Publication
Vintage (2017), Edition: Reprint, 512 pages
Original publication date
2016-02-23
Collections
Awards
Dublin Literary Award (Longlist — 2018)
The Morning News Tournament of Books (Quarterfinalist — 2017)
NPR: Books We Love (2016)
San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of the Year (Fiction — 2016)
RUSA CODES Listen List (Listen-Alike — Listen-Alike to "Infinity Gate" — 2024)
Description
The compelling story of a couple living in the wake of a personal tragedy. She is a star employee of an online dating company, while he is a physicist, performing experiments that, if ever successful, may have unintended consequences, altering the nature of their lives and perhaps of reality itself. Rebecca Wright has gotten her life back, finding her way out of grief and depression following a personal tragedy years ago. She spends her days working in customer support for the Internet dating site where she first met her husband. However, she has a persistent, strange sense that everything around her is somewhat off-kilter: she constantly feels as if she has walked into a room and forgotten what she intended to do there; on TV, the President seems to be the wrong person in the wrong place; and each night she has disquieting dreams that may or may not be related to her husband Philip's pet project. Philip's decade-long dedication to the causality violation device (which he would greatly prefer you do not call a time machine ) has effectively stalled his career and made him a laughingstock in the physics community. But he may be closer to success than either of them knows or imagines . . . A woman deals with a strange and persistent sense of everything being slightly off, which may or may not be related to her scientist husband's pet project, a "causality violation device" that might actually be working.… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member bragan
Version Control features a woman named Rebecca, who works for an online dating service; her husband, Philip, a brilliant physicist who has devoted his life to attempting to create a Causality Violation Device (which he would much prefer you didn't refer to as a "time machine," thanks); and their
It's an odd hybrid of a novel. It's partly literary fiction, complete with explorations of relationships and characters' interior lives, family tragedy, alcoholism, marital issues, and so on. And partly science fiction, featuring time travel, scientists doing science, and a near-future version of America in which the Dakotas are trying to secede from the union and everyone is constantly interrupted by personalized video chats from the President. There are also lots and lots of nerdy ramblings, about everything from religion, to Big Data, to scientific progress, to how dating sites work, to the social problems of Millennials, to the novels of Octavia Butler, to the music of Rush.
With all of that, it often feels like a weird grab bag of a book, but while it bemused me a little, and while I may have felt a tiny bit impatient with it here or there, mostly I found it reading it an enjoyable experience. But then, I think I may be just about the ideal audience for whatever this is. I like a good literary novel, am a science fiction fan from way back, and am capable of surprisingly high amounts of enthusiasm for nerdy ramblings. Also a Rush fan. Not to mention the fact that I've always found the whole idea of time travel fascinating, and this story does do some clever and creative things with the concept. Not things that necessarily make huge amounts of sense when you stop to think about them, admittedly, but they fail to make sense in ways that are interestingly different from the ways that time travel stories usually fail to make sense. And in the end, however shapeless it might sometimes feel when you're in the middle of it, the novel as a whole does take on a satisfying overall shape -- and not precisely the one I expected it to, either.
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young son Sean, who, although he is gone by the time the story starts, remains an important presence. Also, to a lesser extent, various of their friends and co-workers.It's an odd hybrid of a novel. It's partly literary fiction, complete with explorations of relationships and characters' interior lives, family tragedy, alcoholism, marital issues, and so on. And partly science fiction, featuring time travel, scientists doing science, and a near-future version of America in which the Dakotas are trying to secede from the union and everyone is constantly interrupted by personalized video chats from the President. There are also lots and lots of nerdy ramblings, about everything from religion, to Big Data, to scientific progress, to how dating sites work, to the social problems of Millennials, to the novels of Octavia Butler, to the music of Rush.
With all of that, it often feels like a weird grab bag of a book, but while it bemused me a little, and while I may have felt a tiny bit impatient with it here or there, mostly I found it reading it an enjoyable experience. But then, I think I may be just about the ideal audience for whatever this is. I like a good literary novel, am a science fiction fan from way back, and am capable of surprisingly high amounts of enthusiasm for nerdy ramblings. Also a Rush fan. Not to mention the fact that I've always found the whole idea of time travel fascinating, and this story does do some clever and creative things with the concept. Not things that necessarily make huge amounts of sense when you stop to think about them, admittedly, but they fail to make sense in ways that are interestingly different from the ways that time travel stories usually fail to make sense. And in the end, however shapeless it might sometimes feel when you're in the middle of it, the novel as a whole does take on a satisfying overall shape -- and not precisely the one I expected it to, either.
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LibraryThing member RidgewayGirl
This is a novel about time travel, but not in the sense one expects. There are no madcap adventures in the past or future. This is a conversation about time travel, and a novel in which time travel occurs, but the packaging is subtle and more thoughtful than that.
Set in the near future, Version
It's hard to discuss this novel without giving important events away, so I'll just say that this is the most interesting exploration of time travel that I've read. It explores several theories and ideas about time travel. My new favorite idea is spouted by a security guard who likes the sound of his own voice and my previously favorite theory is cut to shreds in a satisfyingly convincing way. But the discussions don't get in the way of the story Palmer is telling. Yes, there is a long scene with people discussing their working theory over breakfast that goes on for pages, but by that point I was invested in the story. The final chapters were a let-down, especially given the preceding section, but this was a book that I'm very glad to have read.
