The Future of Another Timeline

by Annalee Newitz

Overview

“A revolution is happening in speculative fiction, and Annalee Newitz is leading the vanguard."—Wil Wheaton

From Annalee Newitz, founding editor of io9, comes a story of time travel, murder, and the lengths we'll go to protect the ones we love.

1992: After a confrontation at a riot grrl concert, seventeen-year-old Beth finds herself in a car with her friend's abusive boyfriend dead in the backseat, agreeing to help her friends hide the body. This murder sets Beth and her friends on a path of escalating violence and vengeance as they realize many other young women in the world need protecting too.

2022: Determined to use time travel to create a safer future, Tess has dedicated her life to visiting key moments in history and fighting for change. But rewriting the timeline isn’t as simple as editing one person or event. And just when Tess believes she's found a way to make an edit that actually sticks, she encounters a group of dangerous travelers bent on stopping her at any cost.

Tess and Beth’s lives intertwine as war breaks out across the timeline—a war that threatens to destroy time travel and leave only a small group of elites with the power to shape the past, present, and future. Against the vast and intricate forces of history and humanity, is it possible for a single person’s actions to echo throughout the timeline?

Praise for The Future of Another Timeline:

"An intelligent, gut-wrenching glimpse of how tiny actions, both courageous and venal, can have large consequences. Smart and profound on every level.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"You close the book reeling with questions about your own life and your part in changing the future."—Amy Acker, actress (Angel and Person of Interest)

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780765392107
Publisher:	Tom Doherty Associates
Publication date:	09/24/2019
Pages:	352
Sales rank:	764,698
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.30(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

ANNALEE NEWITZ is an American journalist, editor, and author of fiction and nonfiction. They are the recipient of a Knight Science Journalism Fellowship from MIT, and have written for Popular Science, The New Yorker, and the Washington Post. They founded the science fiction website io9 and served as Editor-in-Chief from 2008–2015, and then became Editor-in-Chief at Gizmodo and Tech Culture Editor at Ars Technica. Their book Scatter, Adapt, and Remember: How Humans Will Survive a Mass Extinction was nominated for the LA Times Book Prize in science. Their first novel, Autonomous, won a Lambda award.

Editorial Reviews

Conceptually The Future of Another Timeline is breathtakingly brilliant, and part of a constellation of time-travel stories this year that wed present-day activism to a willingness to change the past. But as I read, I found myself far more affected by the smaller, fiercer story of Tess and Beth's early years—the story of feral friendships formed in extreme circumstances, of surviving abuse and finding the power to seek revenge or walk away from it…But time travel creates the space for that story to happen—and Newitz's book is, more than anything else, about the importance of fighting for such spaces. In that, it's entirely successful.

The New York Times Book Review - Amal El-Mohtar

★ 05/13/2019

Newitz’s mind-rattling second novel (after Autonomous) is a multilayered tale of “editing” history, human rights, and the ripple effect. Geologist and time traveler Tess (2022 CE) is fighting a misogynist group set on subjugating women across the present and future, then destroying the time machines to lock in their dominance permanently. Punk rock–loving high schooler Beth (1992 CE) just wants her own life, and normalcy after witnessing a murder. Their lives intertwine in ways neither quite understands, and the effects of their connection extend for centuries in both directions. Newitz’s fascinating extrapolation is an intelligent, gut-wrenching glimpse of how tiny actions, both courageous and venal, can have large consequences. The sidelong looks at prejudice-born horrors are frequent but not overwhelming, and the examinations of how much darkness one might be willing to endure in order to stop a vaster terror are heartbreaking. Smart and profound on every level, this is a deeply satisfying novel. Agent: Laurie Fox, Linda Chester Literary. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

★ 2019-07-01
Time travelers battle for the future in this feminist sci-fi thriller.

We begin in 1992, where (or is it when?) "traveler" Tess has appeared at a punk concert in California. She's on the lookout for "anti-travel activists" who want to shut down the mysterious "Machines," structures of unknown origin that somehow facilitate time travel. Tess discovers that a group of misogynist crusaders, centered around the ideas of 19th-century conservative moralist Anthony Comstock, are trying to change events in the past so that women are stripped of all human rights. Tess and her friends, who are diverse in both race and gender, chase these "Comstockers" through time to stop them from fulfilling their evil plans. Meanwhile, teenager Beth, who is really living in 1992, escapes her oppressive home life to revel in the California punk scene with her best friend, Lizzy. But what is Beth supposed to do when she meets a traveler from the future who warns her to stay away from Lizzy? And why is that traveler, Tess, making detours in time to find Beth when she has a conspiracy to thwart? Newitz (Old Media, 2019, etc.) does well enough with the time-travel premise, but where this book really shines is in its page-turning plot and thoughtfully drawn characters. The Comstockers' plan, with its rhetoric plucked straight from present-day "men's rights" online forums, is truly terrifying. Between careful attention to Tess' development, Beth's chapters, and the near-constant jumps through time, the story charges along until Newitz suddenly ties it all together with breathtaking finesse. The humdinger of an ending is a perfect cherry on top.

