Kindred - Octavia E. Butler

As an on-again-off-again fan of science fiction writing, I’ve known of Octavia E. Butler by reputation for years. She was, after all, inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2010, so it would probably be more surprising at this point in Butler’s long career for someone not to recognize her name than it would be for them to recognize it. Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean that I had ever actually read her work. Then a week or so ago, Butler’s name and books were mentioned several times in segments of a video course on science fiction writing I was working my way through. Because of my fondness of time travel novels, the novel that particularly caught my attention was 1979’s Kindred.

 

I expected Kindred to be somewhat of a thriller during which a modern California black woman, a writer by trade, finds herself trying to stay alive – and free – in the Deep South during the first quarter of the nineteenth century. As it turns out, Kindred is that and much, much more.

 

Dana and her white husband are in the process of moving into their new 1976-Los Angeles home the first time that a bout of time-travel-inducing dizziness strikes her. Within seconds, Dana finds herself on the muddy banks of a river staring at what seems to be the lifeless body of a little white boy. Springing into action, she manages to resuscitate the boy just in time to save his life. But as she looks up to catch her breath, Dana finds herself staring into the barrel of a gun being held by a very angry man. Even terrified as she is, Dana does not have time to react before she suddenly finds herself, wet and muddy, back inside her new California home.

 

Dana, although she is unable to predict when it will happen, learns that she is being called back into time over and over again to save the life of one of her ancestors, the son of the same man who seemed ready to kill her when she appeared out of nowhere to save the boy’s life for the first time. Unfortunately for Dana, Rufus, a very reckless child, grows into a self-destructive drunkard as a young man – and she is the only thing keeping him alive until he can father the child with one of his father’s slaves that will keep Dana’s family line intact.

 

Octavia E. Butler

This is the science fiction/time travel premise of Kindred, but that’s about as much “science” as Butler ever offers the reader. She does not try to explain how it is possible for Dana – and anything in contact with her, including her husband, Kevin – to leap back and forth from 1819 to 1976. Nor does she ever address the usual time travel paradoxes with which fans of the genre are so familiar. Instead, this is a novel about a woman who “knows” that her ancestors had been slaves not all that long ago. Slavery, in fact, had only been dead for 111 years upon publication of Kindred, so Dana’s own great-great grandmother had been a slave. But there is a fundamental difference in knowing that your ancestors were enslaved for generations and actually  standing alongside your great-great grandparents knowing that one of them is a slave owned by the other.

 

Dana arrives in 1819 Maryland a modern woman, one completely overconfident that her education and modern sensibilities will protect her from the harsh reality of the times she finds herself entrapped in. By the time she learns just how naïve she is, she is lucky to be alive – or not working the steaming cane fields of southern Louisiana. So, will her luck continue long enough for Rufus to father the child that links directly to her portion of the family tree or not?

 

Bottom Line: Kindred explores an aspect of American slavery that is seldom tackled so well in historical fiction: the different emotional effects that generations of slavery had on a people who knew no other way of life. Butler considers the ones readers most often read about, those who never lose their desire for freedom, but she gives equal time to those who manage to justify slavery to themselves even to the point of feeling almost at ease with it, what becomes for them a choice of “security” over the greater, scarier unknown out there. The author also explores the insidious culture that spawned generations of whites capable of such cruelty for over 200 years by showing how Dana’s white husband himself is unconsciously affected by his own five years of living in early nineteenth century America. Perhaps most surprising to Dana (and to readers), is how quickly she adjusts to life’s new rules and some of the things she is willing to do to make her life as bearable as possible. Octavia Butler herself did not consider Kindred to be a science fiction novel – and it’s easy to see why.   

How to Stop Time - Matt Haig

I have been a fan of serious time travel fiction (an oxymoron, I know) for a long time, but these days the genre seems to have morphed into some kind of romance novel/time travel novel combination so I’ve tended to read less and less of it. But I figured if I can’t find a time travel novel I want to read right now, why not one about the slowest kind of time travel possible - a book about a man who has lived for more than four centuries and is still going strong. That’s the premise of Matt Haig’s How to Stop Time, a novel that mostly works but at heart is really another romance novel. 

