The Future of Another Timeline, by Annalee Newitz

Spanish-language cover of the first issue of the "Death of Speedy" arc in one of the best comics of all time, Locas, by Jaime Hernandez (part of the Love and Rockets magazine by the Brothers Hernandez). Included here because Newitz's novel kept bringing Maggie and Hopey to mind, and I kept imagining the characters in The Future of Another Timeline as if drawn by Jaime Hernandez.

I've read plenty of nonfiction by Annalee Newitz, lots of stuff that they've edited, and some short fiction, and I've listened to their podcast with Charlie Jane Anders. But I hadn't read any of their novels! Well, I got to listen to and ask questions of Newitz at the 2023 VICFA online conference, and that reminded me how remiss I've been, so while they were talking, I surreptitiously got on Amazon Japan and bought the ebook of The Future of Another Timeline. I finished it a few days ago, and though I still haven't blogged some other books I finished before that (note to self: need to write about Rivers of London audiobook, The Raven Tower in print, the first few stories of The Unreal and the Real Vol 1, and starting my 8th circumnavigation of the Aubrey/Maturin series with Master and Commander in audio), I wanted to get this one down before it loses its freshness.

Time-travel stories are hard. Even harder, because there have been so many, is getting anything fresh into a time-travel story. That certainly one of the reasons Future of Another Timeline has shot up to be in my top-five time-travel stories. (Note: I do not actually make top-five lists. I have a really hard time putting things in order like that. My students often ask me "What's your favorite ___?" and I panic and go "Too much pressure!" and reply "Well, I don't know about my favorite, but right now I really like ___." If somebody on social media tags me with "name your top ten thingamajigs," I just ignore it or I'll end up with a migraine. So when I say "my top-five" I really just mean "I love this!") Fresh things in this story: For one, there are vastly ancient time machines, created when life was just starting on Earth, that humans have figured out how to work by tapping them in certain sequences, and thus for centuries there has been time travel, though an academically inclined society keeps a monopoly on it to prevent things from going totally crazy. The fact that a time traveller can go back to the late-19th century and people go "Oh, so you're a time traveller! So what's that like then?" is a charming change from all the "must keep time travel secret" of 99% of such stories. Also, I love the pre-human machines--were they built by aliens? By humans who somehow travelled back before the machines were built? Are they some result of a bizarre natural process? Nobody knows yet.

Another thing I love about this book is that it is unapologetically feminist, and portrays a time war going on between two factions: the Daughters of Harriet (who claim Harriet Tubman as their patron saint), and the Comstockers (basically Incels, who are trying to get the movement led by 19th-century anti-vice/anti-abortion misogynist activist Anthony Comstock to produce a timeline where women have no rights at all). As is revealed in hints through the early parts of the novel, Comstock's laws have already succeeded in a history where abortion is 100% illegal throughout the USA, and the Daughters of Harriet are trying to edit the timeline to get more freedom and equality for women (including trans and nonbinary people), when they come across the Comstockers' plan to edit the timeline to erase women's rights entirely and turn them into "queens" (breeders) and "drones" (workers).

I like how the language and ideas are very reminiscent of how Wikipedia works, particularly with "edit wars," something Newitz has much experience with and has written about. It really brings to mind how much we know of history, what is brought to our attention, and so on. How much do we know of the two most influential historical figures in this novel, Harriet Tubman and Anthony Comstock. I knew a fair bit about the former before I read, but hardly more than the name of the latter, but they're quite important to the history of the USA. Yet it's so easy for them to be "written out," and right now, erasing uncomfortable history is an obsession of the Far Right--the same people who complain endlessly about "cancel culture," something they have mostly made up from their own imaginations. Control of history is a powerful thing, and time travel serves as a powerful metaphor for that.

If I had read this book before Gamergate and the rise of the Far Right (which would have required a time machine as the book is from 2019), I'd probably have thought it a bit on the nose, and a bit hard to believe that incels could ever become that big of a problem. But today, anybody who finds it hard to believe in the existence of a feminist-vs-incel war needs to open their eyes. We are, to put it simply, already there, in an ideological struggle for equal rights, democracy, and liberty on one side and a gleeful romp toward a fascist dark age on the other. (That the second choice will also lead to an environmental collapse is just icing on the cake.) As a middle-aged white American man, I'm expected to be on the side of the majority of my fellow middle-aged white American men, but I am very much with my queer, intersectional-feminist environmentalist antifascist comrades on this issue. Some people reading this book might feel preached at, but at this point that makes as much sense as reading a book set in WW2 that says "Nazis are bad" and being mad that the author doesn't make it fair and balanced.

Still, those things alone do not a wonderful book make. Well, there's also excellent plotting and structure, but the best thing is the depictions of the main and supporting characters. I felt tears welling up twice at the traumas and the victories of the main characters. I always love a book where I fall in love with some of the characters, and I know that Tess and Beth and even Soph and Hamid will live in my imagination for years and years. And that is yet another success in this novel: That it can be both a big, overarching story of the war for human rights across history, and at the same time a focused, very personal story of a few characters, often teenagers oppressed by their society, who escape through backyard punk-rock parties and smoking...and, tragically, violence.

