The Future Fire
My favourite spec fic magazine is The Future Fire, and its reviews section, The Future Fire Reviews, has just published a review of TimeSplash. It was actually a fairly lukewarm review, but well-written and well-researched. The reviewer, Keith Lawrence, called TimeSplash “a pleasant read” (ouch!) but for me, at least, the review was extremely thought-provoking. You might want to click the link above, zip over to The Future Fire Reviews and read Lawrence’s review before you read on.
Here are some of the many thoughts it provoked:
On the quality of the review. I write reviews much more these days than I used to, so I tend to read other people’s reviews with more of a “professional interest”. Lawrence’s review was very good. He strove for balance, he took the trouble to do some background reading, to check out my website, to check out the publisher’s site, and to set his comments in a broader context. As the person on the receiving end, it was gratifying that he had taken the book seriously enough to have done all this work. It was a good example for me and I hope I can learn from it.
On “a cold-war spy thriller”, genres, and marketing. Something interesting Lawrence said was that the publisher and I may have pitched the book to the wrong market because we misclassified it. TimeSplash is a fast-paced adventure story, a thriller, in fact, which uses the future, the past, and a range of cities and buildings as exotic locations for the action. That it uses time travel as a new technology to pose extreme social problems – not just for the characters but for the whole world, is what makes it real science fiction. So I think the reviewer got that part wrong. However, the Europe of 2050 is not so very different from that of 2010 (although, in the background, other parts of the world are radically altered) and, while I did the world building very carefully, there is very little there that is too alien.
In fact, I had agonised before publication about whether I should describe this book as a “science fiction thriller” or as a “techno-thriller”. I agree that it has much in common with the kind of “thriller” that includes lots of high tech (the kind of thing Michael Crichton used to write so well.) But, in the end, I decided that people who buy “techno-thrillers” would expect something more like Tom Clancy – far more thriller than sci-fi – and the balance in TimeSplash would not quite satisfy that audience. So I went with “sci-fi thriller” and, on the whole, reader reaction has vindicated the choice.
On depth and thoughtfulness. At a personal level, it was difficult for me to read Lawrence’s comments on the lack of depth and thoughtfulness in the story, especially the idea that I had disappointed him, that he had expected more from me. And that isn’t for the reasons you might think. Yes, of course I think TimeSplash is deeper and more thoughtful than he makes out, but it is a rip-roaring thriller – an action adventure – it was never a book designed to explore political, social or even personal issues in depth – although it raises many along the way – and I certainly don’t want to defend it on that score. What bugs me is that the book I write before TimeSplash (another time travel story called Time and Tyde) and for whcih I could not find a publisher, is exactly the kind of time travel novel he seems to have been hoping for. Time and Tyde really does explore the philosophical and moral issues involved in time travel, in the interference of powerful cultures with weak ones, even in what it means to be human. Trouble is, it is TimeSplash that the publishers wanted, not Time and Tyde – pacey thriller, not psychological study. To a large extent, this is just a matter of reader preference. Lawrence obviously likes the kind of sci-fi that holds up a mirror to life and asks, “Do you like what you see?” I can’t help approving of such a taste. TimeSplash is a different kind of sci-fi, the kind that thrills and entertains, less thought-provoking and more fun.
On Sandra’s relationship with Jay. One area in which TimeSplash should be taken seriously, is in the characters and their relationships. Sandra in particular is a complex individual into whom I put a lot of work. Obviously not quite enough work, as it turns out. If a reader can say that Sandra was “out for vengeance” or that she was “miraculously cured by Jay’s clean-cut niceness”, then I guess I just did not manage to write it clearly enough, since both interpretations are as wrong as they could be. Lawrence’s comments about TimeSplash as a “morality play” are interesting – and I can see how he got there – but again, wide of the mark. It is Sandra’s fear and self-loathing that drive her. Her redemption is not through the love of a good man, but through the self-destructive impulses that finally leave her at rock bottom, staring into the abyss and recoiling in horror. Jay, in his ineffectual way, merely provides a back for her to step on as she clambers out of the pit. It is alarming and sobering that I somehow failed to convey what was really going on there. More lessons to be learned.
On female characters in the book. It is very true that in the various macho cultures prtrayed in the book – the world of the spashteams, the secret service, the police, and organised crme – women are, as Lawrence says, largely “adjuncts” to the male characters. The two exceptions are Sandra – who, more-or-less single-hadedly, achieves what none of the men can – and Camilla, a woman tough enough to prosper and even triumph in that world. Really, that’s one of the points I was trying to make. Men, mostly, are responsible for turning the world to shit. That’s just the way it is. They grab what power they can and they use it selfishly. It’s human nature. Women’s lives are hugely distorted by this. The greatest distortion occurs in close proximity to the most powerful men. Women who live in that world have to be exceptional to make any kind of impression – and not often exceptional in a very good way. Otherwise, they are simply used.
I actually love stories in which a strong woman triumphs. I remember being amazed at the film Alien when I first saw it. What a powerful feminist statement! The film systematically showed all society’s usual androcentric values failing in the face of the alien and, when all the men and machines had finished flailing about and getting themselves killed, let Ripley beat it – and the company – with little more than a cool head, a stout heart, and a cat box. Sandra is my Ripley – a rather more disturbed and dark version, and her victories are rather more ambiguous, but Ripley all the same.
On Sniper’s evilness. Some people read Sniper – the bad guy in TimeSplash – as little more than a moustach-twirling villain from a Victorian melodrama. Lawrence, I’m very pleased to say, seems to have understood the character’s motives. I do present Sniper as an evil man (“milled from a block of solid evil” in Lawrence’s lovely phrase) and that is because I very much believe in the existence of evil people. I’ve met them. I’ve known them well. And I don’t mean the kinds of emotionless psychopaths you see in so many TV shows. The kind of evil person I mean is the kind who is deeply emotional and sensitive, but only about their own feelings, the kind who finds it impossible to care about, or even believe in the feeling of other people, the kind who is absolutely free to threaten and bully and manipulate others, to harm them in subtle and not-so-subtle ways, with no remorse, no guilt, nothing but the feeling that their own well-being entitles them. If that’s not evil, I don’t know what is.
On the bubble simile. Finally, I just have to mention the way Lawrence described timesplashing. He said it was “like a glass of water into the depths of which bubbles can be pushed through a scientific straw”. That was just brilliant and I wish I’d thought of it!
So thank you, Keith Lawrence, for a thought-provoking (and sometimes just provoking) review and to The Future Fire Reviews for printing it. If you haven’t come across The Future Fire before, and you too enjoy thoughtful, socially-relevant speculative fiction, you should definitely grab a copy and give it a try.