Set in the near future, Version
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Control tells the story of an ordinary and likable woman named Rebecca, who is married to a physicist who heads up a lab that is working on what they call a causality violation device. She likes some of the scientists working in the lab more than others. She has a wild best friend. She works for a dating website that is quite a bit more advanced than the dating sites of today. And the world is similar to our own, but also different, with self-driving cars outnumbering the autonomous variety, civil unrest in the Dakotas and a president who frequently pops up on screens everywhere to give pep talks. It's hard to discuss this novel without giving important events away, so I'll just say that this is the most interesting exploration of time travel that I've read. It explores several theories and ideas about time travel. My new favorite idea is spouted by a security guard who likes the sound of his own voice and my previously favorite theory is cut to shreds in a satisfyingly convincing way. But the discussions don't get in the way of the story Palmer is telling. Yes, there is a long scene with people discussing their working theory over breakfast that goes on for pages, but by that point I was invested in the story. The final chapters were a let-down, especially given the preceding section, but this was a book that I'm very glad to have read.
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LibraryThing member hardlyhardy
“The Time Traveler's Wife” is the title of another book. In Dexter Palmer's brilliant “Version Control,” it is the wife who steps into the time machine made by her physicist husband. But Philip objects to the term time machine. He prefers to call it a causality violation device, and his
The true focus of Palmer's novel is not Philip, however, but his lonely wife, Rebecca, who feels shut out of the part of his life, his lab, that occupies most of his time and attention. It is, she realizes too late, his one true love. Things really turn interesting when Rebecca, after catching her husband in bed with his lab assistant, gets drunk and, as an act of vengeance or just frustration, spends a few moments in his CVD. She is unaware that anything has changed, yet everything has changed. Readers will rush ahead eagerly to discover what will happen when she steps into it again, as we know she will eventually.
The story occurs just a few years in the future. We already have self-driving cars, but in this future such cars are commonplace, and one of them lies at the novel's turning point. Rebecca can step into a clothing store and, thanks to cameras and computers, dresses that will fit her perfectly are ready to be shown to her on a screen by the time she reaches the counter. No changing room is necessary. The president of the United States, or at least computer simulations of the president, can pop up on screens in any home or business at any time and join in the conversation. The only people who still use Facebook live in retirement homes.
Palmer fills “Version Control” with fascinating ideas about the future, about time travel, about science fiction (he calls it "a fantasy in which science always works"), about history (perhaps, he suggests, this is only a rough draft) and about human relationships. At nearly 500 pages, it seems too long, but what should he have left out?
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experiments involve placing a robot inside and using instruments to try to measure movement through time. The results prove inconclusive.The true focus of Palmer's novel is not Philip, however, but his lonely wife, Rebecca, who feels shut out of the part of his life, his lab, that occupies most of his time and attention. It is, she realizes too late, his one true love. Things really turn interesting when Rebecca, after catching her husband in bed with his lab assistant, gets drunk and, as an act of vengeance or just frustration, spends a few moments in his CVD. She is unaware that anything has changed, yet everything has changed. Readers will rush ahead eagerly to discover what will happen when she steps into it again, as we know she will eventually.
The story occurs just a few years in the future. We already have self-driving cars, but in this future such cars are commonplace, and one of them lies at the novel's turning point. Rebecca can step into a clothing store and, thanks to cameras and computers, dresses that will fit her perfectly are ready to be shown to her on a screen by the time she reaches the counter. No changing room is necessary. The president of the United States, or at least computer simulations of the president, can pop up on screens in any home or business at any time and join in the conversation. The only people who still use Facebook live in retirement homes.
Palmer fills “Version Control” with fascinating ideas about the future, about time travel, about science fiction (he calls it "a fantasy in which science always works"), about history (perhaps, he suggests, this is only a rough draft) and about human relationships. At nearly 500 pages, it seems too long, but what should he have left out?
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LibraryThing member Treebeard_404
The only book to deal with the need to account for Earth's movement through space when traveling through time. (Sorry. I just needed to acknowledge that, because it's something that has bugged me for decades.) This is one of those books which, in addition to having an engaging plot, offers up lots
[Audiobook note: January LaVoy is a magnificent reader.]
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of little observations about life and people which should bear remembering. (The downside of audiobooks is that it can be hard to mark those tidbits when listening while doing other things. So I don't have any examples to offer up.)[Audiobook note: January LaVoy is a magnificent reader.]
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LibraryThing member chrisblocker
There is a particular style of science fiction I cannot get enough of. Intelligent, mind-bending, and, most importantly, cultivated in literature, these stories are a rare treat. (Too often, genre writers become so enamored with the confines of the genre that they box themselves in.) Version
Page by page, Version Control builds upon a great opening. The tension forces the reader to stay awake despite the hour. There was so much promise in those first couple hundred pages, I could tell it was building up to something big: a brain-bender of epic proportions. You know when it's coming. You can feel it. Oh my god, here it comes. Turn the page and... it sort of fizzles. It wasn't a huge letdown, I mean, this was still good enough to be the plot of a The Twilight Zone episode, it just wasn't the sort of Twilight Zone episode you spend much time discussing at the water cooler the next morning. And so it goes...
