Wayback

Wayback is the first novel of Sam Batterman. It's another attempt for me to find excellent Christian fiction, a genre I think died out with C.S. Lewis. There's some OK and above-average stuff, but nothing great, at least in my searching so far. This book did not change that trend.

Batterman reminds me a lot of Michael Crichton. He has a good ability to create exciting adventure, a good (if misguided) understanding of science, and absolutely no ability to write with any sort of depth.

In Wayback, a team of scientists travels to the past (using wormholes) to try to uncover the secrets behind the makeup and creation of the earth. It was discovered that nothing exists in the timeline of the universe beyond 5-7,000 years in the past. The team, made up of skeptical scientists and adventurers, travels to the time of Noah's Ark. Along the way, they will encounter challenges to their hard-set beliefs, man-eating dinosaurs, giant humanoids, and Nazis. Yes, that's right, this book contains both dinosaurs AND Nazis. Combining perhaps the two most awesome enemies of all times does not make them more awesome. As a side plot, the man behind the time travel has to make his own journey in time to save Israel from a time-traveling Muslim terrorist.

As I mentioned, Batterman has a good grasp on creating excitement. Unlike the awful Left Behind series, I felt compelled to see what happened next. I didn't care much for the cardboard characters, though. I also didn't care much for Batterman's scientific/theological commentary. In addition to being extremely pro-Israel, this book also takes a very literal view of the Bible. In science fiction you usually have to accept some bending of reality. Exploring an earth wrought by creation rather than evolution (although I still don't believe the two are mutually exclusive) is a perfectly fine idea. However, Betterman's way of doing so bothered me.

First, the creation concept is portrayed as actually being true - not just something you have to accept for the sake of the story (such as certain time-travel paradoxes). But fine, perhaps I could get over that - but Batterman wants you to believe in wormholes but not in string theory, that dinosaurs could exist at the same time as humans (and only 5,000 years ago) but somehow missed mention in the Bible, that the great flood was great enough to separate the continents, and that God created the world to look old - but not that maybe God took a little longer than a day to create each layer of our universe and of our earth itself.

I appreciated Batterman's knowledge of science - he obviously has done his reading. Most creationists have no grasp of science whatsoever. This book was better than I expected, but I just couldn't get over dinosaurs being around at the same time as humans. That was one step too far for me.

If you are into Christian fiction, this is a fine entry in that genre. However, if you are extremely opposed to creationism then you may want to avoid this book.

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Still on track, but with school starting up, I may have to start doing the hard math again to keep track of my rate! book 52 of 100