializing in Iroquois folklore, opines, “Nothing about this trip was easy to explain.”
I wonder if Levinson was smoking something intriguing while reading Isaac Asimov’s The Currents of Space.

[Matt · Rating 1 out of 5]

I don't typically think of myself as a harsh critic, but I really did not enjoy this book. I found it pretty difficult to get through. I would not recommend that anyone read it.

First, I'll start off with a couple of things I did like:

I thought the cover was interesting and beautifully drawn.

There were some interesting considerations about time that this brought to the table.



*** SPOILERS BELOW ***

Now for the things that I didn't like:

I found the mechanics of the universe incredibly inconsistent and frustrating. For example, I can suspend my disbelief to include time going backwards but when the author arbitrarily cherrypicks things that they need the reverse-time not to apply to, it's pretty frustrating. It's not clear to the reader what exactly qualifies as anti-entropic. Apparently, the way time is moving backwards is such that a computer program can be written such that it can copy data from the future into the past. It was too inconsistent to be passable for me.

In addition, the idea that a team of scientists would be even remotely okay with someone getting pregnant on a multi-year space trip, even if food and oxygen are not constrained, is extremely difficult for me to accept.

Worse, the author attempts to pass the fact that "Kathy was entitled to her decision" off as a foregone conclusion. No, she isn't entitled to have a child on a space trip. It's incredibly irresponsible and from that point on I had trouble caring about those who are supposed to be the protagonists because they all seem to think that this absurd decision was reasonable.

If this was originally billed as a multi-generational spacecraft, I wouldn't have as much of an issue with it but this is supposed to be a 16 year journey and there's no mention of an expectation of reproduction on the trip.

One of the biggest things that kills a book for me is when I am not rooting for the main characters and in this book I could not care less about the main characters because of their silly actions that they believe that they are justified in doing.

The unrelateable characters along with the inconsistent scientific explainations really sank this book for me.

[Josh · Rating 3 out of 5]

The science aspect of this sci-fi is poor at best, but the story intrigues and the ending is very thought-provoking. I would recommend it but not to those who need the science to be realistic.

[Vulch · Rating 1 out of 5]

Bailed about 25% of the way in. Hard to distinguish characters from each other and science got bent so far it snapped.