If they make sense, they have an advantage over Gary Brandt's "Recreation: A Fantasy about Reality," a novel that deals with "perceptual bubbles" and the idea of how we can create our own reality. It centers on Sally and Pat, two young adults living in a comfortable lakeside area and wish to leave that environment. Only, upon expressing this to the village elder Ben, they learn that where they want to go is an Earth 3,000 years in the past - and if they're going to get there they need to move through a reality set in pioneer times.

Explaining how this system works is the first sign of trouble. Each of the early speeches are long, nondescript affairs that blend in words such as dimension, perception and "level 3" in a manner more monotone than a physics class taught by researchers who aren't paying attention. The science is made even more annoying by multiple footnotes defining scientific words - granted, words like "morphogenetic" could use some clarification, but most readers don't need a definition for "molehill" and "term of endearment."

When the philosophy has passed and the characters start to interact, "Recreation" doesn't get much better. Characters still speak in long speeches, offering flat dialogue with little differentiation between them - a trait especially bothersome when they shift realities and the book switches to script format. Brandt also can't seem to make up his mind about how much profanity should be used in the book or even how mature his characters should be, with Sally needing to go to "the potty" and then complaining about her "fucking BO."

Beyond characters, the book is in desperate need of editing. "Recreation's" voice constantly shifts between past and present tense, at one point revolving between the two four times in two sentences - regardless of it being a book about time travel, an error like this is the capital of editing mistakes. Photos of artwork and quotes at the beginning of each chapter don't help the reader visualize the book at all, with pictures of keys and menus only serving to break the text flow.