The Plot to Save Socrates

Paul Levinsons astonishing new SF novel is a surprise and a delight: In the year 2042, Sierra, a young graduate student in Classics, is shown a recently discovered new dialog of Socrates, in which a time traveler tries to argue that Socrates might escape death by travel to the future! Thomas, the elderly scholar who has shown her the document, disappears, and Sierra immediately begins to track down the provenance of the manuscript. The trail leads her to a time machine in a gentlemens club that exists in London and in New York, as well as into the pastwhere a time traveler from her future is posing as Heron of Alexandria in 150 AD. Complications, mysteries, and time loops proliferate as Sierra tries to discern who is planning to save the greatest philosopher in human history. She finds that time travel raises more questions than it answers. Fascinating historical characters from Alcibiades (of the honeyed thighs) and Appleton, the great nineteenth century American publisher, to Socrates himself appear. With surprises in every chapter, Paul Levinson has outdone himself in The Plot to Save Socrates.