Setting and major themes:

The setting of Life Line Twenty Fifty is on and near Presque Isle (called “The Dolphin” in the book) and throughout northwestern PA. The book has two illustrations showing future alterations to the Erie map to include a community school, two power plants, and several domes. The school (West Erie Center for Advanced Learning / WestCAL) is the setting focal point of the book, and it is this new community school concept in education that is the “shadow theme” of the book.

WestCAL is a vision of an open 24-7-52, community center, free to all, non-age-discriminatory, mall-like, dome structured, marine mammal experimental high school/college cooperative venture, and pride of the state.

A high-tech Geothermal/Hydro-electric power plant redirects Lake Erie water to depths of ten kilometers. Deep elevator shafts make for very exciting scenes, involving the missing scientists.

The Internet and high technology is more than thematic, it’s almost the voice of the book. Communication, robotics, citizen connectivity to crime solving, Internet judicial proceedings all add a technical/future flavor, however, this is not bizarre Sci-fi, this is just around the corner in the real world. Real national and global issues are addressed, as Internet Blogs weigh in to resolve them. The book reads as “very believable” positive and possible; not the typical negative way-out ray gun battle for the streets.  The Erie community is portrayed as very positive and a model for the nation.

Brief blurb (a mystery unfolds)

            A concerned 2050 Erie PA community, waiting for police CSI news about the brilliant, yet ‘psychotic’ scientist Dr. Davis; is stunned when Dr. Wilson, endangered species activist and highly respected Marine Biologist at the West Erie Center for Advanced Learning, also disappears without a trace.