THE TIME HACKERS
Gary Paulsen, . . Random/Lamb, $15.95 (96pp) ISBN 978-0-385-74659-5
Paulsen's futuristic novel starts with a bang, as Dorso Clayman discovers a medical cadaver in his school locker ("It was an old cadaver. Runny"). Readers quickly learn that the discovery of a "hologram projector chip" has led to "time projection": anyone with a laptop could now "pull images from the past and project them anywhere." Yet this technology is supposedly governed by the "paradox of time"; individuals can view the past but cannot physically be transported back in time so as to be able to alter history. Dorso is puzzled by a string of computer-generated pranks (in addition to the cadaver, he's been visited by holograms of dead frogs, lab rats and rotting earthworms). But the 12-year-old is mystified when he finds himself face-to-face with Custer, Beethoven and then a woolly mammoth—which was most definitely
Reviewed on: 01/24/2005
Genre: Children's