Writing Time Travel Science Fiction with Annalee Newitz, author of THE FUTURE OF ANOTHER TIMELINE
In this episode, I’m joined by Annalee Newitz, author of the sci-fi time travel novel, THE FUTURE OF ANOTHER TIMELINE (Tor Books). In a world where present-to-past time travel is an accepted fact, geo-scientist Tess uses her university-funded temporal travels for both research and resistance.
While a subversive group of travelers seeks to alter history and solidify the subjugation of women, Tess works in secret to minimize the damage of their “edits” and keep them from permanently locking the timeline. But although a dire confrontation looms somewhere in the centuries around her, Tess can’t keep herself from breaking time travel taboo – stepping back into her own history in an attempt to prevent a riot girl teenager named Beth’s involvement in murder.
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About Annalee Newitz
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.
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About The Future of Another Timeline
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?
