Top positive review
5.0 out of 5 starsNo Regrets on this Read
Reviewed in the United States on November 2, 2015
Regrets.
We all have them. Ultimately we have to find a way to deal with our regrets and we all have our own particular methods to accept or reject what we could have done differently in our lives. To this day, I still look back on moments in my life and ask, “what if I hadn’t done that?” or “what if I had done the other thing?”
When I read time travel stories, I can’t help but think that many of them also have a firm basis in the pool of regrets. The idea that we can somehow go back and alter our past, to change the part of ourselves that we find the most offensive -- the most unlike ourselves.
When I read the latest of Samuel Peralta’s Future Chronicles series -- The Time Travel Chronicles -- I found myself reliving parts of my own past. In a way, this book acted as a vehicle to my own regrets and made me reevaluate my own life.
Each of the stories was engaging and intriguing, but a few in particular made me really appreciate this collection.
First off, the anthology starts off with a bang with the excellent Extent by Anthony Vicino. In Vicino’s creation, the past can be altered -- as long as you don’t go back any farther than 32 seconds. Those who can use time as a tool have different and varied abilities to travel through and use time. Vicino uses those various abilities to enrich his characters and make a strong story through alternating time viewpoints where we can piece together the truth by the time the climax comes.
I have been a fan of Stefan Bolz for a long time, so it would be easy for me to rave about his story, but to be honest, I really appreciated his story The Traveler. When we get time travel stories, we don’t often see the work that goes into the journey through time. Our heroine has to work for her payoff and we as the audience see the pain and growth through her eyes by the time she completes (or even begins) her journey.
Daniel Arthur Smith’s Diatomic Quantum Flop is a trippy dippy tumble through time. It’s a take on time travel that puts us in the shoes of someone, no one, and everyone all at the same time. In Doctor Who, time is referred to as a big ball of wibbly-wobbly...timey-wimey... stuff. Take that and a healthy dose of psychotropic drugs and you have Smith’s story. Great stuff...I think.
But I would say that probably the story that really stuck with me was Eric Wecks’ Eighty-Three. Wow. The idea that time travel exists but that you inhabit your future or past self for a limited amount of time is genius. What he does with that idea is even better. Our hero, Noah, isn’t always a great guy, but by the end of the story, I was rooting for him and cheered at times. Cheered. Out loud. I was truly happy for the great things that happened and for the route the story took. I couldn’t help loving this story and the way he took the simple bits of unknown life and made them known, but unpredictable at the same time.
Once again, Peralta has put together a killer collection. I love each and every Future Chronicles anthology and eagerly await the release of the new books each month or so. I was given an advanced reader copy for an honest review, but as you can tell, the review was well-earned. I found all the stories to be well-worth the early purchase price, and definitely will stand the test of time as well.
