Status
Available
Call number
Publication
Tor (New York, 2019). 1st edition, 1st printing. 352 pages. $26.99.
Description
"1992: After a confrontation at a riot grrl concert, seventeen-year-old Beth finds herself in a car with her friend's abusive boyfriend dead in the backseat, agreeing to help her friends hide the body. This murder sets Beth and her friends on a path of escalating violence and vengeance as they realize many other young women in the world need protecting too. 2022: Determined to use time travel to create a safer future, Tess has dedicated her life to visiting key moments in history and fighting for change. But rewriting the timeline isn't as simple as editing one person or event. And just when Tess believes she's found a way to make an edit that actually sticks, she encounters a group of dangerous travelers bent on stopping her at any cost. Tess and Beth's lives intertwine as war breaks out across the timeline - a war that threatens to destroy time travel and leave only a small group of elites with the power to shape the past, present, and future. Against the vast and intricate forces of history and humanity, is it possible for a single person's actions to echo throughout the timeline?"--Publisher description.… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member AnnieMod
What happens when you mix a time travel with an alternate history one and then you generally sprinkle it with women and gender rights? Apparently this novel.
Thousands of years ago, people discovered 5 disks - almost destroyed by the elements but still functional - allowing people to travel back in
The novel follows two main line - one starting in 2022 and jumping around from there and another starting in 1992 and moving linearly. As one may expect, they are not independent but it takes most of the novel to realize just how they connect and why.
Edits to history are not a joke matter - they delete the future and reconfigure everyone's memories - and only the person doing the edit remembers the past. The "now" of 2022 which is the main story in the novel seems similar to our time (plus the time machine) until you start seeing the small differences - Raqmu never fell under Greek and Roman rule so never became Petra, Harriet Tubman became a senator at one point, California never lost the prefix Alta from its name and Comstock won across time- abortion was never legal in the United States. And somewhere in that future, the Daughters of Harriet were born - a group of scientists that is trying to change the past and give more freedom to women (and other persecuted genders). But as is normal with history, there is also another group that wants the opposite - complete reversal of any rights for anyone that is not a man. And so the Edit Wars started - although the opposing fraction does not just want to change things - they also want to lock the world in a single timeline.
Most of the novel happens in Chicago in 1892 (and the years after that); the 1992 story happens in Irvine, Alta California where Beth and her friends are finishing high school and going to college with all the craziness of the era (and its alternative music scene). Add a few trips to the Ordovician Period, 13th century BC and a guest from a few hundred years in the future sent back to try to save humanity (or the female part of it anyway) and you have the temporal knot that needs a lot of tugging in all kinds of directions.
If you remove the time travel, you get two stories - one of the Chicago expo and its Midway theaters (and Comstock and his... actions); one of 1992 California. And both work on their own. Joining them together and mixing them with the time travelers make them even stronger ones and the 1992 story serves as a control of what is getting changed earlier.
By the end of the novel, the California of 1992 seem closer to our timeline. But in order to get there, a lot of bad things need to happen - the novel has some pretty brutal scenes that may turn some people away. But they fit the narrative. And the story.
And somewhere along the line, there is always the lingering question - should we do that? And if editing can change the past and future, what is really the past and future. It is the priestess at the very end of the novel that will give us some answers -- and they won't come as a surprise.
I really enjoyed this novel - despite some predictability here and there, Annalee Newitz found a new way to write on a topic that a lot of authors had explored. Throughout the novel, the group starts their meetings with "I remember a time when" - reporting the times that everyone lost. One time they lost a member. Other times they lost parts of history. At the very last meeting, a few of them start the same way "I remember a time when abortion was not legal". Because in that novel, the world changed.
It is a credit to the author that she does not go into the moral part of that question - the novel and the fight is about the right of a person to make their own choices. Because of that, it may not be for everyone - but if you are not scared of the topic, I would recommend this novel.
Thousands of years ago, people discovered 5 disks - almost destroyed by the elements but still functional - allowing people to travel back in
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time. Before long, everyone realized that the past is not set in stone and that edits in the past can change the present. And things got complicated. The novel follows two main line - one starting in 2022 and jumping around from there and another starting in 1992 and moving linearly. As one may expect, they are not independent but it takes most of the novel to realize just how they connect and why.
