February 3, 1992
According to the author's note, Mer-Cycle was written in 1971 but remained unsold until now. It might better have stayed in oblivion. The plot postulates a series of parallel earths, each due to be struck by a meteor that will destroy it. A planet that has survived the meteor attack has assigned proxies to warn the many other human races and save them from being wiped out. One proxy decides against contacting world leaders--which invariably fails--and instead gathering four ``ordinary'' humans and circuitously showing them evidence of the danger, in the hopes that they would be more likely to convince the population than would unknown aliens. None of this is revealed until the 15th chapter; prior to that, five characters--who are in an aspect of reality that is 99.9% out of phase with their surroundings, so they can breathe underwater--are seen bicycling around the seabed of the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Ocean and getting to know and trust one another. The situation is unoriginal, the romance between two of these stereotypical characters is telegraphed from the instant they meet, and the framing communiques that open each chapter are repetitive. The pacing is good enough that the reader is mildly engrossed, but only mildly.
August 3, 1992
It is difficult to understand how so slight a book can make for such tedious reading. The prolific Anthony's ( Virtual Mode ) latest novel is about a group of humans bicycling along the ocean floor. Anthony does try to provide a framework for the idea--this novel is ostensibly about a benevolent alien race seeking to save the Earth, along with untold numbers of ``alternate worlds,'' from a fatal collision with a meteor. But Anthony was clearly so enamored with his concept of a waterlogged Le Mans that virtually the entire novel takes place underwater, while the rest of the plot is left high and dry. Anthony slips in some tension, which revolves not around the Earth's imminent demise, but around the question of whether Don, one of the bikers, will find himself sexually attracted to another biker, Melanie, who is hairless. There is also a mildly lewd encounter with a mermaid. The book is careless, too--at one point, one of the characters describes an event that happened to him as having happened to someone else.