Reviews with content warning for Sexual assault - The Future of Another Timeline

**SPOILERS ABOUND, reader beware!**

There was a lot to love about this story: a unique spin on time-travel; an interesting and personal exploration of the relationship between past and present selves; teenagers serial murdering unsavoury men who clearly get off on abusing women. As I am learning is typical for Newitz's writing, the prose is clear and evocative, and their facts are well-researched and presented.

But... I can't help but feel they tried to take on too much with this book, and ultimately it failed to come together in a way that I found satisfying.

The serial murder subplot feels like it should have taken place in another book entirely. For being such a keystone in the Tess/Beth relationship, it's given surprisingly little emotional weight outside of Beth feeling conflicted about their actions. It's not until too far into the book that we learn Tess actually Loves To Murder and that it's a key element of her personality (???), which seems like something important to give a taste of sooner than was done.

The concept of Comstockers vs Daughters of Harriet was actually the least compelling part of the book to me. If this had been fleshed out better, I might have been able to look past other flaws. The Comstockers' motive is essentially to ensure women are relegated to a life of servitude and subservience to men forever—genuinely frightening!—but the book can't quite decide if they're a well-organized pseudo-militia or a bunch of bumbling MRAs whose sole purpose in life is to make women stop being "sl*ts". I almost think the story would have been stronger without adding an opposition group of mustache-twirling but ultimately toothless megavillains. Like, what if it were just the Daughters fighting against the tide of history in their alternate universe? That's a story worth telling. And I think it would have helped Newitz clarify and explore some of their philosophical thoughts about Great Man Theory vs Collective Action. We got a lot of Telling about that but not as much Showing as I think should have been done.

No regrets on reading this, but I wish it had come together better in the end.

A note on the audiobook: I found the narrator's style to be a bit amateurish, overall, but there were some stand-out moments too and I felt she did particularly well reading Beth. It was cool to have a musical interlude partway through the story! I haven't experienced that in an audiobook before. Unique and fun!

Content Warnings

azzageddi's review

Go to review page

adventurous dark emotional hopeful informative inspiring sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

(This is from my blog.)
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, 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" (handless breeders) and "drones" (infertile 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 it's 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 such a feminist-vs-incel war needs to open their eyes. We are, to put it simply, 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 tittilate 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.

Content Warnings

krhysling's review against another edition

Go to review page

Very disturbing graphic violence depictions

Content Warnings

xeniaaaaaah's review

Go to review page

medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

This is the author’s rage book re the current political sphere affecting AFAB’s lives

Content Warnings

franmor6907's review

Go to review page

adventurous challenging emotional hopeful mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

Content Warnings

hwaldooo's review

Go to review page

adventurous hopeful medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.5

the premise of this book ticked a ton of boxes for me, but i could NOT get into it at all. no investment in the plot, no affection for the characters, some interest in the central ideas (time/history, collective action) but underwhelmed with how they were handled. bummer!

Content Warnings

amalyndb's review against another edition

Go to review page

5.0

Wow. This is powerful.

Basic premise is an alternate history, where reproductive rights are threatened from the far future via time travel. There's a whole lot more than that.

There is some potentially triggering subject matter. That may be an understatement.

Heed the warnings: I had a visceral reaction to some of this. I've read other stuff written in more explicit ways that didn't impact me as much. An observation, rather than a complaint. Will reread again in future when I feel able to.

Content Warnings

More...