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Revise the World
On March 16, 1912, British polar explorer Titus Oates commits suicide by walking out of his tent into an Antarctic blizzard, to save Robert Falcon Scott and the other members of the English exploration team. His body is never found — because he was snatched away into the year 2045 by scientists experimenting with a new faster-than-light drive. Arriving in the future, Oates stubbornly sticks to his old explorer job and sets off on an intergalactic adventure that leads to both knowledge and self-knowledge. The first section of this novel appeared as a novella in Analog Science Fiction magazine (April 2001) under the title “May Be Some Time.” It was a finalist for both the Nebula and the Hugo awards.
530 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2009
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Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews
November 30, 2022
3.5 stars
I enjoy these kinds of "traveler out of time" science fiction stories. Given the time period our traveler is from, it is not surprising that he's an annoyingly patriarchal man with "old timey" values. Yet despite not being the most likeable guy, I enjoyed watching him adjust to life in the future.
I enjoy these kinds of "traveler out of time" science fiction stories. Given the time period our traveler is from, it is not surprising that he's an annoyingly patriarchal man with "old timey" values. Yet despite not being the most likeable guy, I enjoyed watching him adjust to life in the future.
February 13, 2013
What an enticing concept. And when you read the first couple of chapters, there's an even bigger canvas set up for a truly promising sci fi yarn.
What a pity then, that promise remains only but a tease in the background for about 80% of the book, most of which is padded out with tedious domestic affairs of Titus Oates adjusting to the technological and social changes of the future. It was amusing and enjoyable to read of Oates's stubbornly gentleman manners coping with the raw freedom, racial and sexual equality of these new times but unfortunately it goes on and on and on with hardly much significant events occurring in the storyline. The author's depiction of the future in technology is imaginative but focus is on the domestic scale, there is something big happening in the world, epic in fact but we hardly get any focus on it. Also of course, time travel and futuristic technology are featured but only scantily exploited.
The focus is exclusively on Titus Oates musings on his own life and social observations, so much so that this could have been written in the first person perspective instead. His musings floods the novel all the way through to the climactic end, dragging the pace down to a screeching halt at times.
I also had a problem with Titus's character. A very authentic Edwardian gentleman thanks to the author's excellent research which she includes a few notes on in the appendix. However, Titus behaves like an obstinate middle aged man despite the fact he is only 32. Perhaps that's how they behave at that age in those days but it didnt fit well with me. Perhaps my lack of Edwardian/Victorian period romance knowledge renders my critic on this aspect useless.
Having said that, Titus is a well written character study, in fact its the only character that is actually properly fleshed out but that's fine. The main problem is narrative drive, there just isnt any for a very very long time. Ok there is sex and romance, so if you are a romanticist, then that may serve you well as the main narrative. Good for you in that case and I suggest you approach this book as such as then you will most probably enjoy this more than I had. Just be wary that its in sharp focus while the sci fi remains very much blurred into the background.
The ending is good but not anywhere rewarding enough for the arduously long and very slow build up that precedes it.
I am rather disappointed with this book because I know the author, Brenda, through her musings on a time travel forum. I enjoy her posts, always full of great science fiction ideas and to be fair when her imagination runs in the few short spots in the novel, its a delight to read but as I said, there are so few and far between but I can clearly see Brenda's potential for great scifi. Just the focus was misplaced here.
The thing is, this was originally a short novel that was nominated for a Hugo and Nebula prize. A great achievement. Knowing the story from this novel, I think it must have been a splendid short story devoid of the novel's tedious middle act. Maybe that's it, it was always just a short story stretched way too thin.
What a pity then, that promise remains only but a tease in the background for about 80% of the book, most of which is padded out with tedious domestic affairs of Titus Oates adjusting to the technological and social changes of the future. It was amusing and enjoyable to read of Oates's stubbornly gentleman manners coping with the raw freedom, racial and sexual equality of these new times but unfortunately it goes on and on and on with hardly much significant events occurring in the storyline. The author's depiction of the future in technology is imaginative but focus is on the domestic scale, there is something big happening in the world, epic in fact but we hardly get any focus on it. Also of course, time travel and futuristic technology are featured but only scantily exploited.
