Review: "The Dimension Researcher" by Chris James

In 2068, Lucas Hunter realized his lifelong dream. After years of training, he finally qualifies as a dimension researcher; one of an elite corps of time/dimension travelers who explore the many alternate realities that have diverged from their own, on behalf of the European Government’s Second Internet Café, the world’s most advanced scientific research facility.

Hunter’s dream quickly turns into a nightmare. Some nations, led by the Americans who destroyed the first Internet before he was born, are seeking to shut the Second Internet Café down, and seemingly will stop at nothing in order to achieve that aim. Worse, on his first ‘jump,’ Hunter encounters a mysterious ‘American’ who also seems to be a dimension jumper, but from another dimension, and the stage is set for the worst of all situations, a time paradox and the potential for a trans-dimensional war.

Hunter finds himself fighting not only the ‘aliens’ who seem to be following him from dimension to dimension, but the betrayals of his own superiors at the Second Internet Café, who are playing a game, the rules of which Hunter must understand if he is to survive.

In The Second Internet Café, Part 1: The Dimensional Researcher, author Chris James has described a future ‘reality’ with such astonishing detail, both technological and social, it is vividly authentic, and all too ‘real.’ There’s a tendency, when encountering a new writer with James’ skill, to compare him or her to some luminary of the past. Well, Chris James is no Heinlein, he’s no Asimov; he’s Chris James. The man has a style that is uniquely his, and someday, people will be saying of young writers, ‘they write in the style of Chris James.’