So first and foremost, someone recommended this to me. I vaguely recall a strong recommendation in some comment somewhere. I can no longer find the comment that did. From the detailed, glowing review over at his blog, I suspect it was Bart. Go read that for a more thorough analysis. I’ll opt for keeping it brief.
I think the writers of Rick and Morty are onto something with their reluctance to do a time travel story. I think its not the fertile story element we think it is. In that reductionist “a person goes on a journey or a strangers comes to town” way of looking at stories, I don’t think there is heaps of variety to time travel stories. I think it becomes very hard to say anything within that framework that hasn’t already been said elsewhere. I think of this as “Fundamental Time Travel Story problem #1”
Problem number #2 is that time travel stories beget plot holes at practically industrial scales. I joke that writing fiction is like trying to make a souffle (because sometimes it just breaks on you and later you find out its because a storm rolled through town in the barometric pressure changed), and in that analogy a time travel story is like taking a souffle out of the oven early, folding it in on itself, and popping it back in for 5 more minutes. You are going to screw it up. The internet seemed to like the movie Primer, but I am convinced its because no one actually followed the plot.
Michael Moorcock’s Behold the Man is great, but mostly as an exercise in creative blasphemy. Robert Silverberg’s Up the Line is cute for its conceit (let’s face it, were time travel possible there would be a stadium full of popcorn chewing historians watching the Venetians sack Constantinople) but ultimately I barely remember it. I like H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine because it is anti-capitalist propaganda, and it shows how my Morlock descendants might one day succeed in eating the fucking rich (no joke, that’s what the book is actually about). Dexter Palmer might have written the best time travel story. They managed to avoid both the aforementioned problems I mentioned above.
So now I have barely spoken about the book. Weird, I know. But I am going to leave it like that. A vague review simply saying “yea its good go read it.”
Despite everything I have just said here, I have my own time travel story brewing in my head that I will eventually get down onto paper. Let’s hope I don’t botch that souffle.