Version Control is an absorbing tale and gives the reader much to consider. Through the actions of his characters, Palmer injects quite a bit of commentary on gender, religion, race, etc., that add some needed heft to the story, but may in gross weigh down the story a bit. But oh to write such clever little stories. I'm jealous. And I eagerly awaited the next, as well as any suggestions for similar reads.
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Control, Dexter Palmer's second novel, satiated this need of mine.Page by page, Version Control builds upon a great opening. The tension forces the reader to stay awake despite the hour. There was so much promise in those first couple hundred pages, I could tell it was building up to something big: a brain-bender of epic proportions. You know when it's coming. You can feel it. Oh my god, here it comes. Turn the page and... it sort of fizzles. It wasn't a huge letdown, I mean, this was still good enough to be the plot of a The Twilight Zone episode, it just wasn't the sort of Twilight Zone episode you spend much time discussing at the water cooler the next morning. And so it goes...
Version Control is an absorbing tale and gives the reader much to consider. Through the actions of his characters, Palmer injects quite a bit of commentary on gender, religion, race, etc., that add some needed heft to the story, but may in gross weigh down the story a bit. But oh to write such clever little stories. I'm jealous. And I eagerly awaited the next, as well as any suggestions for similar reads.
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LibraryThing member billycongo
This would be a much better book if the central character were not Rebecca. She and her friends are the least interesting aspect of the book. Future dating technology is boring. So is the President of America's AI. Alicia would have made a better central character. The end result of having Rebecca
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is that you can easily skip entire chapters at a time. The whole premise of Alicia explaining what they think happened inside the CVD to Rebecca was preposterous. The subplot about someone being racist? So unnecessary. To me the greatest irony was when one of the characters describes Octavia Butler as being 'touchy feely'? I've read Butler, and she is faaar from touchy feely. Unless that's just a sexist remark because she's a female writer. I found Butler to be pretty damn harsh. It's actually Dexter who's all touchy with the feely. Dating and relationships and love problems? Hello? Pot, meet kettle. Sorry, but that really bugged me. Show Less
LibraryThing member booklove2
The inclusion of this book in the Tournament of Books this year put this on my radar and made me read it sooner. I'm glad. The beginning of the book, things kept popping up that were so eerily in tune with things I had been thinking very recently. Dexter Palmer is my new best writer friend! I even
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had his previous book already waiting on the shelf. This one is big and glorious and full of characters and ideas. A causality violation device (don't call it a time machine) that may or may not be changing history. A President that is popping up on screens everywhere like he is everyone's personal assistant. A war between the Dakotas and the rest of America. The characters are lovely and full but the one thing I couldn't get past is the main character Rebecca is an English major who never ONCE talked about a book. I would characters that constantly talk books. Was this an intentional choice from the author? A subtle satire? The book is about many physics scientists and though physics was the only class I ever failed (mainly due to a teacher who never talked physics and only talked about himself) the physics here isn't too tough for me to grasp. I don't think ALL of these pages needed to exist to get to the end, though the ending was a bit confusing for me. A bit more explanation would have been appreciated. There is a character named Carson who is told by his writing professor (who is aware that he has a knapsack of privilege) to stop writing his elaborate sci-fi stories and write about his race. This was heartwrenching. I wanted to hug the book and Dexter Palmer himself if this bit was true to his own life. Palmer is a new favorite writer... I'll be looking out for his next book! Show Less
LibraryThing member Gwendydd
I was torn throughout this book about how much I was enjoying it. On one hand, there was always lots of food for thought and the mystery of "what is really going on here and when are the characters going to figure it out?" On the other hand, it was really hard to tell where the story was going (or
There's a lot of fascinating stuff in here, lots of good food for thought, on a wide range of topics: race relations, hazards of autonomous vehicles, ethics of dating websites, influence of media, alcoholism... but as interesting as all of these topics are, most of them never drove the plot. You could take out everything about some of those topics and it wouldn't change the story at all. I'm torn about that - I enjoyed being encouraged to think about the topics, but it contributed to the sense that this isn't so much a story as it is a collection of events.
On the other hand, part of the point of the story is the lack of a story. This is supposedly a time travel book, but no time travel actually happens. Which turns out to be the point. It is the most scientifically plausible time travel book I have ever read.
So it was an enjoyable read, but if you're really goal-oriented, this might not be the book for you.
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even if there was a story).There's a lot of fascinating stuff in here, lots of good food for thought, on a wide range of topics: race relations, hazards of autonomous vehicles, ethics of dating websites, influence of media, alcoholism... but as interesting as all of these topics are, most of them never drove the plot. You could take out everything about some of those topics and it wouldn't change the story at all. I'm torn about that - I enjoyed being encouraged to think about the topics, but it contributed to the sense that this isn't so much a story as it is a collection of events.
On the other hand, part of the point of the story is the lack of a story. This is supposedly a time travel book, but no time travel actually happens. Which turns out to be the point. It is the most scientifically plausible time travel book I have ever read.
So it was an enjoyable read, but if you're really goal-oriented, this might not be the book for you.
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LibraryThing member mattclark
A thought provoking read in which reality is not quite as linear as it appears. The author got a bit science geeky occasionally, and the supporting characters lack depth, but the main pair are well fleshed out and the story is engaging.
