Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach

February 1, 2018
A high-concept story of time-traveling scientists trying to fix the future by returning to the past.Minh's generation has been working for years to try to repair the ecological damage done to the Earth, but the invention of time travel has drained funding away from these complicated remediation projects. Now Minh and her colleagues have the chance to tackle a time-travel project of their own--going back to study Mesopotamia in a pristine state as preparation for restoring its ecosystem. Minh wants this job, but getting it won't be easy. Not only will she need to win over the funders; she'll have to find a way to work with her "ridiculously frenetic" young colleague Kiki, who wants this job for her own reasons. Robson (A Human Stain, 2017, etc.) has created a richly detailed world in which the environmental disaster that forced humanity to retreat below the surface of the Earth is so far in the past it's not even worth mentioning. Dazzling technology and an endearingly cranky main character make this an engaging read, but the plot gets off to a slow start, bogged down in the process of Minh and her colleagues' preparing a proposal and interviewing for the time-travel consulting job. The adventure that ensues when they do make it to ancient Mesopotamia is exciting, but the book suffers from packing all the suspense into its second half. The strong worldbuilding will appeal to sci-fi fans, but a slow-burn plot that spends too much time on the logistics of time travel weakens an otherwise appealing story.

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April 2, 2018
Robson (A Human Stain) creates a high-tech far-future world radically altered by climate change and plague. In 2267, an ecological restoration team travels 4,000 years into the past to gather data to use in restoring a river ecosystem after climate change and other ecological disasters have forced most humans underground. The irascible Minh, who specializes in river restoration projects (and has six tentacle prostheses instead of legs), leaps at the chance to visit 2024 BCE Mesopotamia to collect samples to take back to the future. Joining her are Kiki, who goes to extreme lengths to join the team; tactical historian Fabian, an employee of the group that developed time travel; and Hamid, who’s eager to study the plentiful animal life. Upon arrival, they discover a plethora of material, but they also wind up in the crosshairs of a Mesopotamian king and a moon priestess. Robson’s work offers much food for thought, but the world is initially confusing and the story builds slowly. The second half, however, brings plenty of action as distrust and paranoia build among the group and they inevitably tussle with the locals. This richly imagined adventure marks Robson as an author to watch.

March 1, 2018
They say that those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it, but what if the fate of future generations depends on learning history for the very sake of repeating it? When most think about time travel, they consider the future; Robson instead imagines a time riddled with bioeconomic crises, doomed if the characters in her novel cannot replicate a biologically lush and forgotten past. Readers are transported back in time to 2000 BC with a team of scientists scrambling to collect information from the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in the hopes that they'll be able to replicate the biodiverse aquatic ecosystems in their own desolate future. The stakes are so high that some members of the team are willing to sacrifice anything for the sake of their mission, even if that means making the past pay for their mistakes. But as we all know, the past has a way of coming back to haunt you. Robson's science-fiction adventure, her first full-length novel, will leave you wondering: What's scarier?living in the past or planning for the future?(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)