Jack Chalker - Downtiming the Night Side

This, then, means scrupulous outlining with little room to maneuver. It’s constricting and can drive a creative mind completely around the bend, particularly when you see a wonderful idea that you’d love to use but which would mean throwing out the 50,000 words you already wrote. This kind of time travel book requires more discipline than most writers have, and more than any writers want to have.

The book you are now reading took many false starts and was worked on over a long period of time, between the other projects, requiring in the end better than two years to write after its mechanics were worked out. I realize when I finished it that it could not have been written by me any sooner; without the personal computer and a decent word processor, it would have been nearly impossible for me to have seen it through. That alone gives me both admiration for the earlier paradox writers using only typewriters and some feeling of why so many of the questions were left unanswered by those who came here before.

Well, here’s my answer to the question, and my way of making time travel science fiction, rather than a branch of fantasy. If done right, these stories can be a lot of fun to read while making your head spin. I think Downtiming the Nightside is both fun and fast and yet thoughtful. It, and this explanation, though, may tell you why in forty-plus subsequent books, I haven’t written another time travel book.

Now, then… Never mind that they dismantled New York City. The real question is, why did they build it in the first place? Hmmmm…

Jack L. Chalker

May 8, 1992