The focus is exclusively on Titus Oates musings on his own life and social observations, so much so that this could have been written in the first person perspective instead. His musings floods the novel all the way through to the climactic end, dragging the pace down to a screeching halt at times.
I also had a problem with Titus's character. A very authentic Edwardian gentleman thanks to the author's excellent research which she includes a few notes on in the appendix. However, Titus behaves like an obstinate middle aged man despite the fact he is only 32. Perhaps that's how they behave at that age in those days but it didnt fit well with me. Perhaps my lack of Edwardian/Victorian period romance knowledge renders my critic on this aspect useless.
Having said that, Titus is a well written character study, in fact its the only character that is actually properly fleshed out but that's fine. The main problem is narrative drive, there just isnt any for a very very long time. Ok there is sex and romance, so if you are a romanticist, then that may serve you well as the main narrative. Good for you in that case and I suggest you approach this book as such as then you will most probably enjoy this more than I had. Just be wary that its in sharp focus while the sci fi remains very much blurred into the background.
The ending is good but not anywhere rewarding enough for the arduously long and very slow build up that precedes it.
I am rather disappointed with this book because I know the author, Brenda, through her musings on a time travel forum. I enjoy her posts, always full of great science fiction ideas and to be fair when her imagination runs in the few short spots in the novel, its a delight to read but as I said, there are so few and far between but I can clearly see Brenda's potential for great scifi. Just the focus was misplaced here.
The thing is, this was originally a short novel that was nominated for a Hugo and Nebula prize. A great achievement. Knowing the story from this novel, I think it must have been a splendid short story devoid of the novel's tedious middle act. Maybe that's it, it was always just a short story stretched way too thin.
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June 17, 2009Despite the updated cultural background and the focus more on romance than adventure, Revise the World continually reminded me of a Golden-Age-SciFi space opera, in the vein of Doc Smith and his contemporaries. It has the same great sense of fun, and the same lack of attention to the mundane details of characterization and plotting.
The premise of the book (and the earlier novella it's built on) is that humanity has been contacted by an alien race that has told us how to bend time and space in order to accomplish faster-than-light travel. Before going whole hog and building an FTL starship, the world's governments decide to test the theory by pulling someone out of Earth's past. They settle on Titus Oates, an Arctic explorer who died on Robert Scott's polar mission in 1912; because his body was never found, they figured he was completely out of the biological and historical stream of things, and so snatching him wouldn't change anything. (It's worth noting here that the scientists in the book don't seem to be very good ones, though they're supposedly the best. Never mind that nothing on Earth is ever completely out of the life cycle; no one ever even comments on the classic time-travel-novel paradox they've gotten themselves into regarding why his body was never found. And that's par for the course for these geniuses.)
Oates's adjustment to the world in 2045 makes up the meat of the novel; in fact, we get so involved in character development that he doesn't even get to go on the foreshadowed exciting space adventure until four-fifths of the way through the (six-hundred-page!) book. Which is admittedly a departure from the Golden-Age-SciFi sensibility I'm attributing to the book, but on the other hand, putting a heroic, stereotypically manly figure like Titus Oates at the center of things makes it feel like we're on a heroic, stereotypically manly journey whether he's exploring himself and his new social situation or exploring a new world. And there's a lot to enjoy about Titus's inner journey: how he learns to think outside of himself, and the ways in which his thinking never changes; how advanced modern folk react to his antediluvian notions despite their determination to be understanding; ruminations on how a man known for stoic heroism might make his way differently than someone else of his era; all done with a nice ironic humor. (At least I hoped it was being ironic in, for instance, Titus's notion that Edwardian British men were absolutely straightforward...and in some instances I was probably only wishing it were ironic.)
