Today’s stack is about—you guessed it!—time travel. I’ve got a couple of middle grade novels and a comic, a couple of adult comic books, and one memoir that all involve skipping through time in some form or another.
Blurmp: A Blurmp in Time by Jim Benton
Blurmp is a happy, dumb cat, and he makes a time machine by writing “Time Masheen” on a cardboard box—but then it works! What follows is a series of trips where Blurmp accidentally invents pizza, mummies, and various other things as he bumbles his way through history (and the future). This comic book is for early readers and kids who like fart jokes and just plain silly humor. You’ll need to wait until January, though, because I traveled forward in time to read an advance copy. (This is the first book in Blurmp’s own series—he’s appeared before in the Catwad series, featuring that grumpy blue cat you see on the cover.)
Time Lions and the Chrono-Loop by Martin Seneviratne and Krystal Sutherland
At first I wondered if Time Lions was going to be a pun on “timelines” somehow, but it actually has to do with the main characters. Pearl and Patrick Amarasinghe are twins, and their dad loves to remind them of their Sri Lankan heritage, that they are “immortal lions,” descended from the rightful king. But the twins, who have grown up in London, aren’t really interested in their dad’s stories or the elaborate dinners he makes—they’d rather eat pizza and … break into museums?
As it turns out, the two are geniuses, though they’ve managed to stay under the radar by being just average at school and avoiding the spotlight. Patrick is a history geek and loves ancient languages and artifacts; Pearl is a science genius with a backpack full of self-made gadgets that would make James Bond envious. Lately Pearl has dragged Patrick along to steal or otherwise finagle a variety of things needed for her latest invention: the chrono-loop. Yep, this twelve-year-old has invented time travel.
What they don’t know is that, well, that’s nothing new. People invent time travel all the time, which is why TIME—a secret organization housed in Big Ben’s tower—arrests them for a mistake that could have rewritten history. They’re given a chance to become TIME agents themselves, but they end up working for a rival who has some tantalizing ideas of what the world could be like if they worked together. But then the timeline gets messed up, and Pearl and Patrick have to figure out how to fix everything.
I liked the inclusion of Sri Lankan history in the story, but one of the things I found unbelievable was that Patrick—supposedly a PhD-level historian—was so dismissive of his dad’s stories because “If ancient Sri Lankan history was so interesting, why didn’t they teach any of that in school?” He judges history by what Europeans have deemed important, which feels like a rookie mistake. As expected, though, by the end of the book the twins learn some important lessons: they grow to appreciate their dad’s passion for his cultural heritage, Patrick gains a bit of self-confidence, Pearl starts to appreciate the value of having friends her own age, and they both come away with a newfound understanding of their place in the world.
TIME, which stands for “The Interdimensional Misconduct Enquiry,” reminds me a lot of the TVA from the TV show Loki, though with a Victorian aesthetic rather than a 1960s vibe. There’s a “correct” timeline, the way things are supposed to happen, and TIME is like a bunch of time cops going back and making sure that nobody messes with that version of events. At first, Patrick and Pearl bristle against this—after all, if you could prevent World War I from happening, wouldn’t you? TIME does not seem to offer any arguments for their stance other than that it’s the “right” timeline—there’s not even any hand-wavy explanation about breaking the space-time continuum or anything. By the end, the twins are on board with this view—but it’s because they see what happens when one megalomaniac takes things into his own hands, and not because there’s ever any really convincing argument that the existing timeline is somehow the best or most correct. I wasn’t convinced, anyway.
Still, it was a fun world to play around in, and the book definitely leaves an opening for more Time Lions adventures in the future.
The Planet, the Portal, and a Pizza by Wendy Mass & Nora Raleigh Baskin
Piper’s parents are clockmakers, though there’s definitely a touch of mad scientist involved—she’s grown up with frequent explosions in their basement workshop, and she has a robot dog who looks very realistic but can talk. But then one day her parents both start acting really strangely—even stranger than usual—but they’re pretending everything’s fine. Meanwhile, she discovers an old notebook full of math equations that apparently nobody else can see…
In another universe, Raisa and Lev have “borrowed” a book from Raisa’s mom, who has been trying to prove the existence of other worlds. Her funding has dried up and she’s just about given up—so Raisa decides to use the book to travel to another world and bring back evidence. She and Lev end up in Piper’s world, but now they’ve lost the book and are trapped!
The book switches back and forth between Piper and Raisa. Eventually these two stories will intersect, but not exactly in the way you first expect. Though it is primarily about travel through the multiverse, there is a time element that’s really important to the plot as well. Though most of the book is in the third person, there’s this one chapter late in the book that’s narrated in first person by Dr. Kallie Kwan, Raisa’s mom’s lab partner. The chapter does advance the plot, but it’s also an info dump that (sort of) explains how the portals work, and it felt a little jarring, a little too much explaining instead of allowing the reader to see the characters figure things out. And then things get pretty weird for a bit!
I did like the story overall; the characters and their interactions and relationships with each other were well-written and there are some big emotional beats when some of the questions are finally answered.