LibraryThing member KatyBee
Excellent, challenging, and worthy of consideration from literature lovers who don't usually turn to science fiction. Although this novel is entirely set on our real Earth, I love it for all the same reasons that I love "The Book of Strange New Things" by M. Faber.
LibraryThing member wifilibrarian
Really enjoyed the ideas explored in this book. Some of the near future ideas seemed a bit far fetched but now we have a Trump presidency everything is looking possible. The novel explained how time travel actually works and it had one of the best explanations I've heard. Paradoxes like the
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grandfather paradox, where you go back in time and kill your grandfather so you were never born, are no longer a problem in this novel's type of time travel. Show Less
LibraryThing member UnderMyAppleTree
This is a time travel story but not the action-adventure type. I would call it literary science fiction. There is character development and a complex plot. The device causing the time travel isn’t even referred to as a time machine — it’s a causality violation device. It’s set about 10
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years in the future, but it’s very relatable to the present day with our technology and social media. I listened to this in audio, and there were a few times I had to back up to be clear on the details — events keep changing as we travel back in time — but it was worth the extra work and the audio was very well done. Show Less
LibraryThing member Kristelh
Another book read for the Tournament of Books 2017. I got it done before it was reviewed this morning. It's a new to me author and I liked his writing. The judge for ToB compared him to Neal Stephenson and I agree with this comparison. This is a book set in the very near future, in fact the
epigram: "we are children of time, not its masters, we can act upon time only by acting within it". Ernest Troeltsch.
Rebecca has a strong feeling that “Nothing is as it should be; everything is upside down,”
"even the most honest person has many faces none of which are false"
"history lives int eh gap between the information and the truth"
"in the absence of perfect information, I choose to believe in the version of events that would occur in the best of all possible worlds."
"he found the subject to be excruciating interesting. He felt that race was not a characteristic that was a part of his identity but one that was projected upon him by the gaze of others who looked on him."
Other subjects this looked at include God, predestination, free will and philosophy of how do you choose if you can go back and change the future.
I would recommend this book to those that like Neal Stephenson, science fiction, philosophy and beside those points; this book looks at ethics of Big Data and marketing.
This will be one of my top favorites of the ToB this year.
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characters are millenniums and I felt like this book could be very true much of the time that I reading. I like books about time and this book is a lot about time/time travel which you are not suppose to call time travel. This is an interesting look at ethics of Big Data and artificial intelligence. I found it a bit interesting in a conspiracy kind of way. This felt like 1984 written for the present age. It also examines girlfriend relationships (written by a man) and marriage and race. Lots of great quotes that I jotted down; epigram: "we are children of time, not its masters, we can act upon time only by acting within it". Ernest Troeltsch.
Rebecca has a strong feeling that “Nothing is as it should be; everything is upside down,”
"even the most honest person has many faces none of which are false"
"history lives int eh gap between the information and the truth"
"in the absence of perfect information, I choose to believe in the version of events that would occur in the best of all possible worlds."
"he found the subject to be excruciating interesting. He felt that race was not a characteristic that was a part of his identity but one that was projected upon him by the gaze of others who looked on him."
Other subjects this looked at include God, predestination, free will and philosophy of how do you choose if you can go back and change the future.
I would recommend this book to those that like Neal Stephenson, science fiction, philosophy and beside those points; this book looks at ethics of Big Data and marketing.
This will be one of my top favorites of the ToB this year.
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LibraryThing member antrat1965
A very smart science fiction novel dealing with time travel in a unique way.
Yeah, as with most time travel novels, there are parts where your head spins. But I put that aside to just enjoy the story.
There are parts where the characters sound like they are ranting/preaching but I did enjoy some of
Overall it is a fun read.
Yeah, as with most time travel novels, there are parts where your head spins. But I put that aside to just enjoy the story.
There are parts where the characters sound like they are ranting/preaching but I did enjoy some of
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the commentary on modern society. Some of those comments were a bit vicious but oh so accurate.Overall it is a fun read.
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LibraryThing member 1greenprof
Hmm...what to say about this book. I first picked it up because of my interest in futurism, AI, and a good review I had read. The premise is interesting - a physicist building a time machine (but don't call it that), and a cast of characters with all the normal foibles.
There were times when I was
There was adequate tension developed with the "multiple endings" scenario, and in the end it delivered a satisfactory denouement. Still I struggled with my rating, vacillating between a 4 or a 3. I ultimately chose 4, but I'm less sure now after writing these comments.
As for my original goals in reading it...futurism and AI...I found it wanting.
As I went back and reviewed my highlighted notes I was reminded what I did like the most about the book...it's discussion on science...how science is really done...on the scientific method. It got those things right. It also did paint a picture correctly speaking to the coming generations of people who have been "connected" and plugged-in since birth, and how that changes society, politics, culture, etc. That then causes the reader to consider relationships, marriage, leadership, government...and that makes it worth doing. I'll stick with the 4.
There were times when I was
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reading it and I found myself thinking about it being a sinister version of the Big Bang Theory from TV, but that's not really fair...it was richer than that.There was adequate tension developed with the "multiple endings" scenario, and in the end it delivered a satisfactory denouement. Still I struggled with my rating, vacillating between a 4 or a 3. I ultimately chose 4, but I'm less sure now after writing these comments.