Edits to history are not a joke matter - they delete the future and reconfigure everyone's memories - and only the person doing the edit remembers the past. The "now" of 2022 which is the main story in the novel seems similar to our time (plus the time machine) until you start seeing the small differences - Raqmu never fell under Greek and Roman rule so never became Petra, Harriet Tubman became a senator at one point, California never lost the prefix Alta from its name and Comstock won across time- abortion was never legal in the United States. And somewhere in that future, the Daughters of Harriet were born - a group of scientists that is trying to change the past and give more freedom to women (and other persecuted genders). But as is normal with history, there is also another group that wants the opposite - complete reversal of any rights for anyone that is not a man. And so the Edit Wars started - although the opposing fraction does not just want to change things - they also want to lock the world in a single timeline.
Most of the novel happens in Chicago in 1892 (and the years after that); the 1992 story happens in Irvine, Alta California where Beth and her friends are finishing high school and going to college with all the craziness of the era (and its alternative music scene). Add a few trips to the Ordovician Period, 13th century BC and a guest from a few hundred years in the future sent back to try to save humanity (or the female part of it anyway) and you have the temporal knot that needs a lot of tugging in all kinds of directions.
If you remove the time travel, you get two stories - one of the Chicago expo and its Midway theaters (and Comstock and his... actions); one of 1992 California. And both work on their own. Joining them together and mixing them with the time travelers make them even stronger ones and the 1992 story serves as a control of what is getting changed earlier.
By the end of the novel, the California of 1992 seem closer to our timeline. But in order to get there, a lot of bad things need to happen - the novel has some pretty brutal scenes that may turn some people away. But they fit the narrative. And the story.
And somewhere along the line, there is always the lingering question - should we do that? And if editing can change the past and future, what is really the past and future. It is the priestess at the very end of the novel that will give us some answers -- and they won't come as a surprise.
I really enjoyed this novel - despite some predictability here and there, Annalee Newitz found a new way to write on a topic that a lot of authors had explored. Throughout the novel, the group starts their meetings with "I remember a time when" - reporting the times that everyone lost. One time they lost a member. Other times they lost parts of history. At the very last meeting, a few of them start the same way "I remember a time when abortion was not legal". Because in that novel, the world changed.
It is a credit to the author that she does not go into the moral part of that question - the novel and the fight is about the right of a person to make their own choices. Because of that, it may not be for everyone - but if you are not scared of the topic, I would recommend this novel.
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LibraryThing member miken32
I really wanted to love this book. Great concept and a well-defined world, where time travel has been available for thousands of years thanks to a series of eons-old time machines. Only able to travel into their own pasts, a group of women try to edit the world into something more equal.
Where the book fell down for me was the dialogue. Characters are constantly speaking unnaturally, sometimes for expository purposes, sometimes to make a Very Important Point, and sometimes for no particular reason. Upon entering a college dorm room for the first time: “Hi, roomie! I’m Rosa Sanchez, from Salinas. Do you care whether you get top or bottom? Because I don’t care.”
Despite the dialogue concerns, I’d still happily recommend it.
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(Interesting that something similar to our present timeline, and not something better, was the winning one.)Where the book fell down for me was the dialogue. Characters are constantly speaking unnaturally, sometimes for expository purposes, sometimes to make a Very Important Point, and sometimes for no particular reason. Upon entering a college dorm room for the first time: “Hi, roomie! I’m Rosa Sanchez, from Salinas. Do you care whether you get top or bottom? Because I don’t care.”
Despite the dialogue concerns, I’d still happily recommend it.
