Changing his personality was his goal going in, and it works, especially because the timewarp is only about 8 feet across, and he's the only person in it. The protagonist spends about a year inside a timewarp, which is about 8 hours outside. One-Word Title: The book is presumably named for the black hole-ish nature of the Playhouse, and a singularity is the supermassive center of a black hole.The main character, in fact, spent a whole year waiting for the creature to arrive, knowing only its toothy appearance. It was visible from this universe long before it arrived, and the only part of it that was visible was its huge mouthful of teeth. More Teeth than the Osmond Family: The creature coming through a Portal Pool from another universe.

He doesn't want supernatural powers per se, but he wants to be different from his brother and to step out of his shadow.

Dark Is Not Evil: The scary-looking toothy thing is just coming through the Portal Pool to destroy the portal to put an end to its dangerous effects, then eat itself alive before it can cause any harm itself.

Always Identical Twins: Barry and Harry, of course.

This novel is an example of the following tropes: They discover that a metal shack (called the Playhouse) outside their uncle's home has a strange Year Inside, Hour Outside effect because something about that area acts as a portal to another universe. some property after their eccentric great-uncle dies. The novel is about two twins, Barry and Harry, who semi-inherit note It technically belongs to their mother, but they go to check it out anyway. Because it's not hardcore, non-scifi fans will still be able to enjoy it, while scifi fans can get a quick, but awesome, fix for time travel.A sci-fi novel written by William Sleator for young adults. It's very well done.Īll in all, I'd highly recommend Singularity to scifi fans and nonfans.

But despite this, there's lots of technobabble to explain the singularity and time travel and stuff like that. But it's meant to be a quick read, not an indepth hard scifi novel, so I can forgive Sleator for not fleshing out some of the stuff as much. I don't know what I can say about it without giving much away. I was getting ready for disappointment the more I read, because I really wasn't sure if it was going to pick up. I had heard great things about Singularity, so I had my expectations uncomfortably high.

Another expected thing that sometimes doesn't always happen is how AWESOME it gets further in. That's kind of an expected thing in most William Sleator novels though. So there's a very eighties young adult type of writing to this book, and the characters and plot aren't immediately interesting.

Singularity sleator novel