Alexandra's Adventures in Books

Time travel stories always are a bit tricky. And most have some small issue or another you kind of have to ignore or just overlook. Some stories handle logic issues and problems better than others.

 

In this story we're told that, "Artwork, literature, plays, films - every colorful aspect of humanity - they were all lost during the fifth world war. Preserving culture was Cyrus' passion."

 

"Atlic Syndicate - a business specializing in locating and acquiring objects from the past. Historical procurement was a lucrative business. For an obscene price, we would obtain any item from any time that a client requested. Any item."

 

That sounds interesting, and plausible, except I'm seeing a problem with that. Removing a significant item from the past would alter history. To some degree or another. Imagine important works of art gone, etc. Well before their destruction in this fifth world war. It's just not plausible it would have no effect on history.

 

In one of Connie Willis' time travel stories she had her historians go after an item from the past, to bring it to the future. However the way she handled it made much more sense. She had them go to retrieve it shortly before it was to be destroyed in a fire.

 

Here we're told our time travelers are trained to do their job "...without causing ripples in the timewaves." It's good they're cautious about their presence in the past and not having an effect, but removing significant objects from the past would logically cause "ripples", I would think.

 

Another thing I'm laughing over, although this one isn't uncommon in time travel stories, is the fact that they are gone from their time the same amount of time they're spending in the past. This makes no real sense. They're scheduling their trips. Theoretically they could spend a month in the past and return five minutes after they left. Some time travel stories do it one way, some the other.

 

Typically those that have it take the same amount of time to return do so in order to create tension, being able to worry when someone is late returning back. But it really makes no logical sense. So, it makes me laugh. I can't fault this book for it though, it's one of the little logic issues that time travel stories can have. Overall though so far I'm enjoying it, and am interesting to see where it goes.