As the novel opens, Tom Hazard has moved back to London after a long time away and is interviewing for a history teacher job at a private high school. Tom, though, finds it a bit difficult to concentrate on the interview after the school’s young French teacher catches his eye. That’s not too unusual or surprising a reaction from a healthy 41-year-old man like Tom. But the truth is that Tom is not 41 years old; he is 439 years old, and the London he has been walking through all morning bears little resemblance to the city he left behind so long ago. 

Tom has only recently (recently in terms of his true age) learned that there are many others out there like him, people who have lived by their wits for centuries. Tom, a man who sailed with Captain Cook, worked at the Globe Theatre with Shakespeare, and was introduced to the Bloody Mary by Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, has had to run for his own life more than once after superstitious locals noticed that he was not aging. Now he has the support of the Albatross Society, a group whose purpose is to keep the secrets of people like Tom. But unfortunately for Tom, the number one rule of the Albatross Society is a simple one: Never, ever, fall in love.

Matt Haig

Matt Haig uses numerous (maybe I should say countless) flashbacks to tell Tom’s story. That is, of course, the most obvious way to approach a story like this one, but it should have worked much better than it did in this case. The problem here is that there are so many flashbacks that they chop the present-day story into such tiny bites that they just barely move the segment along before another, longer flashback begins. And that can – and did – get very frustrating.  

Bottom Line: How to Stop Time is romantic science fiction that touches lightly, very lightly at that, on a few historical eras and events. Even at its climax it is difficult to believe that anything bad will really happen to Tom or those close to him. It’s not that kind of book, and it isn’t intended to be. I do see that How to Stop Time is soon to be a “major motion picture” starring one of my favorite actors, Benedict Cumberbatch, and I suspect that it will make an entertaining film.

All Our Wrong Todays - Elan Mastai

With the exception of time travel novels, science fiction is not a genre that I’ve done a whole lot of reading in in recent years. But I love time travel stories so much that I jump at every new one I can find, including this 2017 offering from Canadian author Elan Mastai. The best thing about All Our Wrong Todays is that it takes enough of a different approach to some of the usual paradoxes of time travel that it seems relatively fresh no matter how many time travel novels a reader may have already read. The basic question being explored in All Our Wrong Todays is just how easy it would be for a time-traveler inadvertently to change the present-day world by visiting the past. Just how much interaction in the past would it take to do something critical  enough to alter the present in significant enough a way to impact the lives of billions of people – for good or bad?

Just ask his father; Tom Barren is kind of a loser. Despite living in almost exactly the world anyone growing up on that old cartoon seriesThe Jetsons hoped we would have by the year 2000, Tom really hasn’t done much with his life. “Flying cars, robot maids, food pills, teleportation, jet packs, moving sidewalks, ray guns, hover boards, space vacations, and moon bases” (page 7). It’s all there. Now, Tom’s father, on the other hand, is a recognized scientific genius on the verge of sending the very first team of six time-travelers back into the past, so it’s easy to understand why he is so frustrated by having an only child who has failed miserably at every single thing he has ever attempted. 

Elan Mastai

But Tom’s old man hasn’t seen anything yet because Tom is about to make the biggest mistake of his life, one that will change “the fabric of the universe” in ways no one could have imagined possible. One oversight Tom makes as he leaves present-day 2016, compounded by a careless move he makes when he arrives in 1965 to witness a major event in world history for himself, completely changes the planet’s history. And when Tom returns to 2016 there are no flying cars, moving sidewalks, robot maids, or jet packs to be found. Instead, he finds himself living in what he considers to be the rather primitive conditions of 2016 as the rest of us know it today. 