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LibraryThing member dcoward
Tess is member of the Daughters of Harriet, a group that time travels to edit and protect women's rights. She is trying to prevent Comstockers from trapping everyone in a timeline that destroys women's rights. Meanwhile, she is trying to right past wrongs in the form of preventing deaths that
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occurred when she was a teenager. Fascinating and timely, with a wealth of interesting characters. Show Less
LibraryThing member lavaturtle
This book is amazing. It's full of smart women and non-binary people working together to make the world a better place. The time-travel mechanism is well-integrated into the worldbuilding; the relationship with academia feels believable. I loved the emphasis on collective action to achieve social
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change for oppressed people, especially since the time-travel subgenre is usually fixated on famous people and wars. Plus, for a book focused on "women's issues", it never forgets that trans people exist. Finally, the ending was satisfying and well-earned. Show Less
LibraryThing member sophroniaborgia
I was intrigued by the idea of a time-travel book with a somewhat unusual focus on women's history, the punk subculture, and the power of collective action to affect change. Annalee Newitz writes about the Daughters of Harriet (Tubman), a collective of women and nonbinary people who are working to
There was a lot of plot in this book -- time travel gives a writer a lot of potential settings to work with -- and the author mostly handled it well. I thought her world of 1892 was not as well-written as the other sections, however, particularly the story of Beth and her friends, which took a while to intersect with the theme of the book. I liked the focus on the morality and potential affect of making changes to past timelines, as detailed when the Daughters would recount the things only they now remembered from the past. the time-travel mechanism was odd and never quite fully explained, but it functioned fairly well for purposes of the story. It's refreshing, in a genre that often relies on dystopia and great-man hero characters, to find a narrative speaking for the power of women, LGBTQ people, and their allies to work collectively to make the world a better place.
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stop the Comstockers, a group determined to force women into submissive and victimized roles in society by destroying the advances in women and minority rights that have happened throughout history. Meanwhile, Tess, one of the Daughters, is making changes both in the timeline of 1892, when Comstock attempted to close down several women-led businesses at the Chicago World's Fair, and in 1992, when a teenager named Beth finds that her best friend is influencing her to follow a dark path. There was a lot of plot in this book -- time travel gives a writer a lot of potential settings to work with -- and the author mostly handled it well. I thought her world of 1892 was not as well-written as the other sections, however, particularly the story of Beth and her friends, which took a while to intersect with the theme of the book. I liked the focus on the morality and potential affect of making changes to past timelines, as detailed when the Daughters would recount the things only they now remembered from the past. the time-travel mechanism was odd and never quite fully explained, but it functioned fairly well for purposes of the story. It's refreshing, in a genre that often relies on dystopia and great-man hero characters, to find a narrative speaking for the power of women, LGBTQ people, and their allies to work collectively to make the world a better place.
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LibraryThing member fpagan
The world of this nicely crafted novel is the very one we live in, except that its geology, to everyone's knowledge, somehow permits people with special expertise to travel through time and alter historical reality. The storyline's strongly feminist theme will displease the descendants of Anthony
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Comstock, if such there be. But I'd be much less sympathetic to them than to dislikers of (occasional) extreme violence and of "music" consisting of godawful sonic garbage. On the whole, though, this one's a winner. Show Less
LibraryThing member jzacsh
Couldn't get enough of this book. This was SO good!!
I loved the sci-fi concept that made this universe unique, relative to ours. I loved the conflict around that universe. I loved the characters and their story. The whole book felt beautifully connected.
It has a lot in it that's dark and
I loved the sci-fi concept that made this universe unique, relative to ours. I loved the conflict around that universe. I loved the characters and their story. The whole book felt beautifully connected.
It has a lot in it that's dark and
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disturbing, but the story is also uplifting. Show Less
LibraryThing member jakecasella
I really wanted to like this, especially based on a reading I heard Newitz do from one chapter. That chapter still rocks, but on the whole I found myself intensely frustrated by this book. I love the core premise—feminist time-travels combating MRA types in what's basically a wiki-style edit-war,
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BUT WITH MURDERS SOMETIMES, and the World's Fair Chicago setting was fun and clearly well-researched. However, the actual time-travel mechanics here, as well as how the characters think about the ethics of timeline manipulation, are a serious mess. Distractingly so, and pretty much ruined this for me. Grape Ape sounds pretty rad, though. Show Less
LibraryThing member Shrike58
I have to admit that this wound up being a mixed bag for me, as while I felt it was time to give the author's fiction a try, the fact remains that I'm not a big fan of time-travel stories. On the plus side I have no issues with this novel basically being a polemic, as it's a topic well-worth being
The less-than-good remains that I set a really high bar for time travel plots and this story really doesn't get over this bar. If we had a world with known time machines I just can't believe that access would be that easy to achieve. I also think it likely that an exercise in having an "edit" war would likely result in our time warriors being marooned in an alternate world where there was no time travel. Also, the militant patriarchalists of the story could have been better developed, even if understanding this sort of person in real life often seems like a fool's errand. I also tend to agree that the dialogue is clunky in places. On the whole, this novel probably needed another pass of editing.
