The Iron Bridge

ISBN: 0-15-100259-2 Order from: Amazon.com

An interesting but somewhat meandering book of time travel, unintended consequences of change, wonder and horror of human ingenuity, and the ethics of peace.

Reviewed by David on January 25, 1999

Genre: Science Fiction (Time Travel, Social Issues, Religion, Industrial Revolution)

Synopsis: In a near future, where deteriorating environment, social decay and crime causes the accelerating decline of civilization, a small pacifist colony uses a new invention of time travel to send a young woman to the beginning of the industrial age. Maggie Foster, intending to sabotage the world's first large-scale iron construction, arrives in 1773 England naked and bruised. Hoping that the collapse of the first iron bridge would delay or divert the large-scale adoption of steel structures, which in time would lead to skyscrapers and submarines, Maggie works to influence the Darbies, the Quaker family controlling the largest iron manufacture in the world.

The book traces the next few years of Maggie's life, the very modern woman trying to influence the explosive start of the Industrial Revolution.

Full Review: David Morse has used the time-traveling mechanism mostly to place a modern (actually a future) woman into 18-th century England. The time travel itself is mostly pseudo-psychic hand-waving, but Morse's humans are anything but 2-dimensional. Maggie herself, her friends and mentors, her memories of painful childhood in a ravaged America, even her (unintentionally) humorous recollections of the baby-boomer, valley-girl-talking grandmother, preserved on a home-video disk of heedless consumption in the face of environmental collapse.

There are pointed, razor-sharp stabs at the wasteful exploitation of our times. However, most of the book, and its most remarkable success takes place in England of two centuries ago.

Maggie herself is a remarkably solid character, intelligent, ambivalent; by turns passionate and apprehensive, frustrated in her mission and persistent in her ethics. Her friendships, attractions, work and play shape the story of the book. In the background, the remarkable progress of the times, from electricity to gun-making to the steam engine are reshaping the world, while the shadows of the first world-wide war loom closer. Unlike the typical "Connecticut Yankee" time visitor, Maggie's mission is to avoid revealing any technical knowledge, and in fact delay the mechanical progress. This proves no easy task, faced with the tide of human genius, ambition and greed in the Age of Enlightenment.

Another unusual matter is the characterization. What appears like the positive hero, both romantically and in terms of plot, proves an elusive ally, and eventually remarkably unlikable character. The villain, full of greed, has a certain attractive vitality, never quite approaching sympathy. Ultimately, Maggie's purpose and love prove something quite different from expectations, largely the fruit of her own effort.

Rather than closing with a success, the book ends with a meaning. Interwoven with the Quaker principles, Maggie's moral search concludes that there is no innocence while evil exists in the world. Only in the struggle to end injustice, such as the soul-corrupting, hand-staining practice of slavery, there is true freedom from evil.

The Iron Bridge is a skilled, sympathetic novel, suffering from a meandering plot, and too much attention given to the (ultimately) unpleasant character Abraham. However, its remarkably deft characterization, especially that of Maggie herself, and a non-trivial treatment of ethics and consequences, make this a worthwhile and pleasant book.

Overall: 6; Plot: 5.5; Characters: 5.5; Style: 6; World-building: 6; Originality: 6;

ISBN: 0-15-100259-2 Order from: Amazon.com