Overall, Revise the World is quite good at a few of the things it sets out to achieve. It paints a relatively believable near future (and near future is the hardest future to do well), its exploration of different lenses on reality (and how we take them as truth) is interesting and well-thought-out, it has a few great jokes, and the author manages to engage the reader in her obvious feeling of having a rollicking good time playing with a nifty premise. But the novel falls down in the details, again and again; it's clumsy in pretty much every small way I could think of. The supporting characters are caricaturish, the dialogue frequently wooden, the pacing bizarre, the point of view inconsistent, and the philosophizing and psychologizing overly belabored, and there's a plot hole, inconsistency, or implausibility on nearly every page. (Not to mention the typos.) The ending doesn't cap the story arc (what there is of it); once the romantic plotline has been concluded, the narrative just stops without resolving the mysteries about the aliens that have been built up throughout the book. (Perhaps the author is planning a sequel...?)
Many of the book's problems could have been solved by a good edit. While I like Book View Café's direct-as-possible from-author-to-reader publishing philosophy in some respects, the interference of a traditional publishing house that's paying for paper and ink isn't always such a bad thing. A few memorable moments and the author's infectious sense of fun certainly gave me enjoyment in the reading, but it was counterbalanced by slogging through writing that could have been so much better with some polishing.
(Reviewed for the GUD Magazine website.)
The premise of the book (and the earlier novella it's built on) is that humanity has been contacted by an alien race that has told us how to bend time and space in order to accomplish faster-than-light travel. Before going whole hog and building an FTL starship, the world's governments decide to test the theory by pulling someone out of Earth's past. They settle on Titus Oates, an Arctic explorer who died on Robert Scott's polar mission in 1912; because his body was never found, they figured he was completely out of the biological and historical stream of things, and so snatching him wouldn't change anything. (It's worth noting here that the scientists in the book don't seem to be very good ones, though they're supposedly the best. Never mind that nothing on Earth is ever completely out of the life cycle; no one ever even comments on the classic time-travel-novel paradox they've gotten themselves into regarding why his body was never found. And that's par for the course for these geniuses.)
Oates's adjustment to the world in 2045 makes up the meat of the novel; in fact, we get so involved in character development that he doesn't even get to go on the foreshadowed exciting space adventure until four-fifths of the way through the (six-hundred-page!) book. Which is admittedly a departure from the Golden-Age-SciFi sensibility I'm attributing to the book, but on the other hand, putting a heroic, stereotypically manly figure like Titus Oates at the center of things makes it feel like we're on a heroic, stereotypically manly journey whether he's exploring himself and his new social situation or exploring a new world. And there's a lot to enjoy about Titus's inner journey: how he learns to think outside of himself, and the ways in which his thinking never changes; how advanced modern folk react to his antediluvian notions despite their determination to be understanding; ruminations on how a man known for stoic heroism might make his way differently than someone else of his era; all done with a nice ironic humor. (At least I hoped it was being ironic in, for instance, Titus's notion that Edwardian British men were absolutely straightforward...and in some instances I was probably only wishing it were ironic.)
Overall, Revise the World is quite good at a few of the things it sets out to achieve. It paints a relatively believable near future (and near future is the hardest future to do well), its exploration of different lenses on reality (and how we take them as truth) is interesting and well-thought-out, it has a few great jokes, and the author manages to engage the reader in her obvious feeling of having a rollicking good time playing with a nifty premise. But the novel falls down in the details, again and again; it's clumsy in pretty much every small way I could think of. The supporting characters are caricaturish, the dialogue frequently wooden, the pacing bizarre, the point of view inconsistent, and the philosophizing and psychologizing overly belabored, and there's a plot hole, inconsistency, or implausibility on nearly every page. (Not to mention the typos.) The ending doesn't cap the story arc (what there is of it); once the romantic plotline has been concluded, the narrative just stops without resolving the mysteries about the aliens that have been built up throughout the book. (Perhaps the author is planning a sequel...?)
Many of the book's problems could have been solved by a good edit. While I like Book View Café's direct-as-possible from-author-to-reader publishing philosophy in some respects, the interference of a traditional publishing house that's paying for paper and ink isn't always such a bad thing. A few memorable moments and the author's infectious sense of fun certainly gave me enjoyment in the reading, but it was counterbalanced by slogging through writing that could have been so much better with some polishing.
(Reviewed for the GUD Magazine website.)
