Levinson, Paul: The Plot to Save Socrates

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Paul Levinson's The Plot to Save Socrates is a mixed bag. On the one hand, it's got a great premise. Doctoral student Sierra Waters is handed a recently discovered Socratic dialogue by her mentor. Its content is shocking. The dialogue describes the visit of a certain Andros to Socrates' prison in 399 B.C., shortly before the philosopher would be forced to commit suicide by drinking hemlock. Like another of the condemned man's visitors, Andros attempts to persuade Socrates to escape his fate, but in a manner which would conceal the fact that Socrates had disregarded the state's verdict against him. Andros has access to futuristic technology: the solution to the Socratic dilemma lies in time travel and cloning.... The idea is a great one, and it's fun to watch our principals loping around the centuries and wrestling with the complexities of time travel. But the book has problems. Levinson's action scenes are invariably too abrupt and thus lacking in any feeling of suspense or excitement. More importantly, it's often not clear what's going on. I have no idea why some of the characters are trying to kill some of the others. Or why one of the main characters elects in the end to hide his identity. Or why Sierra is thought to have traveled back to 4th-century A.D. Alexandria, where she was known as Hypatia. (The entire Hypatia business should probably be removed from the narrative.) Or why some of the characters had any role to play in the story at all (Appleton, for example). About two-thirds of the way in I was pretty much lost. Still, the book is not without its merits. Fans of time travel stories and ancient world buffs may want to take a look.