Time Was (novella)
Time Was | |
---|---|
E-book | |
Pages | 144 |
ISBN | 978-0-765-39146-9 |
Publication date | 24 April 2018 |
Time Was is a time travel romance novella by British author Ian McDonald, published on 24 April 2018 by Tor Books.
Plot
This section's plot summary may be too long or excessively detailed. (May 2023) |
London book dealer Emmett Leigh discovers a love letter, written from Tom to Ben, in a
In the early 1940s,
In the present, Regenbald Howe, the caretaker of the Martello tower at Shingle Street, knows of Chappell and Seligman, who were stationed at RAF Bawdsey during World War II. He produces a diary, left anonymously for the Chappell family in 1980, in which Tom describes a military scientific experiment gone awry. Regenbald has also amassed countless eyewitness accounts, personal notes, and legends about the event. Over the next few years, the Paris and Brussels bookstores close, but Emmett keeps track of their copies of Time Was, both in Rome. He reads of a strange storm in Cyprus, which he believes to be one of Tom and Ben's portals. Tom arrives at one of the bookshops, and recognizes a stunned Emmett as the E.L. who wrote Time Was. Sometime in the near future, Emmett will become a time traveler himself, and meet a young Tom before the experiment. Emmett tells Tom that Ben died in a ship sunk by torpedoes.
Characters
1940s
- Tom Chappell, a member of the Royal Engineers, in the 9th Heavy Anti-Aircraft Regiment, Royal Artillery, stationed at RAF Bawdsey
- Ben Seligman, a doctor of physics with Royal Air Force Photoreconnaissance
- Rev Anson Hildreth, padre with the Royal Army Chaplains' Department, assigned to the 9th
Present day
- Emmett Leigh, an English book dealer
- Thorn Hildreth, a jack of all tradeswho maintains her family archives
- Leland Hildreth, Thorn's aged grandfather
- Shahrzad Hejazi, a Persian photo archivist at the Imperial War Museum in London
- Regenbald Howe, the caretaker of the Martello tower at Shingle Street
Themes
Time Was touches on a necessarily secret homosexual romance in the World War II-era,[1] with Booklist adding that it "captures the emotional nuances of a decades-long love while exploring issues of military and scientific might and the state of the contemporary book industry."[2]
Publication
In April 2016, the novella was announced as Time There Was, to be released in 2017.[3] By October 2017, the title had changed to Time Was, with an April 2018 publication date.[1][4] It was released on 24 April 2018.[4]
Reception
In Library Journal, Kristi Chadwick called the story "elegant and delightedly romantic", and praised its "exciting, timeless finish."[2] Booklist wrote that "This tiny novel packs a huge emotional punch as layers upon layers are revealed."[2] Publishers Weekly called the novella compelling and vivid, noting that "The ending's predictability is washed away by beautiful writing that mixes Emmett's excitement with melancholy".[5] Writing for Locus, Gary K. Wolfe called Time Was "one of the most purely beautiful pieces" of McDonald's writing, and praised the device of communicating through bookstores as "both ingenious and romantic in its own way".[6]
In January 2019, Time Was was nominated for a Philip K. Dick Award.[7]
References
- ^ Tor.com. 3 October 2017. Retrieved 2 April 2018.
- ^ OCLC 1002422391. Retrieved 25 April 2018 – via kcls.bibliocommons.com.
- ^ Harris, Lee (21 April 2016). "Announcing Ian McDonald's Time There Was". Tor.com. Retrieved 2 April 2018.
- ^ a b Liptak, Andrew (31 March 2018). "Read an excerpt from Luna author Ian McDonald's heartbreaking new time-travel romance". The Verge. Retrieved 2 April 2018.
- ^ "Fiction Book Review: Time Was by Ian McDonald". Publishers Weekly. Retrieved 25 April 2018.
- ^ Wolfe, Gary K. (31 May 2018). "Gary K. Wolfe Reviews Time Was by Ian McDonald". Locus. Retrieved 15 June 2018.
- ^ "Announcing the Nominees for the 2019 Philip K. Dick Award". Tor.com. 14 January 2019. Retrieved 29 January 2019.