As for my original goals in reading it...futurism and AI...I found it wanting.
As I went back and reviewed my highlighted notes I was reminded what I did like the most about the book...it's discussion on science...how science is really done...on the scientific method. It got those things right. It also did paint a picture correctly speaking to the coming generations of people who have been "connected" and plugged-in since birth, and how that changes society, politics, culture, etc. That then causes the reader to consider relationships, marriage, leadership, government...and that makes it worth doing. I'll stick with the 4.
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LibraryThing member antao
“For months now, Rebecca had felt what she could only describe as a certain subtle wrongness – not within herself, but in the world. She found it impossible to place its source, for the fault in the nature of things seemed to reside both everywhere and nowhere. Countless things just felt a
In “Version Control” by Dexter Palmer
A lot of the debate around this book must be surely undermined by the lack of a clear definition of time.
The idea of time 'moving forwards or backwards' is just a metaphor that people adopt because it's easy to identify with physical objects that move and since time is a dimension- a dimension of space-time, the continuum in which everything has its being. Time itself doesn't 'move' or 'pass' any more than length can pass or move. However, everything moves, or occupies a series of different points, in space-time. I also suspect that our perception of time as a progression in one direction, with a remembered past and a future of multiple unrealized possibilities, is a 'fiction' or mental construction that allows us to make sense of cause and effect. If we could imagine a being outside of space-time, whether God, or Vonnegut's Tralfamadoreans, that being would see all those points simultaneously. As we do when we remember someone's life.
You think SF can't be literature? You think there is a procedural difference? This is going down the Delany 'paraliterary' route. I suspect most readers who expressed a preference would say that they are generally rather keen on ideas. In fact, the literary-fiction crowd often use 'the idea is the protagonist' as a stick with which to beat SF. The problem is that the notion of travel comes from movement through space. When we're standing still, and on no conveyance, we are not traveling relative to the world around us (of course, the planet is traveling through space). But in the case of time, when we stand still, we are indeed moving forward at the pace of life in time. So, in that context, time travel must mean more than that standing still movement - it must mean traveling faster than that to the future, or at any speed at all to the past, which does not happen at all in natural life time. One view of time is that is does not actually "pass”, as we experience it, and that there is nothing uniquely real about the present. There is a 21st century and there is a 15th Century, there are lions and there are trilobites. The past or future are not less real because we do not exist in the same plane with them, any more than distant universes, separated from us by the speed of light, are less real because we cannot perceive them. I think it was Einstein who put it that people who understand physics know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stupid illusion. The events, say, in a person's life, can be viewed, not as a cradle to grave time frame, but as continuous arrow that can be narrated in any order. Forwards, backwards, or hopping around like an ant on a chessboard. This view of time is explored in Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse Five", and a 'backwards' version in Dick's "Counter-Clock World". This kind of time-travel is, I'd argue, consistent with physics; Time cannot 'move' because it doesn't occupy a physical location from which it can move. As Palmer states:
“But in real life, connecting two naturally non-contiguous points in space-time such that a corporeal object can move from one to the other is extremely difficult! And it’s not really moving through time that’s the problem: moving through space is the problem.”
The idea of time travel was first set out by H G Wells but since then, like the internal combustion engine, very little of the idea has changed. We still generally think in terms of a machine or cabinet that propels the passenger backwards or forwards in time. Think for one moment however of the written word used by Mr. Wells to convey this idea. The book was written in 1895 following thoughts happening inside his head. Without the written word, those thoughts would have remained trapped in 1895 unless some form of aural tradition of storytelling had taken it forward. Hence thoughts inside Mr. Wells' head have traveled from 1895 to 2017 and beyond.
There's two basic ways of thinking about time, one is it’s like a film reel, the present is the frame that's currently being illuminated by the projector, the past is the film that's been through the projector and it might conceivably be possible to move back to it, there are two debatable models for the future - the film that hasn't been illuminated yet, one is that it's there on the not yet seen frames just waiting to be illuminated, so one could conceivably travel to them, the other is that those frames are blank and the image is created on them as they're illuminated.
The other time concept is that it's like a (cathode ray tube) TV, the present is the image you see now on the screen but neither the future nor the past has any meaningful existence, an image that was on the screen, the past, is simply gone, and an image that will appear on the screen, the future, doesn't exist yet. The reason you cannot travel back (or forward) in time is because all the matter you are made of will suddenly be the same as matter already existing in the universe.
I'll explain.
If you travel to the past before you were born, all the matter you are made of now would have been around in different forms. If you travel to the future after you are dead your matter will be in your ashes, decomposing bones, cells that constantly renew and reform and absorbed into the great cycle. Once that matter is exposed to the same universe the quantum force known as spooky action at a distance comes into effect, it forms a massive feedback loop and annihilates itself. That is why we don't see time travelers in the real world. The reason you cannot travel back (or forward) in time is because all the matter you are made of will suddenly be the same as matter already existing in the universe.
There's more than one way to skin Schrodinger's cat. And Palmer found a way to do it. Who would have thought that tackling Big Data and quantum physics in addition to more mundane subjects like marriage and friendship would produce a novel of this magnitude?
