Paul Levinson's astonishing new Sf novel is a surprise and
a delight: In the year 2042, Sierra, a young graduate
student in Classics is shown a new dialog of Socrates,
recently discovered, 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, with the help
of her classical scholar boyfriend, Max.
The trail leads her to a time machine in a gentlemen's club
in London and in New York, and into the past--and to a time
traveler from her future, posing as Heron of Alexandria in
150 AD. Complications, mysteries, travels, and time loops
proliferate as Sierra tries to discern who is planning to
save the greatest philosopher in human history, or to do so
herself. And she finds that time travel raises more
questions than it answers. Fascinating historical
characters from Alcibiades (of the honeyed thighs) and
William Henry Appleton, the great 19th century American
publisher, to Socrates himself appear. with surprises in
every chapter, Paul Levinson has outdone himself in The
Plot to Save Socrates.