Have Wormhole, Will Travel - Review

Tony McFadden’s speculative fiction story, Have Wormhole, Will Travel, is set in Australia and the descriptions of Sydney and the bay are nicely done. The story starts with a woman, Sabrina, certain that she has identified vampires. She is actually seeing two aliens--Callum, and Jacob. They (and many other aliens) have been hanging around Earth for more than 400 years. Sabrina enlists her friend, Mandy, into her attempt to prove these two men are vampires. Sabrina also mentions her beliefs to another friend, Jackie.

Along with the young women who are pursuing Callum and Jacob to see if they are vampires, there is the element of potential Earth destruction. It seems that Callum and Jacob are from a distant planet where the civilization monitors other sentient worlds, looking for advancement that could become a threat to their own planet and culture. When Callum reports that scientist Sam Sheppard is close to developing wormhole travel, his superiors decide that the sentients on Earth must be eliminated. (Sam Sheppard's sort-of girlfriend is, conveniently, Jackie.) Callum doesn’t like the decision to wipe out Earth’s humans, and tries to sabotage the scientist’s work.

There are some funny bits in this story and the characters of Sabrina, Jackie and Mandy are well developed. Callum and Jacob are indistinguishable until the last third of the book. The science presented is done in an articulate manner, but I don't know enough about string theory and wormholes to be able to say if any of it was sufficiently and scientifically accurate--even on a speculative level. Maybe that doesn't matter.

The third person presentation works well, especially to give the actions and reactions of the many characters. In all, Have Wormhole, Will Travel is an upbeat read, although I found much of the story a bit glib.