Science Fiction: This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone

 

Author: Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone

Title: This Is How You Lose the Time War

Genre: Intellect (Science Fiction)

Publication Date: 2019

Number of Pages: 198

Geographical Setting/Time Period: myriad landscapes, planets, and time periods both past and future

Plot Summary: Red and Blue are time-traveling agents on either sides of a conflict, each trying to mold the future their superiors envision into being. Red belongs to a technoscape, and many of her body parts have been replaced by machinery. Blue hails from an ecoscape, grown and nurtured like a prized, lethal plant. The agents circle each other for the millennia, undoing each other's work and finding beauty and meaning in the struggle and tactics of their opponent. 

Blue reaches out to Red, and the her answering letter begins a series of correspondence that draws the two women closer and closer together until their handiwork is all over each other time threads. Messages are left behind in plants, on bodies, in the literature of famous writers. As their feelings for each other grow, they are forced to hide their love from those in control. With nearly omnipotent superiors and the curious idiosyncrasies of time travel, their love could be doomed, predestined, or something else entirely.

Subject Headings (per Novelist):

• Competition
• Enemies
• High technology
• Imaginary wars and battles
• Letter writing
• Romantic love
• Secrets
• Space and time
• Time travel

Science Fiction Appeals: 

Characterization - "Although attention is paid to characterization at the more literary end of the genre, generally the issues, story, and frame are given greater attention than the creation of dimensional, fully realized characters" (Wyatt & Saricks, 2019).

    This Is How You Lose the Time War has a memorable, rip-your-heart-out story and dilemma. Are beings created as a means to an end entitled to make their own decisions about their future? If you're able to prevent death by going into the past to change the future--what happened to the you that died in another thread of time? Red and Blue's courtship and romance grapples with these questions, but their individual personalities are not necessarily well understood. This is partly a by-product of the formatting of this book, as it mostly takes places within letters Red and Blue write to each other. We know that Red is rash, and Blue is more artistic. We can inform they are somewhat erudite as they discuss literature together. However, we don't really see them interact in person within the core timeline. This does not hinder the story, but rather empowers the narrative to the ride full-force towards the ethical dilemmas.

Frame/Setting - "Science Fiction is consistently evocative and visual" (Wyatt & Saricks, 2019).

   

    The prose in this novel is lush. The details are precise and vivid, even though we leap as readers between space and time frequently. The night-describable presence of these details allows the reader to craft vast landscapes in their mind's eyes, creating a visual for Red's Agency and Blue's Garden even though we don't get a thorough tour. This individual title trends literary, and is in some ways more of a soft sci-fi than a hard one. There are few, if any, technical explanations on how the time travel works or how it came about. We don't get steep worldbuilding or complicated societal structures. We bask instead in the love story made possible through time travel, rather than in the time travel itself.

Time Travel/Alternate History - "They offer the pleasures of speculation--of what the future may hold and how such travel may be possible--as well as the fascination of the past, mixed with the thought-provoking and mind-expanding possibilities of differing worlds" (Wyatt & Saricks, 2019).

    This is firmly a time travel novel. Red and Blue remake worlds with an eye towards the Agency or Garden's goals. These are presented as sweeping, inviting possibilities, but also impossibilities; Red and Blue are both thousands of years old, often staying in a particular thread of time for a dozen or more years to cement their place in a movement or to be in the right place at the right time. Red and Blue are more often to be the catalyst than the cause; they could give a revolutionary piece of literature to someone who becomes a great leader influenced by that work handed to them by a trusted friend. In many ways, while this novel has few concrete scenes "anchoring" it and feels rather abstract, we do get a lovely birds-eye view of how history's trajectory can be altered by one person, be they a time traveler or an everyday commoner.

Three terms that best describe this book:

• Literary
• Romantic
• Complex

Fiction Read-alikes:

Winter's Orbit by Everina Maxwell

Maxwell, E. (2021). Winter's orbit. New York: Tor.

Common appeals: Romantic, queer, intensifying, compelling

The Future of Another Timeline by Annalee Newitz

Newitz, A. (2019). The future of another timeline. New York: Tor.

Common appeals: Time travel, female characters, intricate

The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

Niffenegger, A. (2002). The time traveler's wife. San Francisco: MacAdam/Cage Pub.

Common appeals: Time travel, literary, romantic, moving

Nonfiction Read-alikes:

A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking

Hawking, S. (1998). A brief history of time. New York: Random House Publishing Group.

Common appeals: Theoretical discussion, possibilities, parallel dimensions

So You Created a Wormhole by Phil Hornshaw & Nick Hurwitch

Hornshaw, P., & Hurwitch, N. (2012). So you created a wormwhole. New York: Berkley

Common appeals: Time travel, physics, possibilities

It's Really About Time by John Oliver Ryan

Ryan, J. O. (2019). It's really about time. Tahilla Press.

Common appeals: Time travel, physics, possibilities

References

El-Mohtar, A., & Gladstone, M. (2020). This is how you lose the time war. New York: Saga Press.

Wyatt, N., & Saricks, J. G. (2019). The readers' advisory guide to genre fiction. American Library Association.