“And yet Rebecca felt that it was hard to tell whether the secret algorithms of Big Data did not so much reveal you to yourself as they tried to dictate to you what you were to be. To accept that the machines knew you better than you knew yourself involved a kind of silent assent: you liked the things Big Data told you were likely to like, and you loved the people it said you were likely to love. To believe entirely in the data entailed a slight diminishment of the self, small but crucial and, perhaps, irreversible.”
Palmer does it also with Einstein-Rosen wormholes, in a way that feels not only thoughtful but new and unreservedly fun. And now when I thought modern SF was going down the drain…
NB: Anyone looking for an explanation as to why we don't see time travelers should seek out John Varley's novel "Millennium". I believe in time travel. It explains why Simon Cowell looks younger every year.
SF = Speculative Fiction.
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little off to her.”In “Version Control” by Dexter Palmer
A lot of the debate around this book must be surely undermined by the lack of a clear definition of time.
The idea of time 'moving forwards or backwards' is just a metaphor that people adopt because it's easy to identify with physical objects that move and since time is a dimension- a dimension of space-time, the continuum in which everything has its being. Time itself doesn't 'move' or 'pass' any more than length can pass or move. However, everything moves, or occupies a series of different points, in space-time. I also suspect that our perception of time as a progression in one direction, with a remembered past and a future of multiple unrealized possibilities, is a 'fiction' or mental construction that allows us to make sense of cause and effect. If we could imagine a being outside of space-time, whether God, or Vonnegut's Tralfamadoreans, that being would see all those points simultaneously. As we do when we remember someone's life.
You think SF can't be literature? You think there is a procedural difference? This is going down the Delany 'paraliterary' route. I suspect most readers who expressed a preference would say that they are generally rather keen on ideas. In fact, the literary-fiction crowd often use 'the idea is the protagonist' as a stick with which to beat SF. The problem is that the notion of travel comes from movement through space. When we're standing still, and on no conveyance, we are not traveling relative to the world around us (of course, the planet is traveling through space). But in the case of time, when we stand still, we are indeed moving forward at the pace of life in time. So, in that context, time travel must mean more than that standing still movement - it must mean traveling faster than that to the future, or at any speed at all to the past, which does not happen at all in natural life time. One view of time is that is does not actually "pass”, as we experience it, and that there is nothing uniquely real about the present. There is a 21st century and there is a 15th Century, there are lions and there are trilobites. The past or future are not less real because we do not exist in the same plane with them, any more than distant universes, separated from us by the speed of light, are less real because we cannot perceive them. I think it was Einstein who put it that people who understand physics know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stupid illusion. The events, say, in a person's life, can be viewed, not as a cradle to grave time frame, but as continuous arrow that can be narrated in any order. Forwards, backwards, or hopping around like an ant on a chessboard. This view of time is explored in Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse Five", and a 'backwards' version in Dick's "Counter-Clock World". This kind of time-travel is, I'd argue, consistent with physics; Time cannot 'move' because it doesn't occupy a physical location from which it can move. As Palmer states:
“But in real life, connecting two naturally non-contiguous points in space-time such that a corporeal object can move from one to the other is extremely difficult! And it’s not really moving through time that’s the problem: moving through space is the problem.”
The idea of time travel was first set out by H G Wells but since then, like the internal combustion engine, very little of the idea has changed. We still generally think in terms of a machine or cabinet that propels the passenger backwards or forwards in time. Think for one moment however of the written word used by Mr. Wells to convey this idea. The book was written in 1895 following thoughts happening inside his head. Without the written word, those thoughts would have remained trapped in 1895 unless some form of aural tradition of storytelling had taken it forward. Hence thoughts inside Mr. Wells' head have traveled from 1895 to 2017 and beyond.
There's two basic ways of thinking about time, one is it’s like a film reel, the present is the frame that's currently being illuminated by the projector, the past is the film that's been through the projector and it might conceivably be possible to move back to it, there are two debatable models for the future - the film that hasn't been illuminated yet, one is that it's there on the not yet seen frames just waiting to be illuminated, so one could conceivably travel to them, the other is that those frames are blank and the image is created on them as they're illuminated.
The other time concept is that it's like a (cathode ray tube) TV, the present is the image you see now on the screen but neither the future nor the past has any meaningful existence, an image that was on the screen, the past, is simply gone, and an image that will appear on the screen, the future, doesn't exist yet. The reason you cannot travel back (or forward) in time is because all the matter you are made of will suddenly be the same as matter already existing in the universe.
I'll explain.
If you travel to the past before you were born, all the matter you are made of now would have been around in different forms. If you travel to the future after you are dead your matter will be in your ashes, decomposing bones, cells that constantly renew and reform and absorbed into the great cycle. Once that matter is exposed to the same universe the quantum force known as spooky action at a distance comes into effect, it forms a massive feedback loop and annihilates itself. That is why we don't see time travelers in the real world. The reason you cannot travel back (or forward) in time is because all the matter you are made of will suddenly be the same as matter already existing in the universe.
There's more than one way to skin Schrodinger's cat. And Palmer found a way to do it. Who would have thought that tackling Big Data and quantum physics in addition to more mundane subjects like marriage and friendship would produce a novel of this magnitude?
