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Journey to Where
When a radical experiment into the nature of time is sabotaged, the scientific team finds themselves in an alternate universe, where humans never became the dominant life force. Instead, dinosaurs evolved into intelligent bipeds, developing language and societal structures.
The scientists have to learn to communicate with this alien species, who view them as unusual pets, and figure out how to recreate the original experiment in a non-industrialized world, so they can go back home—assuming there’s a home, or even a universe, to return to.
But the scientist who sabotaged them is trapped in this new world with them. And he’s looking to rise to power, even if his quest means the death of his traveling companions.
The scientists have to learn to communicate with this alien species, who view them as unusual pets, and figure out how to recreate the original experiment in a non-industrialized world, so they can go back home—assuming there’s a home, or even a universe, to return to.
But the scientist who sabotaged them is trapped in this new world with them. And he’s looking to rise to power, even if his quest means the death of his traveling companions.
- GenresTime Travel
268 pages, Kindle Edition
Published July 4, 2019
About the author
Steven Paul Leiva
21 books20 followersA refugee from the silly fields of Hollywood where he cavorted with such luminaries as Bugs Bunny and Betty Boop (although the latter was but a brief affair), Steven Paul Leiva has authored nine novels and one novella since 2003. His work has been praised by literary great Ray Bradbury, Oscar-winning film producer Richard Zanuck, NY Times bestselling author and Pulitzer Prize finalist Diane Ackerman, and Star Trek actor John Billingsley, the greatest bookworm in Hollywood. He has received the Scribe Award from the International Association of Media Tie-in Writers. A traveler among several genres, his books include his witty Hollywood thrillers, BLOOD IS PRETTY and HOLLYWOOD IS AN ALL-VOLUNTEER ARMY, his novelization of the indie family film; the Scribe Award-winning 12 DOGS OF CHRISTMAS; his Sci-Fi satire of first-contact told from the point-of-view of the aliens, TRAVELING IN SPACE; his comic look at happy-ever-afters, BY THE SEA; his surreal political fantasia, IMP; his bizarre, possibly audacious, somewhat Sci-Fi novella, MADE ON THE MOON; JOURNEY TO WHERE, a contemporary "scientific romance" written in the tradition of H.G. Wells and Jules Vern; CREATURE FEATURE: A HORRID COMEDY; and his latest, BULLY 4 LOVE, a rather odd love story
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
December 18, 2019
I should probably start this review with a disclaimer: I didn’t get past chapter eight. I had a sudden realisation I was wasting precious minutes of my life. Therefore I acknowledge that if I had persevered, Journey to Where may well have been one of the best books I ever read. Having said that, I’m a great believer that a story should hook you in within the first few chapters; if it doesn’t, then either the author isn’t very good at their job or this isn’t the book for you. And I very much doubt this will be remembered as a science fiction masterpiece. With that out of the way then…
Occasionally you buy a book on the back of a great premise and a couple of positive reviews. This process is hit and miss; sometimes you find a hidden gem, other times it turns out to be a big disappointment. Unfortunately, Journey to Where falls into the latter camp for me.
At the beginning of the book the narrator wants us to believe this is a true story. In my opinion, if you’re going to have wonky science, you probably shouldn’t start with that particular premise. I don’t claim to be any sort of scientist, but even with my layman’s understanding of physics I knew that the science was on dodgy ground. I know it’s science fiction, and I know you have to suspend your disbelief somewhat. But a story should adhere to its own logic. It’s very difficult to get lost in the story when you’re marvelling at how ridiculous it all sounds. Also, revealing that most, if not all, of the main characters make it back in one piece right from the start takes away any sense of peril.
Previous reviews I’ve read talk about how the characters seem realistic. Well, they don’t. There’s an old, cliched professor type. There’s two very unprofessional scientists who have some sort of beef with each other because reasons. One of them is a cad, the other one a straight-laced nerd. There are three (or was it two? In hindsight it’s hard to remember because they all blended together) females with no discernible characteristics, except one is French. She sometimes says words and phrases (which she could easily say in English) in French. Oui, how original!