Tom’s old life, however, was not perfect. He had a few close friends, but he had no meaningful work; his father was a complete jerk who just barely acknowledged Tom’s existence; and his mother spent every waking hour taking care of his father’s needs, pretty much ignoring Tom’s problems in the process. But it was a damn comfortable lifestyle, and Tom misses it. On the other hand, in this new world created by Tom’s foolish mistakes his father is a nice guy whom everyone loves; his mother is a highly respected professional; he is a celebrated Canadian architect; he has a sister who didn’t exist in the old world; and he thinks he has found the love of his life.

So, what’s the guy to do? On the one hand, he has caused the world to be a much harsher place in which war is still common, and he has caused billions of people never to be born at all. On the other hand, he really, really prefers this version of his family to the one he had before his time travel blunders – and he is hopelessly in love. Does he go back to 1965 and try to fix things or does he leave well enough alone? What would you do?

Bottom Line: All Our Wrong Todays is a fun, often thriling, read, but it’s a book that the reader has to pay close attention to while reading it because of the complicated theories of time travel being tested and contrasted throughout the novel. Too, it does have one of those endings in which several years of plot are summarized as kind of a “where are they now” moment. I’m not fond of those and would have much preferred a second book to this kind of ending. That said, I still recommend this one to fans of the genre.

Sailing to Byzantium (a Robert Silverberg short story)

“Sailing to Byzantium” is a long “short” story of 59 pages from Robert Silverberg.  Silverberg, who sold his first story in 1954, went on to become one of the most respected writers in all of science fiction.  He is a particular favorite of mine because of his special talent for creating fully developed, believable characters to inhabit the pages of his science fiction and fantasy stories.  No matter how outlandish or speculative the plots of his stories, it always feels like they are happening to real people. 

“Sailing to Byzantium” is set in a 50^th century world in which only five cities exist.  These are not, by any stretch of the imagination, ordinary cities; they are replicas of major cities from the past that have been reconstructed here as they were in their prime solely for the pleasure of this world’s citizens to explore and experience them.  From time-to-time, one of the cities is “retired” and replaced by a new one so that people will always have a new experience to look forward to.  Since no one in this world seems to have a job anymore, rotating the cities on a regular basis plays a major role in keeping boredom to a minimum. 

Robert Silverberg

The five cities are all staffed by “temporaries,” a group of people there to play the roles of those who lived in the actual cities in the past.  As the story begins, the current cities are: Chang-an, Asgard, New Chicago, Timbuctoo, and Alexandria.  The story’s central character is a “visitor” to the 50the century, a tall man who has vivid memories of the “Old Chicago.” The man knows almost nothing about himself except that he is different from everyone he has met so far.  He remembers that his name is Charles Phillips and that he has somehow been transported here from his 1984 life…whatever that may have been like.

Phillips wonders about the true nature of the “temporaries” he encounters as he explores different cities with his 50^th century girlfriend.  Are they real or are they something less than human?  But wonder as he might, definitive answers are hard to come by until he meets another “visitor” from the past for the first time ever.  Phillips is astounded to learn that this Viking warrior from a period in time much older than his own has figured out a few things for himself that never occurred to Phillips’ more “modern” self. 

“Sailing to Byzantium” is first class science fiction, but it really hits its stride when it shifts into a story of true love between the twentieth century Phillips and his doomed fiftieth century girlfriend.  This story is too easy to spoil by saying much more, so I’m going to stop right here.  Silverberg fans are probably already familiar with this one and how it turns out, but if you are not one of those hardcore Silverberg fans, I recommend that you find “Sailing to Byzantium” and enjoy it as a standalone read.  It’s a good one.

Thursday 1:17 P.M.

At first, fans of time travel novels and short stories might not know what to make of Michael Landweber’s Thursday 1:17 P.M.  After all, the novel’s narrator/hero (a teenager whom everyone calls Duck) moves neither forward nor backward in time during the entire novel.  Duck would, in fact, be perfectly happy if he could simply figure out how to get time started again, because right now he is the only thing moving in a world in which every other living thing and machine is frozen solid at 1:17 on the worst Thursday afternoon of his life.