CWs: This novel has some very graphic violence, and abuse of women, trans people, and minors, including sexual abuse. None of it is there to titillate like some cheap action movie--it's all pertinent to the narrative and the characters. But some may want to avoid it for that.

Anyway, highly recommended. I have two more of Newitz's novels ready to read.

All Systems Red (Murderbot Diaries 1)

Is it possible to reread a book/series too many times?

Opening slide from a presentation I gave at VICFA 2023.

Probably. I might just get tired of it, and something I love might become something I'm bored with. Anyway, this time wasn't to reread. I wanted to finally listen to the audiobook all the way through.

This is the review I posted for All Systems Red on Audible UK:

I've reread the Murderbot Diaries several times. I love the whole series. And I just forced myself to listen to the whole audiobook of All Systems Red. Audible often has one of the books in the series available for free, and I've listened to most of them, but always quit and returned the book after the first 10-15 minutes because the narrator, Kevin Free, is (warning: personal opinion ahead that will anger some people) one of the worst audiobook narrators I've ever heard. (And I've heard a lot. I do a LOT of audiobooks, as I spend 3 or so hours a day walking.) Seriously, I would prefer auto-voice-to-text over Kevin Free. I'm not kidding. He's so bad at his job that it literally makes me angry.

But this time, All Systems Red was available free, and hey, it's just over 3 hours, so I decided to grit my teeth and do the whole thing, and try to see why so many people love his narration. Because many do, and that's OK, but...why?

Sorry, Free fans (and Mr Free, if you are reading this), but I still can't see it. His tone is off. He doesn't have a connection with the characters. Some narrators do voices for different characters, some don't, and Free definitely should not, especially women's voices. He makes them sound like a 1980s standup comic doing a "women are different from men" bit, all lispy. He's also inconsistent: the voices he was using for a character change over time--that's something new I noticed, by listening to the whole thing. So instead of improving my appreciation for Free by listening to the whole thing, I actually lowered my opinion.

After about 30 minutes in, I upped the playback speed to x1.2, then a few minutes later to x1.5. I normally never speed up an audiobook--I have a thing about wanting to listen to it as the narrator recorded it. I have to really want to get it over with fast, to do that. (And reminder: this is only 3 hours and 17 minutes long, and I still couldn't be done with it fast enough.)

I'm really hoping that the Netflix adaptation will be successful and that Tor or Netflix or someone will spring for a new audio adaptation, maybe with the star or even a full-cast reading (not dramatized, just a straight reading but maybe with each actor doing their characters' voices). Or, really, just with someone good as the reader. Murderbot deserves better.

I gave it Overall: 3 stars, Narration: 1 star, Story: 5 stars.

Expanding on the "doing voices" thing: I've thought about it more since I posted that review. Like, I listened to Rivers of London narrated by Kobna Holdbrook-Smith recently. He does voices. He has a much deeper voice than Kevin Free, and yet he manages to very effectively do women's voices without sounding like a joke. (The only voice he seems to have trouble with is Dr Walid, a Scotsman who converted to Islam and changed his name but still speaks with a strong Scottish accent, which apparently Holdbrook-Smith has trouble doing--fair enough, not many non-Scots people can do one without sounding ridiculous, so he's wise not to try.) 

News from an immigrant

Fewer workers overall mean essential jobs not being filled

THE ASAHI SHIMBUN

January 28, 2024 at 08:00 JST

Japan is projected to be short of 11 million workers in 2040, according to a report on prospects released by the Recruit Works Institute in 2023.

Restructuring unfair, low-pay work is important. Better pay and benefits leads to better security, which in the long run (along with other reforms like enforcement of sexual-equality rules and provision of childcare) will lead to a reversal of the population decline. But that will take decades. In the meantime, Japan is going to have to allow more immigration, *and* treat immigrants fairly, encouraging them to make a home and raise families here.

I'm speaking as a permanent resident who'd lived in Japan more than half his life and has eight Japanese grandchildren here. Calls for more immigration are often opposed by non-residents or recently arrived immigrants who call themselves "expats." They are so very concerned about "pure Japanese culture" and often say "keep your opinions to yourself" and "no Japan, don't let immigrants in!" What they mean, of course, is "keep the people from developing countries out, but let us wealthy people in"--racism and classism. Well, this is my home. It's where my grandchildren are growing up, and it's where my ashes will be laid to rest. I want Japan to thrive.

Beloved

 I'm falling behind on writing these little reactions...

A collage I made to serve as the Zoom background for the January 2024 KLBAC book-club discussion.

I've read Toni Morrison's Beloved before, way back in graduate school, and it was good to read it again. Rereading after so long away from a book is rediscovering it, a lot of "oh yeah!" and also, in the case of a dread-filled book like this, a lot of feeling of impending doom as you know bad things are coming.

I've often encountered people who say they never reread books, and can't even imagine why people do. Well, all right, but I have to reread. It's part of my job, for one thing. For another, if the book is deep and multilayered like this one, you really don't get to know the book without rereading.

