The Future of Another Timeline
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4.1 • 85 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
“A revolution is happening in speculative fiction, and Annalee Newitz is leading the vanguard."--Wil Wheaton
From Annalee Newitz, founding editor of io9, comes a story of time travel, murder, and the lengths we'll go to protect the ones we love.
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?
Praise for The Future of Another Timeline:
"An intelligent, gut-wrenching glimpse of how tiny actions, both courageous and venal, can have large consequences. Smart and profound on every level.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"You close the book reeling with questions about your own life and your part in changing the future."—Amy Acker, actress (Angel and Person of Interest)
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Nervy and ambitious, The Future of Another Timeline puts a fresh spin on the idea of going back in time to change history. Tess, a time traveler living in 2022, leaps back decades and centuries as she tries to make the world a better place for women and fights off status-quo-preserving rivals. And then Tess’ mission gets tangled up with ’90s riot grrrl Beth’s battle against mosh pit patriarchy. Annalee Newitz’s butterfly effect story is full of fire and punk-rock energy. Her attention to historical details makes the novel’s twisty, white-knuckle plot that much more gripping.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Newitz's mind-rattling second novel (after Autonomous) is a multilayered tale of "editing" history, human rights, and the ripple effect. Geologist and time traveler Tess (2022 CE) is fighting a misogynist group set on subjugating women across the present and future, then destroying the time machines to lock in their dominance permanently. Punk rock loving high schooler Beth (1992 CE) just wants her own life, and normalcy after witnessing a murder. Their lives intertwine in ways neither quite understands, and the effects of their connection extend for centuries in both directions. Newitz's fascinating extrapolation is an intelligent, gut-wrenching glimpse of how tiny actions, both courageous and venal, can have large consequences. The sidelong looks at prejudice-born horrors are frequent but not overwhelming, and the examinations of how much darkness one might be willing to endure in order to stop a vaster terror are heartbreaking. Smart and profound on every level, this is a deeply satisfying novel.
Customer Reviews
A Fresh Take on Time Travel
Annalee Newitz has done an amazing thing with the concept of time travel. In “The Future of Another Timeline” time travel is decidedly different. The time machines are incredibly ancient geological structures that are poorly understood but commonly used. It is believed that the timeline is given stability by all of the constant changes made to it, both directly and inadvertently.
The story is a grim one, where two young women in an alternate Southern California in the 1990’s come of age and deal with a world where their lives are limited. One of these women becomes a Geologist and a Traveler, who seeks to edit the timeline to improve not only her life, but the lives of women throughout history. She and her sisters discover that they are fighting a time war with a group of misogynists who seek a future where women are their property.
Annalee has written a gripping and interesting story, based to an amazing extent on actual history. There is a great appendix that provides references to the historical sources used for research. This is certainly nothing like any other time travel book I’ve read before, and this fresh approach to this subject is absolutely worth checking out.
Disappointing. Did all male characters need to be psychopaths?
I thoroughly enjoyed the author’s previous book and rated it 5 stars. This story has an interesting take on time travel and looked like it was going to be an interesting read. But by the time I made it halfway through the book, the preponderance of evil male characters just became tiring. The only male characters that aren’t murders, rapists, and child abusers are still misogynists. So i’m giving up on this book, which I very rarely do.
I hope this doesn’t represent the author’s real world experience with men. But I will say I now understand how some women have found Michael Crichton’s books hard to read because of the one dimensional portrayal of female characters.