SATURDAY, APRIL 11, 2009
Okay, so it’s true. I can time-travel. But it’s not as exciting as it sounds. I can’t go back in time and kill Hitler. I can’t go to the future and see who wins the World Series in 2038. So far, the most I’ve ever jumped is about six hours in the past. Some superhero, right?
The opening lines of the novel are these. And there it is, in a nutshell. The question that forms the crux at the intersection of the place where time travel and purpose cross paths. Because, really, at the heart of all time travel possibilities—whether fictional or, if they exist, real—is the burning question: to when and for what purpose? For obvious reasons, it goes without saying, most of the answer to this question are already severely limited at the time of asking. After all, just because you travel through time doesn’t mean you can travel through space. So, unless you are already in Germany and you already speak German, you probably shouldn’t entertain thoughts of using time travel to correct that particular mistake of the past. Here's an alternative idea, however: if you do meet the spatial qualifications then instead of trying for the almost certainly impossible task of taking out Hitler, why don’t you instead see if you can locate the Frank home. It is almost always preferable to accomplish the smaller meaningful act than failing to accomplish the Very Big Deal.
Then I jumped out of 2004, and headed back to my own version of purgatory. September 9, 2007. Again.
Eventually, of course, Jackson’s time leaps take him further than six hours. Otherwise, there probably would not be much of a story. The year 2007 becomes the epicenter of his time traveling predicament. Which is kind of a weirdly arbitrary choice since 2007 was not exactly all that notable a year except for being the best year for movies in 21st century as of 2021. But there you have it. And so, whether by design or not, one of the things which urges the reader to continue trying to penetrate the almost universally-acknowledged confusing chronology of the narrative is trying to answer the burning question: why 2007?
Who the hell was Thomas? CEO of the Enemies of Time?
A lot of people penning criticism of this novel across the internet have problems with the confusing chronology. Fewer—but still a good chunk—complain about how there just isn’t that much of interest to invest any emotional connection to the story; in other words, the characters and their predicament seem a little thin. Those that left who still haven’t up on things often target the brick wall of their patience as arriving in the form of the “Enemies of Time.” This is the descriptive name given to those people making up the villainous confederacy in the story and—here’s where it gets problematic for some readers—the Enemies of Time are presented with the utmost seriousness. The lesson that those troubled especially by this aspect of the story want to get out is both simple: there is nothing wrong with writing cheesy story unless the writer insists upon it not being cheesy at all. And in the entire annals of fiction, it just may actually be inconceivable to come up with a situation where a secret cadre of villains working their own agenda within the CIA identified as the “Enemies of Time” is not cheesy.