“And yet Rebecca felt that it was hard to tell whether the secret algorithms of Big Data did not so much reveal you to yourself as they tried to dictate to you what you were to be. To accept that the machines knew you better than you knew yourself involved a kind of silent assent: you liked the things Big Data told you were likely to like, and you loved the people it said you were likely to love. To believe entirely in the data entailed a slight diminishment of the self, small but crucial and, perhaps, irreversible.”
Palmer does it also with Einstein-Rosen wormholes, in a way that feels not only thoughtful but new and unreservedly fun. And now when I thought modern SF was going down the drain…
NB: Anyone looking for an explanation as to why we don't see time travelers should seek out John Varley's novel "Millennium". I believe in time travel. It explains why Simon Cowell looks younger every year.
SF = Speculative Fiction.
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LibraryThing member ashleytylerjohn
I don't get the love, and stopped almost exactly halfway through. None of the characters seemed especially interesting and worthy of my time, there's very little plot of any consequence, the constant going back and forth between periods is inelegantly handled (and, given the inescapable knowledge
It reads, so far, like a kind of dull book about two couples and a potential other woman, some of whom are acquainted via work. Anyone thinking "ooh, time travel!" is going to be hugely let down.
It's not dreck, so not 1 star, but this is clearly not the sort of book that appeals to me.
(Note: 5 stars = amazing, wonderful, 4 = very good book, 3 = decent read, 2 = disappointing, 1 = awful, just awful. I'm fairly good at picking for myself so end up with a lot of 4s)
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that the book is somehow, someway connected with time travel, one has to wonder if you're supposed to be eyeing the text for inexplicable differences, etc.) ... in short, it was no Life After Life, which I loved, and certainly not a patch of To Say Nothing of the Dog, my all-time favourite time travel novel.It reads, so far, like a kind of dull book about two couples and a potential other woman, some of whom are acquainted via work. Anyone thinking "ooh, time travel!" is going to be hugely let down.
It's not dreck, so not 1 star, but this is clearly not the sort of book that appeals to me.
(Note: 5 stars = amazing, wonderful, 4 = very good book, 3 = decent read, 2 = disappointing, 1 = awful, just awful. I'm fairly good at picking for myself so end up with a lot of 4s)
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LibraryThing member soradsauce
This took me a long time to finish, not because it was bad, but because it has been a long month. This was one of the first sci fi books I've read that actually dealt with issues around race and gender and sexuality and all of that social stuff of life, in a real way. It wasn't the main subject but
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it played a large role and spawned some interesting discussions about the topics in the book itself. 10/10 would recommend. Show Less
LibraryThing member adzebill
Curiously disappointed by this: a long setup, establishing characters and a near-future world, then a Sliding-Doors rerun, then finally explanation of how this works and resolution. But I could never buy the model of time travel the author wants us to believe (though I guess it's no more
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paradoxical than "normal" time travel). And the characters sometimes spoke and acted like caricatures, performing little set pieces on subjects the author obviously found interesting but which seemed like sidelines. I definitely remember slogging through 200+ pages thinking "this is here for a reason and surely all will be revealed!"; still unsure whether the coda pulled everything off. And it could easily be 100 pages shorter. Show Less
LibraryThing member auntmarge64
This is a difficult book to either describe or review. It's true that it's science fiction, but only because the plot's driving force is the search for a means to prove that time travel is possible.
But the book is more interested in exploring the possibility that even tiny experiments towards that
But the book is more interested in exploring the possibility that even tiny experiments towards that
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goal can have largely unrecognizable consequences and asks if we would know that we'd succeeded. The story is an in-depth look at the life of one woman, whose husband is the lead scientist running these tests. She constantly feels that things are not quite as they should be, and she'd not the only one. Right from the beginning it's obvious she may be somehow recognizing that a change in reality has been made somewhere, but how does one prove such a thing? I think the book could have been maybe a 100 pages shorter, and I found myself skimming here and there, but in general the details of her life contribute to the reader's growing unease. Quite enjoyable in the long run, and with an ending that gives satisfying closure to both the plot and some of the questions raised. Show Less
LibraryThing member fpagan
"Causality violation device" rather than "time machine" being the name of the story's central piece of scientific apparatus, this highly absorbing novel vaguely put me in mind of John Wray's contemporaneously written _The Lost Time Accidents_, which I read earlier this year. It turns out that a
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partial and distant similarity to Isaac Asimov's much older _The End of Eternity_ might also be discerned. Besides its intriguing science-fictional concepts, there is much analysis and exemplification of aspects of American life in the present day and relatively near future (but far enough into that future for fully autonomous vehicles to be quite commonplace). Show Less
LibraryThing member sturlington
Palmer has taken the old time travel trope and done something completely different with it. The result is an absorbing story that is also about marriage, optimism, choice, and possibility. The time machine here is a physics experiment called the causality violation device, which in theory is
But how did she change things exactly? Palmer doesn't delve into that part of it, but that's the part that kept me awake after finishing the book. Did she meet her past self? Did she become her past self? At what point did she return?
Intriguing concept, great read.
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connected to the past by a sort of wormhole. However, all of the experiments performed on it have failed. After experiencing a couple of tragedies in her life, the head physicist's wife, Rebecca, steps into the machine, and that's when things change. Yet, because of the nature of time travel, no none--including Rebecca--may realize that they are not living in the correct present.But how did she change things exactly? Palmer doesn't delve into that part of it, but that's the part that kept me awake after finishing the book. Did she meet her past self? Did she become her past self? At what point did she return?
