Jack Jacobs and the Doomsday Time Machine (3rd edition)
Albert S. Abraham
Blue Comet Books (2008)
ISBN 9780976974420
Reviewed by Richard R. Blake for Reader Views (7/08)
In the year 2177 Jack Jacobs worked in Area 51 and was assigned as lead scientist to the top secret Advanced Gravity Drive (AGD) project code-named Orion Nine. Jacobs was recognized as one of the top gravity propulsion experts in this field even before he finished his first doctorate. Dr. Brad Gilmore, another Area 51 scientist, was secretly working on interfacing his lab’s prototype organic supercomputer into the spaceship’s systems and subsystems, alongside Jack Jacobs’s secret quantum gravity drive technology.
After concurring with Dr. Gilmore, it was agreed that Jack should take an unauthorized trial test on the day before the scheduled lift off. Unexpected and unexplained, the forces of gravity, light, and time-formulation caused a malfunction.
Jack found himself off-course with the soft-spoken organic supercomputer named Jennifer, created by Dr. Gilmore. Together with her pretty holographic images they traveled through space for a period of sixteen years. Finally arriving back at earth, they had expected to be in the year 2199. They discovered that their spaceship’s quantum gravity drive was caught up in a series of time distortions. They found themselves 100 years into the past. Jennifer explained it this way: “The harmonic of their distortion pulsated backwards moving them back in time.”
The complex plot takes the reader on a journey through space that includes the critical predicaments faced by Jack Jacobs and Jennifer, as well as the solutions they accomplish though intricate quantum mathematical hieroglyphics, formulations and systems whose accuracy are futuristic.
As a reader I did find it hard to identify with Jack’s intelligence, however, other glimpses of Jack’s personality came through in flashbacks, daydreams, and feelings expressed for Jennifer as her personality continued to emerge.
I personally have gained a new respect for members of the NASA team and those in the aeronautical industry. I stand in awe of the dedication and giftedness of these men and women. It is interesting to reflect that during my lifetime I have seen the fulfillment of many futuristic dreams that came from books like this classified as fantasy and science fiction. Kudos’ to Albert Abraham and others like him who can articulate in imaginative story form the outer reaches of our galaxies.
Albert Abraham combines his experience, education, and training in the field of aerospace engineering with a gifted ability to dream and to put those dreams on paper in the form of an imaginative, futuristic, fantasy novel that is both informational and entertaining. His writing is convincing, and credible in futuristic possibilities, yet, impossible in light of today’s research and scientific schemes.
A few unanswered questions, unresolved problems, and the unexpected, exciting final chapter leave the door open for a promised sequel to “Jack Jacobs and the Doomsday Time Machine,” by Albert S. Abraham.
