{"id":3839,"date":"2013-10-22T17:38:39","date_gmt":"2013-10-22T21:38:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/?p=3839"},"modified":"2013-10-23T15:40:28","modified_gmt":"2013-10-23T19:40:28","slug":"mammoth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/2013\/10\/mammoth\/","title":{"rendered":"Mammoth"},"content":{"rendered":"

{4.5\/5} “‘I also heard you’re trying to clone a mammoth. Anyway, knowing just those things about you, I asked myself what a man like you would want from a man like me. You offer me a fine meal’ — Matt\u00a0gestured\u00a0with his\u00a0hamburger —\u00a0‘and then you casually ask if I believe time travel is possible.\u00a0The conclusion I draw is that you may want me to make you a time machine and get you a mammoth. It’s wild, but it’s all I can think of. Now tell me where I went wrong.'”<\/p>\n

Howard Christian is a billionaire. He’s managed to acquire a mammoth that’s been frozen in ice for 12 000 years, and he intends to clone it. There was something else frozen in the ice with the mammoth — a man with a watch and a briefcase. Christian believes that the device in the briefcase is a time machine. He hires a mathematical genius to figure out how the device works. When the entire building housing the device disappears, Christian thinks that perhaps he was right.<\/p>\n

Mammoth<\/strong> by John Varley was published in 2005.<\/p>\n

Along with dinosaurs, the mammoth is one of the most iconic extinct creatures. As you’ll learn, mammoths are like elephants but they have some differences.<\/p>\n

It’s a bit of Bones of the Earth<\/strong><\/a> and a bit of Jurassic Park<\/strong> but it goes off in its own unique direction.<\/p>\n

In between the regular chapters are short chapters chronicling the life of a mammoth.<\/p>\n

There is some interesting speculation about the nature of reality. There’s also some discussion about the rights of animals.<\/p>\n

This is the first novel by Varley I’ve read — I liked it a lot, and I’ll read more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

{4.5\/5} “‘I also heard you’re trying to clone a mammoth. Anyway, knowing just those things about you, I asked myself what a man like you would want from a man like me. You offer me a fine meal’ — Matt\u00a0gestured\u00a0with his\u00a0hamburger —\u00a0‘and then you casually ask if I believe time travel is possible.\u00a0The conclusion I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[7,28,5,8],"class_list":["post-3839","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","tag-book","tag-novels","tag-review","tag-science-fiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3839","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3839"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3839\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3935,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3839\/revisions\/3935"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3839"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3839"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3839"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}