T’Top
By Jeffrey J. Testin

       A planetary virus at the earth’s core? An alien array that stores the patterns of all life and explodes? Alien politicians who want a quick-fix vote-getting solution to the problem? A society in conflict over technology? A widowed Earth paleontologist who gets a triceratops-eye-view when part of the array infects him during an explosion that kills his beloved wife Sarah? Star Trek fans will get a new life picking this one apart.

       Often too many science fiction writers forget the science, but at the very least they can fake their way through enough to tell a good story. If the story is poor, if the writer shows off his computer-geek knowledge of the newest spacecraft engine that runs on hydrogen (calling Govenor Arnold Schwarzenegger), the reader will throw away the book for two reasons: (1) The reader could not care less about science fiction, thinks all science fiction lovers have no life, and is ecstatic when a science fiction book proves suitably geeky, or (2) The reader actually cares about science fiction and is tired of Roddenberry wannabes who know Captain Kirk’s middle name (it’s Tiberius, by the way) that are glutting the genre. At least when Roddenberry included half-naked green alien women, he did so while trying to say something original.

      Then there are the Jurassic Park wannabes who think the best way to write a dinosaur novel is to resurrect Velociraptor and create a hero who chews more scenery than the lizards.

      Fortunately, Jeffrey J. Testin delivers a fresh science fiction paleontology mystery with an appropriately jazzy P. Diddy-esque title: T’TOP. Paleontologists will debate his fictional solution to the mystery of the dinosaur extinction, just as priests, rabbis and yogis will scrutinize the “Heaven is an advanced state of matter” theory of Dr. John Whitehorse, a Native American astrophysics professor who comforts grieving and transforming Dr. Thomas Topecki—T’top himself. Who cares about scientific continuity or plausibility, when in addition to an entertaining original yarn you’ve got a timeless love story (are you listening, George Lucas)? T’TOP will make science fiction readers proud and everyone else want to date us.