The Time Roads

Complexly interwoven

This book jumped the to-be-read queue by virtue of my new policy of strongly leaning towards e-books unless I have a strong reason otherwise. The Time Roads is not a novel but rather a collection of four tightly-connected stories set in an alternate early 20th century which diverges from our own historic time-stream in several deep-rooted ways, most notably the relative political power and influence among the nations of the British Isles--a geographic term that is awkwardly inapplicable here where Ireland became the dominant power—and a striking apparent lack of colonialism (except for the relationship of Éire to its neighbors) that is evident in the political maneuverings. The historic divergence might seem an arbitrary fantastic element, except that historic divergence is the very heart of the stories. By a combination of machinery and mathematics, objects and even people may move through time, with all the expected consequences and potential paradoxes. The technology, indeed the concept, is in its infancy here. The stories trace both small-scale personal consequences and global political ones as meddling with time creates and destroys alternate destinies. Layers of conflicting realities remain in the memories of the characters as well as the traces of “time fractures” that can be detected and mapped.

The first three stories enact these fractured and shifting time roads, each focusing on a different and mutually exclusive version of the world while the fourth and concluding story continues in the third version of reality. The young queen of Éire and key players in the theoretical and practical exploration of time-travel shift through a set of alternate histories, moving toward one where the time technology is developed and mastered sufficiently to destroy or save the world. The political setting of the events remains reminiscent enough of our own early 20th century that there is no need for in-depth explanations. (I’m extremely fond of stories that don’t over-explain but expect the reader to pick up the threads on their own.) Along with the politics, there are personal crises: desire, friendship, madness, loyalty. The most obvious romantic set-up is bypassed in a believable and satisfactory way, and romance is never the focus of the stories (though a key motivation for characters). The science of time-travel is set up with an adequate amount of hand-waving for suspension of disbelief without getting bogged down in details. The primary focus of the plot is on consequences and how to deal with them. I think my favorite aspect of this book was the structural echo of the time-fractures in the way the first three parts followed different histories from different viewpoints, emphasizing the disjunction and—I can’t really call it “the subjective nature of reality” because the differences are clearly objective as well. But the “personal” nature of reality in a setting where the person you are and the world you’ve known may shift underneath you without warning.

There are characters I would have loved to know more deeply. Gwen Madóc gets far more page time in the thread where understanding of the time roads has driven her mad than the ones where she becomes a major player in time research and I can’t help but wish she’d get her own story.

Although the author staunchly disclaims The Time Roads as “steampunk”, I can see how it nestles up against the fuzzy edges of that genre. (And it’s clear that the art director who designed the cover image was fishing for the steampunk readership.) Although falling after the heart of the steampunk era, it shares the focus on a technology that is fantastic in its effects but mechanistic in its theory and methods, while still keeping the heart of the story on human interactions rather than pure technophilia. Even the alternate history aspect could easily be seen as a direct consequence of the fictional temporal physics that makes the core concept possible, rather than as a separate genre element. (There are suggestions that time fractures can occur spontaneously around major historic events, and not only as a result of time-travel meddling. I could easily see the divergence from our history as being a result of those fractures, given what we see of their effects.) So I will dare to suggest that – whatever genre label you care to give it – if you enjoy steampunk fiction, that increases the likelihood that you will enjoy The Time Roads.