April 8, 2012
"Revise the World" is a fish-out-of water story about Captain Titus Oates, a polar explorer who walked away from the doomed Robert Falcon Scott expedition to the South Pole. His body was never found. This provides an opportunity in 2045 to test a time machine to rescue him without having to worry about changing history through some butterfly-effect. There are no butterflies in Antarctica.
Captain Oates is a proper Edwardian gentleman possessed of all the attitudes and prejudices of that time. His love-interest is a mixed-race female doctor--a trifecta of insults to his bigotry. This book provides an excellent depiction of prejudice without hate. He doesn't hate women, he merely thinks them inferior--at first.
He is also a hero as he demonstrates repeatedly in the novel. His heroism is seen in his refusal to give up on understanding future society and how to productively contribute to it. And he knows how to keep his head in a plane crash. Or in the hostile environment of an alien planet.
I first read this work in short-story form entitled, "May Be Some Time," when it appeared in Analog magazine. It was nominated for Hugo and Nebula awards. I was most pleased when I learned last week that she'd expanded it into a novel.
What made me love this work most was Ms. Clough's use of language. Her hero's prose is delightfully littered with words no longer in common circulation. I read on my Kindle where I need only highlight the word to get a definition...most of the time. In the story, most of his utterances send his interlocutors to their laptop computers to look up his barrack's slang.
Captain Oates is a proper Edwardian gentleman possessed of all the attitudes and prejudices of that time. His love-interest is a mixed-race female doctor--a trifecta of insults to his bigotry. This book provides an excellent depiction of prejudice without hate. He doesn't hate women, he merely thinks them inferior--at first.
He is also a hero as he demonstrates repeatedly in the novel. His heroism is seen in his refusal to give up on understanding future society and how to productively contribute to it. And he knows how to keep his head in a plane crash. Or in the hostile environment of an alien planet.
I first read this work in short-story form entitled, "May Be Some Time," when it appeared in Analog magazine. It was nominated for Hugo and Nebula awards. I was most pleased when I learned last week that she'd expanded it into a novel.
What made me love this work most was Ms. Clough's use of language. Her hero's prose is delightfully littered with words no longer in common circulation. I read on my Kindle where I need only highlight the word to get a definition...most of the time. In the story, most of his utterances send his interlocutors to their laptop computers to look up his barrack's slang.
July 9, 2014
Titus Oates comes to life in this book, right down to his accent. From what I've read about his real life personality, his character in the book is absolutely believable. Following his story from near-death to recovery to romantic involvement to lunacy to sheer focus was riveting. I just couldn't put this book down.
Why, you ask? For starters, I like science fiction that develops characters and focuses on a solid plot. Brenda Clough did a fantastic job with that. This story was about people, with the sci-fi forming a believable back story.
Further, the language was exquisite. Every piece of dialogue intended for Titus had a British tone, fit his character and made me thirst for more. Even in the parts where I thought he was going crazy, the tone of writing was well done.
And who could forgo a story with an awesome hero? Revise the World is about a hero who becomes a hero again and again. He reminds us of the character necessary to be a hero in everyday life. And through his life, we see how such a person falls into heroism when life throws something really big at you.
Overall, I loved this book. The tempo threw me off a little, especially at the end. I can't put my finger on it, but maybe it was that the story up through the western trail rides delved into the personalities wonderfully. After that, things skipped rather quickly. It was well done and the character development wasn't as necessary at that point, but it left me wanting a bit.
To sum it up, the story hooked me pretty fast, kept me glued to its pages and had a good ending. I think I'm going to have to look for some more works by this author.
Why, you ask? For starters, I like science fiction that develops characters and focuses on a solid plot. Brenda Clough did a fantastic job with that. This story was about people, with the sci-fi forming a believable back story.
Further, the language was exquisite. Every piece of dialogue intended for Titus had a British tone, fit his character and made me thirst for more. Even in the parts where I thought he was going crazy, the tone of writing was well done.
And who could forgo a story with an awesome hero? Revise the World is about a hero who becomes a hero again and again. He reminds us of the character necessary to be a hero in everyday life. And through his life, we see how such a person falls into heroism when life throws something really big at you.
