Anywhen is an entertaining dual timeline story, that brings science fiction and historical fiction together, spanning the Woodstock festival in 1969 to the future of 2101.
Baezy lives in 2101, in the community of Unity, where AI and geneticists have created the perfect utopian society free of disease, hunger, and where the people have life spans that reach to 150 years old. Kelly is Baezy’s distant relative, and she is working at MIT in 1969, and on the cusp of creating the technology that leads to Baezy’s utopian society.
I really loved that the setting for Kelly’s background was Alabama, since I am from Alabama as well. She is working in a field dominated by men during this time period, and the sexism of her superior is touched on during the story. Kelly’s character is very serious and focused on her work, so most of the descriptions the book gives us of Woodstock is from
the people she traveled with. I actually wanted to see a more in depth look into what she was working on and her experiences in the field of computer technology, as a woman, during this time period.
Baezy is allowed to travel back in time to meet Kelly during Woodstock, but things don’t go as planned. Kelly doesn’t believe Sarah’s (Baezy’s cover name in the past) story that she is from the future and a very distant relative of Kelly’s. Sarah’s character is quite naive during this part of the story, which I expected due to her sheltered life in Unity. I did not expect the love triangle story line with Jack, and found myself wishing that it would have been left out to focus more on Kelly and Baezy’s relationship.
I think Duke poses some great food for thought with this story. Baezy believes her society to be perfect because of the strides in technology, health, longevity of life, and genetic make up. But her time in the past, shows the things that her future society misses out on, such as falling in love, making your own choices, and (most importantly for me) chocolate and pizza. It raises the question, are humans ever truly happy with what we consider to be perfection, when it could mean we are missing out on certain other things.
If you love books with time travel, fun musical references to 1960s music, historical fiction references, and complex relationships then I would definitely recommend Anywhen.
Thank you to Book Publicity Services for providing me with an ebook copy of Anywhen, in return for my honest review.