This time, I went the audio route, and I chose the author-as-narrator edition. Not all authors make good narrators. In fact, probably very few do. I know I wouldn't. Natalie Haynes certainly did, with the audiobook of Pandora's Jar, and Mary Robinette Kowal is a great reader of her Lady Astronaut Series. But then, they're both actors, as well. Someone told me she didn't like Toni Morrison's reading, but I thought it really worked well. Morrison's voice is very warm and enveloping, and it feels like she's telling you the story directly, sitting with you in a dimly lit room.

Beloved is a ghost story, and the ghost story is perfect for telling a story of memories that haunt, that twist us up, that we have to deal with but don't want to because dealing with them is painful and make us feel ashamed. Based on a true incident, this is the story of a murder, done out the purest intentions, by a mother who wanted to protect her children from absolute horror. But it's also the story of slavery in the USA, and how it destroyed lives and poisoned a nation. Slavery haunts the USA, and the more we try to ignore it, the more pain and shame it'll take to lay it to rest.

A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking

I just finished T. Kingfisher's A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking (2020). I probably shouldn't have been reading it while also listening to Beloved on audio, since they have overlapping themes: bigotry and how it can be weaponized for political power. But Defensive Baking is a YA, and does not have NEARLY the depth of lived experience of racism, history, pain, and tragedy behind it, not does it have anywhere near Toni Morrison's dense, masterful writing style. Kingfisher's book is, of course, quite light in comparison, and that's not really her fault: she had different goals. But still, the two are not a good combo for reading at the same time.

Anyway, I can recommend Defensive Baking for someone in search of something light that also has some darkness and seriousness. Also good for a teen or even pre-teen reader. As the author says, YA readers are often not only able to handle but are eager to read somewhat darker, more serious stories than teachers, parents, librarians, and publishers think they are.

Having won the Hugo this year for Best Novel with Nettle & Bone, I'll definitely be reading more of T. Kingfisher/Ursula Vernon's work.

Books books books

(Fukuoka University Library)

Well, it turns out there is a limit to the number of books I can have checked out from our university library: 300! I have reached it.

I tend to keep a lot of the books I check out, as I can keep them out for a year and renew online easily, and as a researcher I often need to refer back to them. But I know of course that I can always turn them back in, and then if I need them later, I can check them out again. Just my silly packrat nature. I'm making a big stack now to return a few books at a time over the next few weeks.

Happy New Year

 Well, been almost a year...

I'm going to try to get this going again. I want to at the very least keep track of my reading. My brain is getting old, and I've been known to buy a book I already have--or even buy a book when I already have two copies, in once case--and I read enough books that if I just use the blog as a book diary that somebody else reads once in awhile, that's OK.

So here's the first book of the year that I finished:

Jester's Fortune, Dewey Lambdin (Alan Lewrie series #8)

Not a great one to start the year off with, but it was a relaxing light read. Lambdin is clearly inspired by Patrick O'Brian, but like all the O'Brian imitators, he doesn't measure up, really. His prose is much weaker, his characters more flat, his humor less humorous, his grasp of the period's language less firm. (He really likes to use the adjective "shitten.") Yet I hold a little warm regard for the main character, who seems as if he were originally inspired by George MacDonald Frasier's cad Flashman, but Lambdin just wasn't able to keep Lewrie so terrible. By this novel, Lewrie has really grown up, and is starting to develop into a good leader with a real desire to be a better man.

I realized partway through that I'd accidentally skipped a book. It seems that #7, King's Commander, is not available on Kindle from Amazon Japan for some reason. Will I go to the trouble of tracking it down? Probably not. It says a lot about this series that I don't feel like I really missed anything.

Lambdin would also have done well to have followed O'Brian's lead on writing postscripts or forwards or other commentary on his own work: generally, just don't do it, but if you must, don't turn it into a blog post full of personal opinions about this and that. It doesn't really come across well. It's too bad, because there are some notes there about the historical events that inspired the story, and those are interesting. 

Currently reading: 

• Beloved by Toni Morrison (audio, read by the author): This is a reread for the Kuala Lumpur Speculative Fiction Book Club, and I'm half loving it--it really is so good!--and half not wanting to continue--it really is such a dark, sad, painful story! 
• A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking by T. Kingfisher (print): I started this awhile ago, got busy, and have returned to it after finishing Jester's Fortune. It's...OK. I'm not the target audience, and I probably would have LOVED it as a pre-teen, but considering that its main theme is how bigotry and fear can be harnessed to take power, and I'm reading Beloved at the same time which deals with much the same thing in a MUCH more realistic and abject manner, it makes this book feel very trite. Not Kingfisher's fault, of course. I'm just kind of reading it to finish reading it, at this point.
• The Future of Another Timeline by Annalee Newitz. This is the first novel of Newitz's that I've read, though I've read plenty of their nonfiction and a couple of short stories. When I was attending a panel they moderated at VICFA (the Virtual International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts) a few months ago, I remembered that I needed to read more by them, and bought this one while listening to the discussion. I've barely started it, but it looks good so far.