Sudbury Time Twist

Sudbury Time Twist, Wence Horai’s first science fiction story for young readers, is a disappointing book. The subject material seems promising enough — young children travelling back in time to witness the cataclysmic event of a huge meteorite crashing into Earth in what is now the Sudbury mining area. But Horai leaves his readers with little more than an admittedly interesting geology lesson wrapped in a flimsy plot.

The story centres on four youngsters from Toronto who take a field trip to the barren landscape of Sudbury. Under the guidance of a geology professor named Stan Kowalski (not to be confused with his namesake of Streetcar fame), they learn some of the history of the area and some details about the mining companies and the ecological programs underway. But when one day the youngsters go exploring on their own, they discover a “Structure,’ capable of transporting them back in time. They embark upon their journey to the past with Jane and George, a lukewarm pair of geology students from the University of Toronto who have squatters’ rights to the Structure. After a day of Precambrian play and a close-up look at the meteorite falling to earth, they return to the present for a denouement that includes moralizing by the police and a worried Kowalski, some third-rate theorizing about the Structure, and a misbegotten car chase scene.

As a dressed-up geology lesson, the book has some value. But even at this, the book is marred by diction that oscillates between the stiltedly formal and the awkwardly colloquial. One is never sure what to expect. A youngster at one point “landed on his rear”; later, surrounded by a force field, his sister is seen “stamping the barrier with her bum.” That the characters are most often mechanical mouthpieces for Horai’s lessons can perhaps be excused by the book’s didactic purposes, yet they rarely simply “say” anything. Instead they “exclaim in exasperation,” or “wonder aloud,” or “demand sternly”; one of them “heaves a sigh” after saying “Oh my.”

The geology lessons are welcome and educational, but Horai sells his young audience short with a less than satisfactory story.