The purpose of genre is to give the customer some basic idea of the fiction or nonfiction category the book falls in. This makes it easier for them to find it on the bookshelf. From there it's usually the fight of the well-known author, or for that rare reader, inquisitive enough to traverse new territory, it might be the arresting cover, or the concise blurb inside the cover or on the back of the book. In the adult fiction category, there are your three basic genres: romance, mystery, and science fiction.

Science Fiction is primarily the genre of ideas. In Matt Browne's series The Perennial Project, his focus is on the movement of mankind to the stars. The first book, The Future Happens Twice explores the how and why we get to the stars. Why we go, is simply because to not do so, mankind will become extinct. Earth and the solar system can not last forever.

Not using the usual leap of logic to travel with warped space, wormholes, or twisted fate, Browne uses something we use daily: languages. In this case, programming languages. Programming that will allow androids to thaw embryos, birth them with mechanical wombs, raise, and educated the children for arrival on the new world. That is a world forty eight thousand years away. No back-up for humans to come fix any problem, or turn to for resources.

The Future Happens Twice covers the vast effort of what it takes to make such a project successful; what it takes makes NASA look like a Garage Band.

Ethical boundaries are pushed as people's lives are unknowingly manipulated for data, gene, and possible psychosis. Who are the people that get involve in all this? Who are those that find out their lives are little more than that of a lab rat? These are the ideas and more that are explore extensively in The Future Happens Twice.

I gave The Future Happens Twice a seven point five only because I found the characters themselves flat. I am a reader who loves not only a juicy steak of an idea but characters I can really live with and in. I can appreciate the idea of a character to simply move the story idea and indeed this was the method of story telling for centuries. Being the modern sort of gal however, I prefer my characters to have more substance. I like to think I could meet them, and wonder what they'd be like to have tea with, or could I stand to be in a room with them? Would I want to smack them for a stupid move, hug them when they have trials, and cheer when they win? This is what pumps the heart. The ideas provide the frame, the structure, and the grandeur for the house. It is the characters however, that make it a home.

Reviewed By: Nancy Louise
© August 2008