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polemical about, when we live in a world where some countries have declared miscarriage a crime and we have a class of political "activists" who can think of nothing more manly than beating up on women; making noted uber-prude Anthony Comstock the antagonist of this story was a stroke of genius. I like the main character time operative, and that her struggles to redeem the past and save the future come at an appropriate cost. Finally, when Newitz is "on," she does have a real knack for capturing a setting.The less-than-good remains that I set a really high bar for time travel plots and this story really doesn't get over this bar. If we had a world with known time machines I just can't believe that access would be that easy to achieve. I also think it likely that an exercise in having an "edit" war would likely result in our time warriors being marooned in an alternate world where there was no time travel. Also, the militant patriarchalists of the story could have been better developed, even if understanding this sort of person in real life often seems like a fool's errand. I also tend to agree that the dialogue is clunky in places. On the whole, this novel probably needed another pass of editing.
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LibraryThing member ansate
CW: This book is great, but it is also surprisingly heavy. Not only is it about oppression of women throughout time, it also contains murder, rape, and abuse topics.
LibraryThing member SChant
I wanted to like it - her previous book "Autonomous" was a bit clunky but had some interesting ideas - but this one is just a shambles.Vast numbers of people hopping randomly through time, contrived plot, moustache-twirling cardboard baddies, and a lack of nuance.
LibraryThing member banjo123
a feminist, SF, time travel book; about a group of Punk Rock Riot Grrls, trying to use time travel to make changes to the past in order to preserve reproductive rights for women in the present and future. In a fun plot twist, a lot of the strategy involves the Columbia Exposition in Chicago in
Some parts of the book were a bit clunky, but overall, I liked it and it was a good plane read.
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1893; and middle eastern dance.Some parts of the book were a bit clunky, but overall, I liked it and it was a good plane read.
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LibraryThing member macha
i was really looking forward to reading this, because i loved Newitz's Autonomous. but then this one seemed a bit of a mess, like sections from different manuscripts with different aims not so much integrated as just shoved together. all the different histories were fun, and the different time
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periods. and the choice of villain (Comstockery!) was inspired. but the premise of the book, our heroes busily editing different periods in history to change the world farther down the timeline, seemed so cavalier and ill-advised, and the time travel rules and regulations pertaining seemed so flimsy, it became impossible to keep a firm grip on my suspension of disbelief (not to mention my respect for the decision-making of the characters). but then after the conclusion, the last sentence of the historical sources section totally unexpectedly made me tear up, think bigger-picture, think range, and recommend the work. Show Less
LibraryThing member untitled841
I found the story to be rather enjoyable. It would be nice to know that if time travel was happening that there was an activist group but also studied the timelines available.
I appreciated a bit more of the science about time travel, the example of people not being able to go back in time to talk
I appreciated a bit more of the science about time travel, the example of people not being able to go back in time to talk
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to their prior selves in order to alter time. And the consequences of that if that action was taken. Show Less
LibraryThing member Zoes_Human
A time travel war between feminists and incels? I am here for this! The Future of Another Timeline was fun and fast-paced, with unexpected twists, complicated heroes, and an ending that feels really good right now. Absolutely adored it.
Content Advisory:Brief depictions of abuse, rape, and
Content Advisory:
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anti-trans hostility. References to trans murder and discrimination. Show Less
Awards
Locus Award (Finalist — Science Fiction Novel — 2020)
RUSA CODES Reading List (Shortlist — Science Fiction — 2020)
Sidewise Award (Winner — 2019)
Golden Poppy Book Award (Shortlist — Fiction — 2019)
Dragon Award (Finalist — Science Fiction Novel — 2020)
Language
Original language
English
Original publication date
2019-09-24
Physical description
352 p.; 5.7 inches
ISBN
9780765392107
Local notes
Inscribed (San Francisco, September 2019).