How bad a day is Duck having?  Well, consider this: minutes earlier, he walked away from his mother’s deathbed; his father is institutionalized; and Duck has just stepped directly into the path of the speeding car that is destined to smash him into pieces.  But suddenly the clock stops ticking, and Duck finds himself staring into the eyes of the driver who is about to crush him.  So he simply steps away from the intersection. 

Thus begins one of the strangest coming-of-age novels a reader is ever likely to encounter.  Duck will be eighteen years old tomorrow – but will tomorrow ever get here, or is Duck destined to remain forever a seventeen-year-old boy grieving the loss of his mother?

Michael Landweber

Survival proves to be surprisingly easy in a world in which everything is literally frozen in in the instant during which time stopped.  Washington D.C. grocery stores are filled with food and drink that never spoils; the temperature never varies; shelter is available everywhere Duck turns (if he can just figure out when it is time to get some sleep); and everything in the nearby shopping mall is his for the taking.  All around him, people are frozen in the act of walking, falling, fighting, or making love.  Everyone but Duck is waiting for the next tick of the clock to determine their fate.  Now what?

Ironically, it a world in which time has frozen, Duck has nothing but time on his hands, time to think about his past, time to miss his parents and his friends, and time to figure out what he would do differently if only the rest of the world would catch up with him again.  But in order to do any of these things, first he has to figure out a way to get time flowing.  Can a boy really come-of-age in a world in which he lives entirely alone, or is his situation akin to the tree that falls in the forest when no one is around to hear it hit the ground? 

You’ll have to read Thursday 1:17 P.M. to find out.

(Review Copy provided by Publisher)

Man in the Empty Suit

Time travel novels, despite the well-known paradoxes associated with the theory of time travel, generally make for fun reading. For example, how could a person go back in time and accidentally kill his own grandfather when that means that he would have never existed to be able to time travel in the first place? But that kind of mind-twister is all part of the fun.

Sean Ferrell's Man in the Empty Suit puts a complicated, mind-bending twist on that old paradox. But Ferrell's story, while it is certainly an intriguing one, generally left me more confused than satisfied because I found it difficult to follow the author's logic. Picture this: every year on his birthday, a man travels to an abandoned hotel in 2071 New York City to celebrate the event at a special party. The event marks the 100th anniversary of his 1971 birth, and in attendance are all the "versions" of the time traveler that have ever existed, or will ever exist.  It is a crowded party - but he is the only one there.

As parties go, this one is actually pretty dull and, of course, very predictable.  But the party jumps off the track the year our hero turns thirty-nine, because on his way to the hotel ballroom, he finds a dead body.  The shocking thing about the discovery is that this body is his own at age forty, and now, as older versions of himself are quick to point out, he has exactly one year to figure out how to stop the murder from happening or they are all doomed.

Because no outsiders (with one beautiful exception) ever attend the party, the killer almost certainly has to be an older version of the victim.  But would not that be some kind of strange suicide?  As the search for clues evolved (and the clues were often ones left in the future/past by our boy himself), I became confused.  Unfortunately, I pretty much stayed that way for the rest of the ride.

Sean Ferrell

What saved Man in the Empty Suit for me is the love story that anchors it.  The first outsider ever to attend one of the birthday parties is an attractive young woman who calls herself Lily.  Our hero falls hopelessly in love but soon learns that he has a second mission almost as important as solving his own murder - he must stop Lily from attending the birthday party at which he meets her.  So, hoping to fix things, the time traveler jumps backward six months.

Despite my confusion, I did enjoy Ferrell's depiction of a future in which people still manage to work for the common good and take care of each other despite living in a city that is largely in ruins. What avid reader, after all, could fail to appreciate a society in which so many people, despite the struggle they face just to stay alive, are so physically involved in finding and distributing library books to readers in other cities?

Bottom Line: This one requires a little extra patience from the reader, but is an interesting, if sometimes confusing and frustrating, time travel novel whose side-plots and setting make it a memorable read.

