In most of the science fiction I read growing up, changing the time line is generally a Bad Thing. If you squish a butterfly while hunting a dinosaur, it can result in long lasting and unexpected repercussions and incorrect spelling. (Or it results in getting sat on by a brontosaurus.) If you go far enough of the future you might find that class warfare ends in Morlocks and Eloi. And of course, killing your own grandpa may result in finding out that your grandmother was unfaithful.
Playing with time is more often than not a monkey’s paw situation. You might get what you want, but it might actually be a very bad thing to get what you have, and the parable was that time travel was a thing to be avoided.
In The Lord of the Sands of Time, the reason to tinker with history is to keep humanity from being wiped out by time travelling aliens who are bent destroying the human race for unknown reasons. In order to do this, AIs known as “Messengers” are created. Their mission is to create as many viable timelines as possible where humanity survives in the hope that people from up-time will be willing and able to help folks “downstream.”
Messenger O (known as “Orville”) is one such AI. The story of his activation, education, and early missions are interspersed with the story of Miyo, a Shaman-Queen of an alternate Japan created in part by the efforts of Orville and his fellow Messengers. Miyo’s own story intersects with O’s when the aliens begin to invade her country and her timeline. (The format is somewhat “braided,” and the O who interacts with Miyo in her chapters is much older, more worn, and much more mature than the younger O of the alternate chapters. We see the younger O’s first missions and attempts to alter history just as the action in Miyo’s timeline begins to heat up.)
This is a very short, fast paced book. (It also in some respects makes me think of it as a “prose manga.” There are a few scenes which have sight gags and prat falls in the manga style.) O and Miyo are both very interesting characters and I like the subtle world building moments where we discover exactly how much history has been changed. As well drawn as O and Miyo are, it’s a little disappointing that many of the other characters seem to fade out, even O’s love interest Sayaka in his home timeline.
There’s a lot of “assumed knowledge” (sort of the opposite of “As You Know Bob,” trope-wise) which may make the book difficult to get into or confusing. How and at what point Miyo’s timeline is altered is toward the end of the book. Despite the initial confusion of the early chapters and a few points where I couldn’t figure out how the writer got from point A to point B, I really liked this novel, though I wish it had been longer, and a little more detailed.
This is an older book review from a former book blog. This and other old book reviews can be found on Goodreads.
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