The story moves forward at light speed, and within just a few short chapters the characters have conducted their fateful experiment. They proceed to wake up from a three-day sleep. Their first instinct isn’t to find water because of an immense thirst, or wonder why they’ve soiled themselves. No, they’re all a bit peckish, so they head to the canteen. They then proceed to wander outside to find that they have been thrust into another dimension, seemingly ruled by evolved dinosaurs. There is no slowing down to wallow in this amazing revelation or take in any of the details – except for a tree that somehow “doesn’t look primordial”, whatever a primordial tree looks like – as they are quickly rounded up and taken away by some hastily-described and frankly boring “Saurs”.
Don’t expect to get any sense of the characters’ feelings or thought processes either, as the story hurtles along. And they make idiotic decisions on the hoof. Like immediately straying from the relative safety of a man-made building to go and explore a jungle full of enormous, razor-toothed predators. I don’t care how strong your sense of scientific curiosity is, any sane person’s first priority is survival. Exploration comes later if you’re lucky enough to live that long, and wandering into the unknown with absolutely no survival skills is a good way to commit suicide.
As you can imagine, this ridiculousness goes on.
In summary then, I found Journey to Where to be waste of a good concept. A hastily written, poorly thought out story based on ropy science, with paper-thin characters, forced dialogue and no sense of peril whatsoever.
Occasionally you buy a book on the back of a great premise and a couple of positive reviews. This process is hit and miss; sometimes you find a hidden gem, other times it turns out to be a big disappointment. Unfortunately, Journey to Where falls into the latter camp for me.
At the beginning of the book the narrator wants us to believe this is a true story. In my opinion, if you’re going to have wonky science, you probably shouldn’t start with that particular premise. I don’t claim to be any sort of scientist, but even with my layman’s understanding of physics I knew that the science was on dodgy ground. I know it’s science fiction, and I know you have to suspend your disbelief somewhat. But a story should adhere to its own logic. It’s very difficult to get lost in the story when you’re marvelling at how ridiculous it all sounds. Also, revealing that most, if not all, of the main characters make it back in one piece right from the start takes away any sense of peril.
Previous reviews I’ve read talk about how the characters seem realistic. Well, they don’t. There’s an old, cliched professor type. There’s two very unprofessional scientists who have some sort of beef with each other because reasons. One of them is a cad, the other one a straight-laced nerd. There are three (or was it two? In hindsight it’s hard to remember because they all blended together) females with no discernible characteristics, except one is French. She sometimes says words and phrases (which she could easily say in English) in French. Oui, how original!
The story moves forward at light speed, and within just a few short chapters the characters have conducted their fateful experiment. They proceed to wake up from a three-day sleep. Their first instinct isn’t to find water because of an immense thirst, or wonder why they’ve soiled themselves. No, they’re all a bit peckish, so they head to the canteen. They then proceed to wander outside to find that they have been thrust into another dimension, seemingly ruled by evolved dinosaurs. There is no slowing down to wallow in this amazing revelation or take in any of the details – except for a tree that somehow “doesn’t look primordial”, whatever a primordial tree looks like – as they are quickly rounded up and taken away by some hastily-described and frankly boring “Saurs”.
Don’t expect to get any sense of the characters’ feelings or thought processes either, as the story hurtles along. And they make idiotic decisions on the hoof. Like immediately straying from the relative safety of a man-made building to go and explore a jungle full of enormous, razor-toothed predators. I don’t care how strong your sense of scientific curiosity is, any sane person’s first priority is survival. Exploration comes later if you’re lucky enough to live that long, and wandering into the unknown with absolutely no survival skills is a good way to commit suicide.
As you can imagine, this ridiculousness goes on.
In summary then, I found Journey to Where to be waste of a good concept. A hastily written, poorly thought out story based on ropy science, with paper-thin characters, forced dialogue and no sense of peril whatsoever.
August 3, 2019
A group of scientists have a rare opportunity to use a supercollider to test out a theory they have been working on. Unfortunately for them, something goes horribly wrong with their experiment when a jealous former colleague secretly changes one number in an equation, attempting to cause their experiment to fail. What happens instead is something quite different than expected, and they all find themselves waking up in a world full of dinosaurs.
What happens when these scientists find themselves somewhere that humans had never evolved? Instead, the dinosaurs had risen to prominence and were now the dominant intelligent species on the planet. Can they manage to find a way to survive in this new world? And will they ever be able to find a way back to their old existence?
