Lots of Words about Time Travel and Feelings in Version Control


This is the book that doesn’t end. It goes on and on, my friend.

In Dexter Palmer’s America, as seen in Version Control, the world is very much like ours today: people live and thrive through their devices. Rebecca Wright lives in that world, as does her eventual husband, Philip Steiner. When the two meet via the dating site Lovability, where Rebecca works as a customer support representative, the two unalike individuals make a go of it.

The go they make is strange, influenced by the Causality Violation Device (CVD), Philip’s life work. A lot of time is spent making it clear that Philip does not want the CVD called a time machine, but it’s a time machine. A lot of time is spent showing how the machine has made Rebecca’s life fuzzy, both because she’s been in it, but also because it is Philip’s true love.

Version Control suffers from Palmer’s talent for exposition. The theories of the time machine (which is NOT a time machine) as well as the emotional journeys of the novel’s characters seem endless, where summary would have done. We’re introduced to Rebecca’s friend group, and come to know quite a bit about them, but we don’t need to know that much. In painstaking detail, Palmer gives back story to everyone and everything. At its best, the detail is helpful, at its worst: boring.

Palmer aimed big here, tackling ideas of love, time, and God. Fans of science fiction, if they can work through the emotional slog, will likely appreciate his fresh approach to time travel. There is a lot here for them. A lot. If only there could have been less.

Thank you to Ross Swofford for suggesting Version Control.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Five Books to Escape into while Social Distancing

Maybe one day soon a headline will read, “Out of Netflix Content, More People Turn to Books for Relief.” If you’re already ready for some literary escapism, check out these five books I read and loved in 2019. Hopefully they help you in this difficult time: The Storm King , Brendan Duffy. This book has many things that would make me not choose it as a Top Five: a straight male hero; not many strong female leads; privileged men acting out their privilege. Alas, it sucked me in with a short, strong opening chapter that set the tone and the mystery for the rest of the book. Duffy’s writing is a bit dramatic at times, but that’s also what kept the pages quickly turning. You can check out my review here . The Soul of an Octopus , Sy Montgomery. Montgomery ’s beautiful work in The Soul of an Octopus gives us hope about the connectivity between living creatures. Introducing the reader to several octopuses she met at the New England Aqua
Read more

A Chat with E. Christopher Clark, author of the Stains of Time series

In the first book of his Stains of Time series, E.Christopher Clark pulls in magical realism, a hearty dose of nineties’ nostalgia, and family drama to tell Veronica’s story. Pregnant at sixteen, Veronica marries the baby’s father to appease a father who might never be happy with her, but really won’t be happy with her if she follows her heart and dates women as she wants to. Clark kindly answered About a Book’s questions about The Piano of Death , the series as it stands now, and his plans for its future. About a Book : How/when did you conceive of The Piano of Death ? Clark : The book that people can read today really started to come together in September 2011. I met with my friend, the actor/director Crystal Lisbon…to plan a benefit for the arts organization she was starting. Another friend of Crystal’s, the musician Mary Casiello [joined us for that meeting]. We were trying to put together an evening of theater and music, and I was tasked with writing the scrip
Read more

Almost Too Much Covered in The Tradition

In his third book of poetry, The Tradition , Jericho Brown covers much ground: he grapples with myth, media, racism, his own mortality, and still manages to push past established forms of poetry. It’s impressive in scope, but the breadth can leave the reader forgetting the ground covered because there was too much of it. Brown conveys a disdain for the world around him that embraces and encourages racism and violence, but also exudes a confidence about his own abilities to navigate the terrain. This is a book from a grown, tired man, and is filled with the heartbreak and the fortitude he’s earned. He introduces, too, the “Duplex” form in his poetry, described by Jeannine Hall Gailey in her Barrelhouse review of The Tradition as “a sonnet-like series of couplets that include repetition.” The repetition accomplishes a layering of experiences and voices, making his experiences feel that much more echoed in the lives of others, as though he is not alone. These stories are from a
Read more