Аннали Ньюиц: The Future of Another Timeline

The song Aseel writesis a variation on the one attributed to Sol Bloom in our timeline. You can listen to Bloom’s song here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6A5yJ5Z2Ezw. I prefer Aseel’s version, partly because it actually makes sense. Sol always regretted that he didn’t act fast enough to sell the song as sheet music, thus securing the exclusive rights to it. The song was appropriated so quickly by other dance acts that it became basically a folk song, impossible to copyright. You’ve probably heard the tune, if you grew up in an English-speaking Western country, where it is synonymous with cheesy stripper music and Orientalist tropes. One of the common variants on the lyrics does include the line (presumably about Sol Bloom) about how the dance the ladies do “was written by a Jew.” And yes, the tune is also in a delightful Ke$ha song called “Take It Off.”

The American Geophysical Union (AGU)is a real-life international organization whose members include scientists, industry researchers, and public servants who study Earth, our atmosphere, and space. They have advocated tirelessly for government and industry to recognize the reality of climate change. If we ever do find time machines in the Earth’s crust, AGU members will be all over that.

Most of the locations that Lizzy and Beth visit in Irvineand Los Angelesare based on places I knew as a teen in the late twentieth century. No, I never killed anyone, though I will confess that I might have thought about it a few thousand times. As we said back then: Irvine sucks. Some of Beth’s family backstoryis based loosely on things I experienced. My great-grandfather was jailed for arson in the early twentieth century, and my grandfather owned an auto repair shop in Los Angeles until the 1980s. My father committed suicide many years ago, after struggling for a long time with depression. He and my mother went to college together at UCLA, and took me to the La Brea Tar Pits a lot.

I remember a world where abortion was legal in my country. I hope you do too.

This book was a work of collective action, and thanks are due to the many people who talked to me about it, read early drafts, and generally listened to me stressing out about it for two years.

First, thanks to the many scientists, researchers, and friends who gave me ideas. Physicist Adam Becker talked to me about the impossibility of time travel, and cosmologist Sean Carroll agreed that time travel was impossible, but kindly suggested I think about wormholes and a “narrative force” that creates a timeline. Geology researcher Josh Zimmt speculated about what people could eat during the Ordovician and what it would smell like. Ethnomusicologist K. Goldschmitt told me about the nineteenth-century music industry and appropriation. Archaeologist Sarah Wenner talked to me about the Nabataean Kingdom in the first century C.E. Historian Karen Ordahl Kupperman let me interrogate her about social change over centuries, and pop history chronicler Lynn Peril gave me tons of sources about rational clothing and New Women. Adrienne Crew, creator of the incredible Louche Angeles Instagram, told me about being a Black girl in the L.A. punk scene during the 1980s. Science history aficionado Esther Inglis-Arkell suggested that the villain of this novel should be Anthony Comstock. Author Jess Zimmerman talked to me about witchcraft. Critic Lynn Rapoport and filmmaker Fivestar spent many late nights talking to me about indie music, indie porn, and all the good things in between. L. A. Kauffman inspired me with her writing and political actions more times than I can count.

I also got tons of feedback from extremely kind, patient early readers. A zillion thanks to Tempest Bradford and Jaymee Goh for sensitivity reads, and to Claire Light, Charlie Jane Anders, Meg Elison, Chris Palmer, Maggie Tokuda-Hall, and Katya Lopez for feedback during revision.

I owe pretty much everything to my amazing editor, Lindsey Hall, who read three separate drafts and improved the book immeasurably. Also thanks to Liz Gorinsky for first believing in the book, and to Devi Pillai for making it happen. And of course, thank you to my astounding agent provocateur, Laurie Fox.

A very special thank-you to Mike Burns for Flin Flon advice, and to Peter Burns for his stories about getting there (and beyond) by boat.

For helping me to survive my teens and twenties, thank you to Kathleen Hanna and Bikini Kill (and Le Tigre and Julie Ruin), Pauline Black and The Selecter, Alice Bag and The Bags, L7, Poly Styrene, Queen Latifah, and every other woman who yelled so loudly in my young ears that she drowned out my fear.

As always, I couldn’t have written this without the timeless love and support of Jesse Burns, Chris Palmer, and Charlie Jane Anders.

Autonomous

ANNALEE NEWITZis an American journalist, editor, and author of fiction and nonfiction. She is the recipient of a Knight Science Journalism Fellowship from MIT, and has written for Popular Science, The New Yorker, and The Washington Post . She founded the science fiction website io9 and served as editor in chief from 2008 to 2015, and subsequently was editor in chief at Gizmodo and tech culture editor at Ars Technica . Her book Scatter, Adapt, and Remember: How Humans Will Survive a Mass Extinction was nominated for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in science. Her first novel, Autonomous, won a Lambda Literary Award. You can sign up for email updates here.

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THE FUTURE OF ANOTHER TIMELINE

Copyright © 2019 by Annalee Newitz

All rights reserved.

Cover art by Will Staehle

A Tor Book

Published by Tom Doherty Associates

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