The Barnes & Noble Review
Just a few months after his 97th birthday, Jack Williamson -- fittingly dubbed the Dean of Science Fiction -- showed that he was still going strong by releasing a brand-new novel. The Stonehenge Gate is a planet-hopping romp through space that follows four inquisitive professors who discover an ancient portal in the Sahara Desert that leads them not only to a network of distant worlds but also to some mind-blowing insights about humankind's place in the cosmos.
Will Stone is an English literature professor at Eastern New Mexico University. Every week, he and his three buddies gather for a potluck dinner and a few hands of poker. When Derek Ironcraft, a physics and astronomy instructor who spends his summers interning at NASA, shares with his friends his "latest enigma" -- a ground penetration radar scan of the Sahara that shows a huge circle of stones buried a few meters underground -- they decide to spend Christmas break digging in the African sand. What they uncover will turn the scientific community upside down -- if only they get back!
Williamson, born in 1908, has written numerous seminal works like "With Folded Hands" (1947), Darker than You Think (1948), Seetee Ship (1951), and the Hugo and Nebula Award–winning novella "The Ultimate Earth" (2000). The Stonehenge Gate is reminiscent of his pulp science fiction beginnings: While the characterization isn't exactly substantial, the action and adventure are virtually nonstop throughout, and the pacing is so fast and furious that readers will find it hard to put down this book until the very last page. Paul Goat Allen
The Stonehenge Gate
Narrated by Harlan Ellison
Jack WilliamsonUnabridged — 8 hours, 48 minutes
The Stonehenge Gate
Narrated by Harlan Ellison
Jack WilliamsonUnabridged — 8 hours, 48 minutes
Overview
A dark mystery has been buried beneath the sands of the Sahara for eons. In a basement in New Mexico, four poker buddies find reason to believe that a startling secret is out there, and these four amateur adventurers are about to uncover it.
Curiosity propels mild-mannered professor Will and his three friends to the Sahara to excavate a site where radar has detected trilithic stones hidden beneath the sand. There they stumble upon an ancient artifact that will change their lives-and the world-forever: a gateway between planets, linking Earth to distant worlds where they will discover wonders and terrors beyond imagining. Now each traveler must play a crucial role in unraveling an ancient mystery, the solution to which may reveal the true origins of the human race-if they can survive the journey back to Earth.
Editorial Reviews
This trippy stand-alone from Hugo- and Nebula-winner Williamson reads like a novelization of Paul Verhoeven directing Jules Verne's combined rewrite of H.P. Lovecraft's The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath and C.S. Lewis's Perelandra. It follows the world-hopping adventures of four poker buddies: physicist Derek and archeologist Lupe, both so obsessed with exploration and getting grants that they have no sense of personal safety; Ram, a linguist descended from an extraterrestrial deity; and Will, a weak-willed English professor who just wants to go home. Williamson's artificial creatures are brilliant as always, so much so that the shape-shifting intelligent metal caretakers of these distant planets are more lovingly and intricately described than the people. Derek and Lupe's absence through most of the book renders them mere plot devices, and Ram and Will's search for their compatriots turns into a humorless parody of the clever dark-skinned native leading the stumbling white man through the jungle. Lush descriptions and a refreshingly brisk pace buoy the novel, but the characters are so uninteresting that disbelief soon becomes as hard to suspend as the space elevator that carries them between worlds. Agent, Eleanor Wood at the Spectrum Literary Agency. (Aug.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
Four poker-playing friends with physics and archaeology backgrounds and connections to NASA discover an ancient artifact that leads them to the Sahara Desert. There they discover a gigantic arrangement of stone columns that form a gateway to the stars. First together, then separately, Derek, Ram, Lupe, and Will travel from world to world, always searching for something just beyond their grasp. Displaying a knack for writing compact stories with ever-expanding themes, the author of Terraforming Earth combines space adventure with science fantasy in a book that challenges the imagination at every turn. A solid addition to most sf collections. Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
A new adventure by one of the surviving giants of the pulp era (Terraforming Earth, 2001, etc.). Will, an English professor, is one of four faculty members at a New Mexico college who get together for regular poker games and gab sessions. One night, Derek, an astronomer and physicist, shows his colleagues aerial radar photos of a rock formation under the Sahara sands: stone trilithons looking like huge gates. Intrigued, the friends pool resources to explore this Stonehenge-like structure. Almost as soon as they find it, a large insect-like creature emerges from the gate and captures Lupe, a brilliant anthropologist. The other three enter the gate hoping to rescue her. This takes them on a series of adventures through strange worlds connected by the gates. Eventually, Derek is captured by another of the insect-like creatures, which they now suspect to be robots. Attempting to find him, Will and Ram end up in a world plagued by racial conflict. A luminous birthmark convinces the black inhabitants that Ram is their god Anak, returned from the dead to liberate them. That eventually sets off a civil war, in which much of the planet is devastated by a deadly plague apparently released by the natives, who are immune to it. Just as the plague seems to be finished, Will and Ram discover another trilithon and escape to still another world. Finally they are reunited with Derek and Lupe and begin to learn the secrets of the ancients who built the trilithons. Low-key but inventive adventure.
"As you might expect from an author who's been in print in nine decades now, it's a well-crafted . . . story."
"The amazingly durable Jack Williamson turn out another wild, old style adventure story.... as effective as ever."
"One of Williamson's strongest and most entertaining …"
Product Details
| BN ID: | 2940169808346 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Blackstone Audio, Inc. |
| Publication date: | 01/01/2006 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
Read an Excerpt
The Stonehenge Gate
By Williamson, Jack
Tor Science Fiction
Copyright © 2006
Williamson, Jack
All right reserved.
ISBN: 0765347954
A Gate...
The rocks were identical: two square columns of smooth black stone, some ten feet square and spaced twice as far apart.
Derek squinted, and said "I think it's the lintel stone that lay across the top to frame the gate."
"Gate to where?" Lupe asked.
"To hell," Ram shrugged "If you remember my Little Mama's tales. She was certainly terrified of whatever she thought might follow her through the gate."
Derek was already tramping on to study the nearest stone. It was an odd black granite, veined with thin green streaks, perfectly squared and polished slick. "I'm no geologist," he said, "but I never saw a stone like this. It certainly wasn't quarried anywhere near here. No culture so old ever worked stone so well."
Ram and I followed. I heard him gasp. When I turned back, he was gone.
"Ram!" Lupe was calling. "Ram!"
We heard no answer. We scattered out to search the sand around us and found no footprints, no sign of him or where he had gone. We were gathering again in the shadow of the column when he came staggering back out of nowhere and fell on his face right beside me...
Continues...
Excerpted from The Stonehenge Gate
by Williamson, Jack
Copyright © 2006 by Williamson, Jack.
Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Videos
