The Time Traveler's Wife

This little piece of obscurity will not be obscure for very much longer, thanks to the inevitablity of the Hollywood machine.  In mid-August the film verson of this book, a film that has been sitting on the shelf for far too long, will finally hit the big screen and allow all those wonderful people that fear the written word to experience this great piece of storytelling.  But let me tell you why you shouldn't wait for the movie and SHOULD pick up the book as soon as possible.

The core concept of the book is a "time-displaced love story", about a guy that has the strangest disease in history: he will spontaneously transport to a random time.  The only restriction is that he can only transport within his own lifetime (with a single possible exception that may or may not break the rules; decide for yourself).  This is an interesting enough premise on its own, but it becomes ever more intriguing when you introduce the concept of romance into it.  What happens when the Man Out of Time finds a wife?  How does their relationship begin?  How does it develop?  Can he have children?  Almost every question you could conceive about this idea, "The Life and Love of the Man Out of Time", are brought up and answered in this book.  And along the way, you find a rather beautiful love story entrenched in all of it.  Part sci-fi, but mostly contemporary romance with a very deep twist, this book will definetly make you reconsider the possibilities of time travel in fiction.

And now a tangential rant: Time Travel.  It is a huge part of science fiction, but it almost always leads to headaches in viewers if it's dealt with in anything more than a passing way.  An example: imagine Back to the Future.  Nothing could be simpler than this: boy gets into time machine, time machine goes back in time, time machine come back to present.  Everything was very neatly and cleanly laid out.  Sure, some people find all that paradox stuff in the middle to be a bit confusing, but it all makes sense in the end.  Now think of something like Deja Vu (not a bad movie, incidentally).  Its remote-viewing time-travel concepts were pretty out there, especially for a popular action/thriller.  Suddenly, it's too confusing and damages peoples' enjoyment of the film.  Then you get to the movies that can be conservatively described as absolutely insane with the time travel craziness.  In the interest of having more material to write about in the future, I will hold my tongue (or my fingers, as the case would be here) and allow you to find some of the crazier examples for yourself (for now).

Personally, I have always loved the idea of time travel, and spend almost irresponsible amouits of time as a child thining about it, theorizing on it, writing papers about it (I was a strange child).  I got to a point where I could tie my mind in such complex knots when thinking about time travel that there is no time travel story I have yet come across that I was not able to decipher in a reasonable amount of time.  I will, of course, speak of some examples in the future (no pun intended), but I am proud of myself for being able to do that.

There is much to talk about in reguards to time travel, but since this was originally supposed to be a post about a book that is findamentally a love story rather than a time travel story, I will wrap up my meandering very quickly here (I can hear the sighs of relief already).  I will admit, however, that this is a subject that I would not mind returning to again, perhaps be speaking of other stories/films/theories/whatever about time travel.  Please let me know if that is something you would want to hear about.  If you are loathing this subject (and if you are, I have to sincerely wonder why you have read this far...), feel free to let me know and I will curtail the time travel related posts in the future.

Either way, it is now far too late and I must away to bed.  Good evenings to you all, and enjoy your tomorrows.