(Review Copy provided by Publisher)

Step Into My Time Machine (Favorite Time Travel Novels)

There is something about time travel novels that particularly appeals to me.  I suppose it is that chance to go back for a free re-do, be it a personal one or one that positively (hopefully) affects the history of the whole world.  That second type often involves eliminating someone like Adolph Hitler before they gain power - or changing the course of some major war like the Civil War or one of the two World Wars.  Fun stuff, if done correctly with in depth character development and a side plot or two to worry about.

These are some of my favorites from the last few decades (in no particular order):

I first read Time and Again in the summer of 1970 and later added a first printing copy to my personal collection.  I consider it a modern classic of the genre and believe that it influenced a whole bunch of time travel novels that followed it.  The plot involves a man chosen by a secret government agency to be transported back to 1880s New York in order to test the theory of time travel.  Our time traveler, of course, falls in love, only to come to the realization that the government wants more of him than just standing around and observing everyday life.

The book is illustrated by numerous old photographs of the various locations the time traveler wanders through during the novel.  This was a groundbreaker.

Time on My Hands is one of those time travels novels that focuses on real life historical figures - in this case, former president Ronald Reagan.  Here Peter Delacorte explores the case of a young man hired to return to the Hollywood of the late 1940s where he is to make contact with a young actor by the name of Ronald Reagan.  His assignment is to do anything necessary to somehow push Reagan from the path that would bring him to the White House in 1980.  What happens when our hero befriends Reagan under false pretenses but starts to actually like him makes for a fun ride.

At first glance, Time Out of Mind is pretty much just a ripoff of Finney's Time and Again, but John Maxim gives it enough twists to make it work well even for fans of the great Finney novel.  This one was written some 16 years after Finney's novel, and I suppose that Maxim and Houghton Mifflin were hoping that everyone had forgotten about the Finney masterpiece.  It even goes so far as having each of its chapters begin with an old photo or illustration to set the scene.

The hero of this one goes back specifically to the great New York blizzard of 1888.

Laura Watt's Carry Me Back incorporates one of my favorite music genres (hard core traditional country) into a time travel novel...a perfect combination for someone like me.  This 1997 novel involves ex-con Webb Pritchard who buys an old banjo to entertain himself after his release from prison.  Unbeknownst to Pritchard, this is a magic banjo that transport him back to 1951 where he manages to wrangle himself a job with the man who went on to become country music royalty before he died at age 29, Hank Williams.  The romance story inside this one is another that pays homage to Jack Finney.  Carry Me Back  is still on my shelves and I plan to re-read it in the next year or two.

Time travel novels often involve some kind of moral dilemma for the time traveler to deal with - in this case, our hero has to decide whether or not to prevent the bombing of Hiroshima.  Till the End of Time is part of author Allen Appel's time travel series featuring Alex Balfour, a history teacher for whom the ability to time travel runs in the family and has been genetically handed down to him.

Along the way, Balfour interacts with people like Albert Einstein, Betty Grable, John Kennedy, and FDR.  This one is fun, but the appeal largely comes from getting to know the Balfour character well through several books.

One last one for this time around is Stephen Fry's Making History.  This is one of several time travel novels I've read in which the protagonist goes back in time to do something about Adolph Hitler before it is too late.  In this instance, the time traveler wants to take the most certain path by going back to the time before Hitler was even conceived - and making sure that his parents never get together.

Stephen Fry is one of the most talented people I know of: author, film star, comedian, television star, documentarian, etc.  This man can do it all and this novel is no exception to the quality of his work.  It is great fun...and one of the best snuff-Adolph time travel books I've encountered.


That's it for now, but this is fairly representative of my favorites of the genre.  I haven't even mentioned older books like The Time Machine by H.G. Wells, but that is the one that created my love for time travel books in the first place when I first read it at age 12 or 13...and, of course, there was that great 1960s movie version of the novel.  The movie locked me in for good.