Intriguing concept, great read.
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LibraryThing member bibliovermis
The ending of this was absolutely an old timey misogynist's dream. I really hated where this ended up.
LibraryThing member burritapal
God, I loved this book, and Palmer is an unequivocal genius, along the same lines as Liu Cixin.
A couple of quotes that I connected with: "...there were few things in life more captivating than goofing off online while drinking. Intoxication mixed well with the way the web provided chains of
"Online dating makes you jaded really fast, even if you're not serious about it. You go on enough dates where you find out within 10 seconds that the guy you've been messaging has lied about his age, or his height, or his number of chins, and it starts to wear you down. And then if you can get past that, there are all the little nasty human things about a man that could never be captured in the profile photos or the questionnaires: his wheedling, lisping voice, or the way he insists on splitting the bill even though you're only going out for coffee, or the light film of spit he leaves smeared across your face after what will be his first and only kiss." p.104
The causality violation device has somehow made it into our own world, even though we would never have heard about it, and has changed history, sometime back in the 80s, so that now we have presidents that would never have been able to be presidents in our previous history. For example, Reagan? A former B-actor? President? He started the whole thing with crapitalism, where, for example, the animal agriculture industry became unregulated, and animals could Whiz down factory lines, getting bonked in the head, or not, because they're going too fast, and end up having their throat slit fully conscious. Or where pigs could end up being thrown in the boiling water where their bristles are supposed to become loose, fully conscience. Or where somebody like Donald Trump, for Christ sake could become president and our country can begin to look like what Germany looked like when Hitler took over. these are things that make me wonder, that I never would have wondered before I read this book.
A couple of quotes that I connected with: "...there were few things in life more captivating than goofing off online while drinking. Intoxication mixed well with the way the web provided chains of
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distractions nested within other distractions. Even just a drink or two could suppress that need for information to be fulfilling in some way, the desire that made browsing such an unsatisfying time-waster sometimes-- without that, you could get into a groove and see the larger shape of things, see the internet the way it's saw itself. With diminished inhibitions you could leave yourself open to its suggestions, letting it show you things that'd tickle your hind brain or give you a nice surprise. You could let it try to Divine your wants from the trail of data you left behind as you bounce from site to site." p.78"Online dating makes you jaded really fast, even if you're not serious about it. You go on enough dates where you find out within 10 seconds that the guy you've been messaging has lied about his age, or his height, or his number of chins, and it starts to wear you down. And then if you can get past that, there are all the little nasty human things about a man that could never be captured in the profile photos or the questionnaires: his wheedling, lisping voice, or the way he insists on splitting the bill even though you're only going out for coffee, or the light film of spit he leaves smeared across your face after what will be his first and only kiss." p.104
The causality violation device has somehow made it into our own world, even though we would never have heard about it, and has changed history, sometime back in the 80s, so that now we have presidents that would never have been able to be presidents in our previous history. For example, Reagan? A former B-actor? President? He started the whole thing with crapitalism, where, for example, the animal agriculture industry became unregulated, and animals could Whiz down factory lines, getting bonked in the head, or not, because they're going too fast, and end up having their throat slit fully conscious. Or where pigs could end up being thrown in the boiling water where their bristles are supposed to become loose, fully conscience. Or where somebody like Donald Trump, for Christ sake could become president and our country can begin to look like what Germany looked like when Hitler took over. these are things that make me wonder, that I never would have wondered before I read this book.
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LibraryThing member mhanlon
Easily one of my favorite books of the year so far, even though it turned out far, far different than I'd expected. The book was just so much more *full* than I'd anticipated, from the jacket copy. I think I expected a light-hearted, jokey romp around the causality violation device setup but I got
The way Palmer builds Philip and Rebecca's relationship, from the very start on the Lovability site to its various ends across multiple timelines is heart-breaking, lovely, and real, and I think is what made the book sing, for me. The author takes full advantage of his unique perspective allowed by the causality violation device to paint the book like a palimpsest, to paint history like one, for that matter. Where the use of a time machine could easily become hokey or over-explained, this one just fits. There is no fantastic flash from the machine as it's working, in fact, you (and they) are not even sure it *is* working at all. And that's the same way the book worked for me -- not a thunderbolt but just something that felt perfectly right.
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something so much more. A musing on love in the digital age, race relations and predispositions, scientific progress, our busy, unforgetting world, and at the center of it a lovely and sad family story of Philip, Rebecca, and Sean. And then it does have its genuinely funny moments, like the dream of YHWH as the worst of all possible tenants towards the end.The way Palmer builds Philip and Rebecca's relationship, from the very start on the Lovability site to its various ends across multiple timelines is heart-breaking, lovely, and real, and I think is what made the book sing, for me. The author takes full advantage of his unique perspective allowed by the causality violation device to paint the book like a palimpsest, to paint history like one, for that matter. Where the use of a time machine could easily become hokey or over-explained, this one just fits. There is no fantastic flash from the machine as it's working, in fact, you (and they) are not even sure it *is* working at all. And that's the same way the book worked for me -- not a thunderbolt but just something that felt perfectly right.
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Language
Original language
English
ISBN
0307950352 / 9780307950352
Physical description
512 p.; 5.13 inches
Pages
512