An ambitious adventure that keeps the surprises coming.

Kirkus Reviews

Breathtakingly brilliant.”—The New York Times

"A revolution is happening in speculative fiction, and Annalee Newitz is leading the vanguard." — Wil Wheaton, actor Star Trek and Big Bang Theory

“Newitz always sees to the heart of complex systems and breaks them down with poetic ferocity.”—N. K. Jemisin, author of the Broken Earth trilogy and The City We Became

“Few stories are as smart, as nuanced, as exciting, and as unsettling as this one....engrossing and impactful.” — Karen Joy Fowler, bestselling author of We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves

“Annalee Newitz combines time travel, multi-alternative realities and feminist politics in the fast-paced, complex and mind-blowing The Future of Another Timeline . . . a compulsively readable novel of controlled anger that, despite the horror, offers hope.”—The Guardian

"It's like Newitz has written a science fiction addendum to Handmaids Tale... She flawlessly weaves between time and characters and creates a feminist, sci-fi, thrill-ride integrated into a covert history lesson. You close the book reeling with questions about your own life and your part in changing the future." —Amy Acker, actress Angel and Person of Interest

"A page-turner and an ambitious feminist lens on the time-traveler story.” — Kelly Sue DeConnick creator of Bitch Planet, writer for Captain Marvel

“A glorious tale of hope in the face of outrage, an anthem of timeless resistance against the powers that would lead us to our worst futures.” —Ken Liu, Author of The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories and The Grace of Kings

"The Future of Another Timeline does brilliantly what SF does best: makes metaphor concrete to illuminate the human condition. In this case, the idea that women are consistently written out of history by men is turned into a visceral reality, and secret history becomes a thrilling secret war." —Nicola Griffith, author of Hild

"The best punk rock / time travel / Chicago history / riot girl / mindf*ck of a book I have ever read. Grape Ape Forever!" —Dan Sinker, creator of Punk Planet magazine

"The Future of Another Timeline is the mind-blowing punk feminist sci-fi time traveling thriller you've been waiting for, and which our culture desperately needs. Packed with action, sass, righteousness, technology and danger, it just might be a perfect book." —Michelle Tea

“A multilayered tale of “editing” history, human rights, and the ripple effect. Smart and profound on every level.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Clever, compelling and utterly original." —Laurie Penny, author of Everything Belongs to the Future

"Exciting and urgent." —Saladin Ahmed, Eisner winning author of Black Bolt, Exiles, and Throne of the Crescent Moon

"Newitz's carefully built narrative of time travel and conflict is rooted in the drive and joys of intersectional feminism, sex positivity, and acceptance...This riot of a book will have readers delighting both in the thrilling battle over timelines in an intricate, alternative world and in the joys of inclusive feminist solidarity."—Booklist (starred review)

"Where the book really shines is in its page-turning plot and thoughtfully drawn characters... the story charges along until Newitz suddenly ties it all together with breathtaking finesse. An ambitious adventure that keeps the surprises coming." —Kirkus (starred review)

"[Newitz] highlights the truths of our past and possibilities of our future. The fantastical elements do not hide the all-too-real horrors women could face, but intelligence and hope are woven into every level." —Library Journal (starred review)

“Newitz is one of the patron saints of geeks . . . a compelling piece of sci-fi that plays with time, friendship, and consequences . . . your new must-read.”—The Mary Sue

“Sure to become a feminist time travel classic.”—Den of Geek

From the Publisher

★ 07/01/2019

High schooler Beth just wants to enjoy punk rock and live her teenage life. But in 1993, she witnesses a murder that threatens to upend normalcy forever. Tess is a geologist from 2022, fighting with a group called the Daughters of Harriet to keep women's rights alive—all across the time line. Arrayed against Tess and her group are misogynistic anti-time travel activists who follow the edicts of Anthony Comstock. When Tess's and Beth's paths cross, they are forced to come to terms with a past and future that are malleable, caught in a war for control, and where one tiny change can have significant consequences. Amplifying many of the touchstones of youth, family, and friendship gives readers a new twist on the butterfly effect. VERDICT In her sophomore work, Newitz (Autonomous) comes back to an Earth that highlights the truths of our past and possibilities of our future. The fantastical elements do not hide the all-too-real horrors women could face, but intelligence and hope are woven into every level. Shrewd commentary and a host of sources highlight Newitz's strength in prose.—Kristi Chadwick, Massachusetts Lib. Syst., Northampton

Library Journal