The Tourist

by Robert Dickinson

Overview

"A rare treat: a time travel tale that brings something new to the subgenre....A wry social commentary and an uneasy tale of escalating paranoia." Guardian
THE FUTURE IS ALREADY WRITTEN.
"As fresh and compelling as it is high concept....Immensely enjoyable." SFX****
THE FUTURE HAS ALREADY HAPPENED.
"Welcome to the 21st Century. Please don't feed the natives....Echoes of Bradbury and Orwell, in the service of a crackerjack conspiracy plot; a seductively intriguing work of speculative fiction." Kirkus
TIME TRAVEL IS CONFUSING.
"Leaps of time, identity, and chronology create a dark, chillingly claustrophobic atmosphere." Publishers Weekly
PROCEED WITH CAUTION.
WHO WILL SOLVE THE PUZZLE OF THE TOURIST?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780316399432
Publisher:	Orbit
Publication date:	10/18/2016
Sold by:	Hachette Digital, Inc.
Format:	eBook
Pages:	352
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Robert Dickinson lives in Brighton, England, and his life to date has been shockingly uneventful. His two previous novels were published by a small press. The Tourist is his third novel.

Editorial Reviews

As fresh and compelling as it is high concept ... Packed with dry humor, satirical swipes at the twenty-first century, and vivid characters....Immensely enjoyable.

SFX

Riveting

The Sunday Times

The story is slowly but surely teased out, intermittently dropping little details while advancing the plot at a breathtaking pace ... among the most gripping of any SF novel we've read this year.

SciFiNow

Dickinson has created a bleak future world and spins a plot most appropriate for readers who appreciate ambiguity.

Booklist

"As fresh and compelling as it is high concept ... Packed with dry humor, satirical swipes at the twenty-first century, and vivid characters....Immensely enjoyable."—SFX

"Welcome to the 21st Century....Echoes of Bradbury and Orwell, in the service of a crackerjack conspiracy plot; a seductively intriguing work of speculative fiction."—Kirkus

"The leaps of time, identity, and chronology create a dark, chillingly claustrophobic atmosphere."
—Publishers Weekly

"Dickinson has created a bleak future world and spins a plot most appropriate for readers who appreciate ambiguity."
—Booklist

"The story is slowly but surely teased out, intermittently dropping little details while advancing the plot at a breathtaking pace."—SciFiNow

"Riveting"—The Sunday Times

From the Publisher

2016-08-07
Welcome to the 21st century. Please don’t feed the natives.Dickinson’s twisty conspiracy thriller turns an often troublesome narrative device—time travel—to wonderful advantage, wittily exploiting the trope’s opportunities for structural inventiveness, worldbuilding, and sly social commentary. Hundreds of years in the future, after a “Near Extinction Event,” the surviving humans have sufficiently rebuilt to the impressive extent that time tourism exists as a feasible vacation option for all. The easiest era to get to (and the cheapest) is our own familiar early 21st century. In the novel’s drollest construction, the current era is an underwhelming novelty attraction, a drab, stinking curiosity; visitors content themselves with a visit to a shopping mall, a handy distillation of human achievement and values to this point. When a tourist goes missing, her minder is plunged into a bewildering, temporally Byzantine plot with apocalyptic implications. Standard stuff, but Dickinson gets there in style, employing alternating points of view (or…are they?) and tantalizingly doling out details of the evolved future humans (they are tall, pale, and have trouble with our food) and society (numbered cities administrated by Orwellian departments of Happiness, Safety, and Awareness). The characters are well-drawn and distinctive, Dickinson’s literary prose glides through the plot thickets with graceful assurance, and the whole immersive enterprise concludes on a satisfyingly poetic note. Echoes of Bradbury and Orwell, in the service of a crackerjack conspiracy plot; a seductively intriguing work of speculative fiction.

Kirkus Reviews