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When a six-second time travel demo by astrophysicist Fred Robinson goes awry at a family gathering, the situation morphs from a minor inconvenience to a major catastrophe. The other three Robinson brothers—Will, Jack, and Ernie—plus their respective wives, five kids, and Fred are subsequently launched on a six-hour time reversal at their family vacation home overlooking Lake Tahoe. Family-friendly relations are soon strained again after the initial brotherly squabble that busts the time machine. A repetitious error immediately causes the Robinsons to repeat the past six days of their lives. Just as Fred figures out how to repair the box, it’s invaded electronically by a rogue member of the Vatican’s Observation Council, an aspiring time traveler whose interference then speeds the Robinsons six years into the past. The next attempt to return to the future sends them sixty years backward to the 1960s. When the family finally gambles their way Nevada-style to cover a costly time machine reconfiguration, further interference lands the brothers in 1890 in a steampunk-flavored Wild West challenge.
This time travel thriller/zany family drama is made believable through crisp writing, a dash of theoretical science that’s neither too technical nor too obscure to follow, a good sense of US history via one setting that naturally changes through time, and familiar, relatable family characters. Like the original nineteenth-century novel Swiss Family Robinson, the mid-twentieth-century comic Space Family Robinson, and the more recent TV series Lost in Space, this tale will appeal to sci-fi fans of all ages. The addition of a heavy-handed saboteur from the Vatican is brilliant and reminiscent of author Dan Brown’s thriller series but without the religious fervor and with more tongue-in-cheek obstacles. The squabbling Robinsons provide a memorable, light-hearted adventure that makes it possible for readers to become part of the family.
RECOMMENDED by the US Review