The Ethics of Time Travel
Time travelers tend to be scientists, inventors, or just average everyday common people who happen to stumble into the mechanics of plot purely by accident. When the criminal element does get involved, they tend to be using the technology to escape responsibility with little desire or intention to come back to their present period in time. In this addition to the genre, however, the men chosen to travel through time are specifically picked because of their criminal past and talents. This only makes sense, of course, since the entire purpose and system of time travel is systemically corrupt. The novel’s implication is that if the secret to time travel is ever discovered, it is inevitable that it will be used for nefarious purposes conducted in the name of a greater good.
The Disposable Society
The purpose of time travel from the future to the past is one based on the seemingly simple science of finite resources. Any civilization in which resources necessary to mere existence is finite is destined to the doom of eventually running out. So what do those who live in a future without access to wasted resources do with the gift of time travel? What else: they send travelers back to a time when the resources they need were available. The necessity of time travel that is conceit of the novel’s plot is at the same time a warning to the present about the inevitability of a disposable society where resources are wasted at an unconscionable level. The unavoidable message is that what is disposed of today is not available tomorrow.
Public Versus Private Sector
Make no mistake, the bad actors in this story are not shadowy deep state governmental ideologues. The protagonist commits the biggest crime known to his line of work: bringing someone from the past to the present. This person looks at the brave new world of the future and longs for the late 21st century where “world governments had banded together a generation earlier to stamp out poverty and hunger, and were mostly successful.” The inherent necessity for the public sector to act at least partly on behalf of its constituents (or else face multiple negative consequences) has given way to the inherent desire of the private sector to make a profit in the present without regard to the consequences of the future. The book is on one level an socio-economic treatise on Georgism masquerading as a science fiction thriller.
