Lots of the time, books (or movies) about time travel are all about the excitement and danger of traveling through time, and the dangers of creating paradoxes, or about parallel universes and causality loops. Or about the creation of the device.
And then there’s Man in the Empty Suit, by Sean Ferrell. Suppose you invented time travel and used it to basically observe every key even in the history of the world. What if it just ended up boring you?
What if you routinely saw the future and past versions of yourself? What if some in the near future looked all put together, and others even farther down the line looked like complete wrecks? How would that affect how you approached your life? And what might you do to prevent the seemingly inevitable decline after the peak? Would you try to quit drinking even though you saw that a future version of yourself was obviously a drunk?
In a way, I almost don’t want to classify Man in the Empty Suit as science fiction. There’s no discussion on how the Inventor created his time travel machine. Or how New York City fell into ruin. Technical detail of any kind is almost entirely lacking. Instead, it’s more science philosophy, meditating on selfishness and detachment and inevitability, on love and loss.
It’s certainly a book with atmosphere, and I have to admit it’s a bit of a head-scratcher. But in a good way. It’s not all the way to Primer head-scratching, but there are a few places I had to retrace my steps to make sure I was getting it.
I encountered the book first through Two Book Minimum, a podcast hosted by Dan Wilbur of Better Book Titles. (Be advised that BBT and TBM tend to be explicit.) I actually picked it up from the Library and read a chapter of two before getting caught up in other reading. It was only when we were working on the Take Me To Your Reader episode on Predestination that I decided to go back and finish the book given the similar themes to those in the movie.
It’s probably not for everyone, but if you like a bit of philosophy thrown into your sci-fi, and you’re interested in a different take on the typical time travel story, I’d recommend this one. (Content advisory: strong language and some sexuality.)
Somehow I wrote this a month ago and forgot to post it. Also, I just haven’t been doing much writing, between work being busy and doing the whole podcast thing. But I’ll try to be better, honestly. In fact, I literally just sat down to write up a quick review of R.U.R., the play that introduced the word robot into popular culture. So maybe I’ll just crank that out while I’m here. Or I could just go do some reading.