This was definitely a fun book to read. The author has created a very interesting and unique world full of intelligent dinosaurs and where humans as we know them have never existed. Seeing how the trapped humans learn to overcome many of the problems that stem from the language barriers gave a unique perspective on what happens when our lives are suddenly, drastically, and completely altered from what we had previously known.
I enjoyed seeing how the characters dealt with the problems and challenges of finding themselves suddenly in a world full of intelligent dinosaurs who spoke a different language from themselves. It was fascinating to see them trying to prove their intelligence to a species that shared no common history or language.
Overall I found it to be a very well written and compelling story that I believe others will enjoy as well. I know that I really enjoyed reading it. Recommended.
What happens when these scientists find themselves somewhere that humans had never evolved? Instead, the dinosaurs had risen to prominence and were now the dominant intelligent species on the planet. Can they manage to find a way to survive in this new world? And will they ever be able to find a way back to their old existence?
This was definitely a fun book to read. The author has created a very interesting and unique world full of intelligent dinosaurs and where humans as we know them have never existed. Seeing how the trapped humans learn to overcome many of the problems that stem from the language barriers gave a unique perspective on what happens when our lives are suddenly, drastically, and completely altered from what we had previously known.
I enjoyed seeing how the characters dealt with the problems and challenges of finding themselves suddenly in a world full of intelligent dinosaurs who spoke a different language from themselves. It was fascinating to see them trying to prove their intelligence to a species that shared no common history or language.
Overall I found it to be a very well written and compelling story that I believe others will enjoy as well. I know that I really enjoyed reading it. Recommended.
January 25, 2022
Phenomenal book
This is a gem! I loved this book. It took a current issue (the rise of sentiment over reason, and the fear and rejection of science and research) and wove it into a parallel universe with a twist at the end. I was disappointed at the quality of the editing, especially with using “daring-do” instead of derring-do, and ”populous” when the author meant populace. There were also too many spelling errors. Downy, used to describe a being with a downy coat, was more than once misspelled as “Downey “.
This is a gem! I loved this book. It took a current issue (the rise of sentiment over reason, and the fear and rejection of science and research) and wove it into a parallel universe with a twist at the end. I was disappointed at the quality of the editing, especially with using “daring-do” instead of derring-do, and ”populous” when the author meant populace. There were also too many spelling errors. Downy, used to describe a being with a downy coat, was more than once misspelled as “Downey “.
February 28, 2023
A scince team investigating the nature od time, suddenly finds themselves in a universe in which dinosaurs never died out, but became the dominant intelligent forms of life. They discover that their experiment was sabotaged and must find a way to reverse it.
August 19, 2019
Thinky, Fun SciFi
Science fiction can be a lot of different things: science-y, thinky, adventurous, fun, philosophical, bizarre, allegorical, and laden with commentary on current affairs, but rarely does one volume proved a dollop of all of these things while at the same time featuring realistic characters and realistic sentient dinosaurs. Fans of everything from Robert J. Sawyer's Quintaglio Ascension series to Leo Frankowski's Conrad Stargard series (starting with The Cross-Time Engineer) to Ray Bradbury's The Sound of Thunder to Andre' Norton's Quag Keep to fans of the Timemaster Roleplaying Game to students of current events will all find touchstones to compare and contrast in this wide-ranging, witty tale. While I confess as a long-time role-playing gamer I often wanted the characters to do what I would do in similar circumstances, the story of what they did do and the consequences it had for all involved was always interesting and always meaningful. Recommended.
Science fiction can be a lot of different things: science-y, thinky, adventurous, fun, philosophical, bizarre, allegorical, and laden with commentary on current affairs, but rarely does one volume proved a dollop of all of these things while at the same time featuring realistic characters and realistic sentient dinosaurs. Fans of everything from Robert J. Sawyer's Quintaglio Ascension series to Leo Frankowski's Conrad Stargard series (starting with The Cross-Time Engineer) to Ray Bradbury's The Sound of Thunder to Andre' Norton's Quag Keep to fans of the Timemaster Roleplaying Game to students of current events will all find touchstones to compare and contrast in this wide-ranging, witty tale. While I confess as a long-time role-playing gamer I often wanted the characters to do what I would do in similar circumstances, the story of what they did do and the consequences it had for all involved was always interesting and always meaningful. Recommended.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews