Travel through time… with editor Dan Blythe
How and why do writers use time-travel? Professor Brian Cox reminds us in Wonders of the Universe that Time moves forward for a reason – the Universe is expanding as a result of the Big Bang, tending towards entropy. When faced with unswerving scientific truth, art asks ‘what if’? From H.G. Wells onwards, the idea of hopping on and off the time-streams, as if they are a London bus, has proven fertile ground for authors.
You may feel drawn to ‘time tourism’, in which present-day characters travel back into history to be educated. This is how TV’s greatest time-traveller, Doctor Who, was at first envisaged by the show’s creator, Sydney Newman – the programme fulfilling the Reithian mantra of ‘Educate, Entertain, Inform’. One of the earliest stories had William Hartnell’s Doctor admonishing his companions, ‘You can’t change history! Not one line!’ The excellent Time-Traveller’s Guide books by Ian Mortimer take the ’time tourist’ approach, treating the reader as a hapless newcomer in a new environment, like a gap-year student consulting the Rough Guide to Argentina. Ali Sparkes’ Frozen in Time flips this notion, and has two cryonically-preserved children of the 1950s, straight out of a Bunty or Boy’s Own annual, coping with the society of 2009.
Many Young Adult and Middle Grade series go further and play with the idea of investigating anomalies in Time. Alex Scarrow’s TimeRiders sees a mysterious Agency gather a troubleshooting team from different decades, while in Caroline Lawrence’s Time Travel Diaries, a young hero is sent back into antiquity by an eccentric billionaire. In Susan Price’s Sterkarm books, young anthropologist Andrea is ‘embedded’ in the harsh world of the 16th century, and Price’s 21st-century scientists aim to exploit the resources of the past. Assuming themselves far cleverer than the ‘savages’ of the 1500s, they in fact underestimate the natives’ guile with terrifying consequences. Your novel may want to challenge the reader’s assumptions about the past in a similar way.
Changing history is a very attractive prospect for writers of fiction, one whose most popular idea involves a time-traveller assassinating Hitler before the start of World War II (Stephen Fry’s novel Making History was far from the first to explore this). C.J. Sansom, Robert Harris and Philip K. Dick all explore the notion of a society in which the Nazis won the war. Sophia McDougall goes further still in her Romanitas trilogy and explores a Rome which never fell, and where 21st-century mechanised crucifixions are shown live on ‘longvision’. The conspiracies around the assassination of President Kennedy are also irresistible material (Stephen King’s 11/22/63 and the second series of Netflix’s The Umbrella Academy being just two recent examples). There is even an annual prize – the Sidewise Award – for the best alternate history story. On balance, writers should maybe avoid the more hackneyed Nazi and JFK scenarios – using the paths less taken will make a novel stand out and seem more original.
What about your fictional technology? Susan Price’s corporate time-travellers use a ‘Time Tube’, whose science is handwaved just as much as the TARDIS, or the time-pod in NBC’s series Timeless. We are usually less interested in how the pseudo-science works, and more in the exciting, time-twisting story which ensues. The time-machine, for the author, is usually just a means of reaching the ‘other country’ of the past. Unless your knowledge and enthusiasm match that of Professor Cox, it’s probably best to avoid getting into the technicalities.
The time period you choose should be one you know well, or have researched extensively. Both World Wars, the 1960s and Elizabethan England all feel well-trodden. Even a period as recent as the 1980s – in the analogy, not so much another country as the Isle of Man – is enjoying a resurgence in fiction, with middle-aged writers reliving a teenage past in which drainpipe jeans, Duran Duran and deely-boppers provide the local colour. Researching your historical details is essential, as an alert reader will pounce upon anything off-kilter – but of course your anachronisms may be a deliberate part of the plot.
Language can be hard to get right, and you should make a decision early on as to whether you aim for ‘realistic’ period dialogue or have your characters speaking in something closer to modern English to represent the speech modes of past eras (as the children in The Roman Mysteries do, for example).
Your time-traveller should ideally have a reason for being in their unfamiliar time zone, one which is more than random and which has deeper resonances for the novel. Some quest or time-limited jeopardy can propel a novel effectively. Perhaps the time-machine will automatically return to our time after 48 hours, so your heroes must solve the puzzle in this time or be stranded?
So, time-travel can be historical fiction by the back door, a way of enticing readers, especially younger ones, into historical settings alongside scientifically eye-popping ideas. But writers should never forget that they are telling a story, not a situation, and should not allow their research to show so much that it clutters the plot. Time-travel fiction is enormous fun, but it can be very easy to do it badly or rehash clichéd ideas. You may want to educate your reader and make them think – but above all, your time-hopping heroes should have an ‘Excellent Adventure’.
Daniel Blythe is the author of over 20 books for adults, teenagers and children, and has contributed books and audios to the official Doctor Who range. He is currently available for reports and mentoring – please contact the Cornerstones office for details.