Acid Box written by Sara Kenney, illustrated by James Devlin, Emma Vieceli, and Ria Grix
Jade Nyo just wants to have a good time, but she also has to be responsible for her brother, whose recurring nightmare has become increasingly frequent. While they’re at the club, they run into three bathroom attendants who turn out to be something more: they guard portals that can transport you through time and space, and they tell Jade that she needs to avert an impending climate disaster.
Jade is given an Acid Box—a little gizmo (in real life an acidbox appears to be some type of synthesizer gear) that can be used to shape the world. But it’s missing some dials, and Jade needs to travel back in time to find the dials and fix it. Jade and her brother Rory jump from one club to another, accompanied by a few other electronica enthusiasts that they pick up along the way, while they try to save the world.
They visit Detroit, where Rhonda gives them the rundown on the city’s history, including the white flight and redlining and techno music. They see Jade’s mom protesting the Criminal Justice Bill in the UK in 1994. And throughout it all, there’s a constant soundtrack because they’re traveling primarily from club to club. (Turns out the portals seem to be connected to … pee?) Jade’s self-destructive tendencies threaten to derail the mission, and Rory’s nightmare turns out to be more real than they knew.
This graphic novel is both a celebration of rave culture and a dive into issues like climate change and our responsibilities to address it. There are definitely some sections that felt like info dumps—it was a character talking, but almost like giving a lecture as if it were a casual conversation, so it felt a little forced. Also a bit lost on me was the many references to the music that was playing at the clubs, or in Jade’s own internal soundtrack. I don’t know much about techno or electronica, so those weren’t as evocative to me. The back of the book includes several essays and comics written by young adults who worked with Sara Kenney to dig into the topics explored in the comic.
Earthdivers written by Stephen Graham Jones, illustrated by Davide Gianfelice, Riccardo Burchielli, Patricio Delpeche, and Emily Schnall
This is the omnibus edition of Earthdivers, which collects three volumes: Kill Columbus, Ice Age, and 1776. It’s a big one—well over 400 pages total. The framing story is in 2112, when climate change has dried up rivers and devastated the land. People with means are leaving the planet in spaceships, but our story focuses on a group of Indigenous folks who are stuck here. What they’ve discovered, though, is a time-travel cave. You enter it carrying only one thing, and the cave sends you to a time associated with that item. Their objective: stop America from happening.
Their theory is that the start of everything going wrong was America, so if they can prevent that from happening then maybe their present will be fixed. Tad, a linguist, heads back to 1492 in an attempt to assassinate Columbus before he can reach the New World. But as it turns out, the timeline resists attempts to change it, and his actions have unintended consequences. Plus, since it’s a one-way trip, Tad will never know if he succeeded in changing the future.
Other characters wind up in different eras—one woman finds herself in the Ice Age, caught in battles between Paleo-Indians and Solutreans who have crossed over on the land bridges. Will her actions affect the future? Or did the future she came from already reflect her trip to the past? Emily winds up in 1776; she is trans, and has some complicated feelings about appearing male so that she can get an audience with Ben Franklin. (As it turns out, whether she looks like a man or a woman, the fact that she isn’t white presents a different barrier.) She asks herself: if it’s not possible to stop America from happening, can she at least change the way it does happen?
The story jumps back and forth between these three pasts as well as the future. It can be a lot to untangle—when you see the scenes in 2112, they’re not always in chronological order, and piecing together the story there also involves a bit of mystery. A bit like Acid Box above, this one also conveys a lot of information, a lot of history, but it does it in a way that feels like it flows from the story and what the characters are doing. One note of warning: it’s fairly gory and brutal, so it’s not for the faint-hearted. Aside from the often-bloody violence, it’s an unflinching look at some of the uglier parts of our nation’s history as well.
Future Boy: Back to the Future and My Journey Through the Space-Time Continuum by Michael J. Fox and Nelle Fortenberry
This short memoir, published this year to catch the 40th anniversary of Back to the Future, details Michael J. Fox’s experience working on the film. While there were a lot of bits and pieces of the story that I already knew (from things like the Ultimate Visual History book), it was really cool to see it from Fox’s perspective. While I knew about the various scheduling difficulties because of Family Ties and the fact that Fox replaced Eric Stoltz after six weeks of shooting, I didn’t know exactly what his schedule entailed. He spends a chapter walking through a typical week of working on both the TV show and the movie, and it’s even more incredible to me that the movie ever got made. There are lots of great anecdotes: how terrible driving the DeLorean was, how his stunt double Charlie Croughwell got the job, and what it was like acting against Crispin Glover. There’s even a little hint of his interactions with Eric Stoltz that took place during the writing of this book—though most of it was left out because Stoltz preferred to maintain his privacy on the subject.
Future Boy isn’t a long book—apparently it was written in a hurry to meet the publication date—but it was fun to get a new glimpse of the making of Back to the Future and to learn a bit more about the guy who gave the movie its heart. The book has two little sections of photographs, including some from Fox’s childhood. If you’re a fan of the movie, I highly recommend giving it a read!
Disclosure: I received review copies or digital access to the books covered in today’s column. Affiliate links to Bookshop.org help support my writing and independent booksellers!
Fonte: GeekDad - Leia mais