Book Reviews

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Reternity
Neal Wooten
C. 2012
ISBN: 978-1-61225-041-0
1-61225-041-6
Mirror Publishing
Milwaukee, WI
www.reternitybook.com
239 pages, $6.99

This is a Christian science fiction novel. Usually one would not find similar aspirations between the proponents of religion and devotees of science fiction, but Neal Wooten does a good job crafting a science fiction plot built on a plausible, but fictional, quirk of science and a very credible appreciation of the influence of Christianity in the world. Neal Wooten, has impressive credentials. He is a successful journalist, blogger, illustrator of books, and author. He is a frequent contributor to an online magazine The Indie Times. He has written three books. This one, Reternity, is his first work of science fiction.

The protagonist, Max, is a nineteen-year-old freshman in Cedarbluff University pursuing education in a seminary, although he does not feel a calling to the cloth. His science professor assigns his class annually an impossible experiment. This year it is try to make a ball of lead become magnetic. Max surfed The Internet to see how this might be done. He learned that lead is not magnetic because it does not have electron spin. For any metal to be magnetic, it must produce an electronic momentum to interact with the magnetic field. He thought maybe he could somehow, using electricity, manipulate the molecular structure of the lead to hopefully get electron spin. He constructed a series of experiments to do this and eventually was shocked to see the lead ball disappear.

He invited his science professor to witness this experiment. The professor was astounded. He thought this a Noble Prize discovery. Max then began to doubt the wisdom of pursuing his discovery. Succumbing to the prejudice that science is evil, he visualized his discovery being applied to the detriment of humanity. He destroyed his apparatus and washed his hands of the whole matter. Later, in a conversation about the evils of science with his father who is a minister, his father opined that there is nothing evil about science. It is how humans use science that could be evil. They have the option to use it for good purposes, if they so choose or they can use it for evil purposes. So Max reappraised his opinion of his apparatus.
Max tells the professor that he regrets destroying the apparatus because he now sees it in a better light. The professor tells Max he has been theorizing on what happens when the lead ball disappears. He thinks the lead ball disappeared because it fell out of three-dimensional space into four-dimensional space through a wormhole. The fourth dimension is time, so the professor thinks the lead ball merely shifted its position in time. This is not so far fetched. There is a famous urban legend that the US Navy experimented with the interaction of magnetism and warping of space to make warships invisible. In October, 1943, The Philadelphia Experiment caused the USS Eldridge to vanish from its berth in the Philadelphia Naval shipyard and reappear in the waters off Norfolk, VA some 200 miles away.

The professor surprises Max by taking Max to a country home owned by the professor where the professor had spent all his savings and constructed a much larger apparatus and has been experimenting with it. Max joins the professor and the experiments get more interesting as Max and the professor conduct further experiment with new ideas and equipment until, finally, they embark on the biggest adventure of their lives.
All along, in the novel, Max has been wrestling with his Christian faith. He joined a bible study group when he first entered Cedarbluff University. Interacting with other students and monitored by the professor, Max is hearing views different from what he learned from his father, the Reverent Maxwell. The author has Max try to come to terms with some of the main issues that have divided Christians—does salvation come by faith alone or are deeds equally important, should Christians turn the other cheek in every circumstance, should Christians judge others, or what would eternity be like? I think Wooten has Max arrive at sensible positions on these topics.

The final seven chapters present a lot of food for thought on what Max and the professor experience and where the author skillfully ties religion and science together, taking the reader on an adventuresome journey the reader will not soon forget. I found this book interesting and stimulating. This is a different kind of science fiction novel. I am looking forward to more novels like this.

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