Overall, I loved this book. The tempo threw me off a little, especially at the end. I can't put my finger on it, but maybe it was that the story up through the western trail rides delved into the personalities wonderfully. After that, things skipped rather quickly. It was well done and the character development wasn't as necessary at that point, but it left me wanting a bit.
To sum it up, the story hooked me pretty fast, kept me glued to its pages and had a good ending. I think I'm going to have to look for some more works by this author.
January 13, 2009
This book has a truly rockin’ concept: British polar explorer Titus Oates—he of self-sacrificing “I am just going outside and may be some time” fame—did not in fact perish in Antarctica in 1912, but was instead rescued by scientists experimenting with new time travel technology in 2045. As Wychwood and I discussed in several very capslocky emails, how can one resist a book where, as she put it, “THERE IS TITUS OATES IN FUTURE NEW YORK AND ALSO SPACE ALIENS”? Especially when it’s available for free online? Answer: one cannot.
The execution is not quite as awesome as the concept, although such a thing would admittedly be hard. The narrative is told in a tight 3rd person POV, from Titus’ perspective, and I don’t know if this is a product of that, but the prose is very exclamation mark-heavy, which is not my favorite thing ever. There are also some frustrating misunderstandings, caused as much by Titus not paying attention as by him being thrust more than a hundred years into the future, and I felt that parts of the story dragged. Nevertheless, this is the best “person from the past goes to the future/present” book I’ve found so far, with the space and polar exploration bits being wonderful (no pun intended, Titus, I swear) icing on the cake. The romance is pretty tasty too. And did I mention that you can read it right now, for free? So it’s cake you can have and eat too!
All right, I’m stopping now.
The execution is not quite as awesome as the concept, although such a thing would admittedly be hard. The narrative is told in a tight 3rd person POV, from Titus’ perspective, and I don’t know if this is a product of that, but the prose is very exclamation mark-heavy, which is not my favorite thing ever. There are also some frustrating misunderstandings, caused as much by Titus not paying attention as by him being thrust more than a hundred years into the future, and I felt that parts of the story dragged. Nevertheless, this is the best “person from the past goes to the future/present” book I’ve found so far, with the space and polar exploration bits being wonderful (no pun intended, Titus, I swear) icing on the cake. The romance is pretty tasty too. And did I mention that you can read it right now, for free? So it’s cake you can have and eat too!
All right, I’m stopping now.
August 15, 2012
The idea behind this book is fabulous: when Antarctic explorer Titus Oates walked out of his tent in 1912 to die (so his fellow Scott expedition members would not be burdened by him), he was scooped up by a time-and-space-travel project and brought forward to 2045. The execution is somewhat less fabulous, but mostly still enjoyable.
Oates in the 21st century is entertaining and believable; he's a racist and sexist product of his times, but the qualities that made him an explorer allow him to learn and adapt. However, he does get a little grating, and the tight POV is sometimes aggravating. Also, the plot meanders a bit too much, with excursions to a dude ranch in Wyoming and an Antarctic expedition that seems like an excuse to pad wordcount, before Clough gets to the meat of the story - the expedition to another planet.
Oates in the 21st century is entertaining and believable; he's a racist and sexist product of his times, but the qualities that made him an explorer allow him to learn and adapt. However, he does get a little grating, and the tight POV is sometimes aggravating. Also, the plot meanders a bit too much, with excursions to a dude ranch in Wyoming and an Antarctic expedition that seems like an excuse to pad wordcount, before Clough gets to the meat of the story - the expedition to another planet.
Read
July 28, 2020A historic Arctic explorer is teleported through time to become an interstellar explorer. The idea is decent and the execution maintains interest, but it is hard to ignore a rather serious style break about halfway through the story.
The first half of the book depicts the culture shock of the "traditional" (i.e., early 20th century) English gentleman thrown into a technologically advanced society which, despite being set in the year 2045 and having a time machine at its disposal, is not altogether different from ours.
As such, it combines psychology and introspection with an outside view of our own mores. I was happily reminded of Robert Heinlein's brilliant Stranger in a Strange Land.
The second half is a space opera about the exploration of a hostile faraway planet. It appears more hastily written, with more plot and less attention to character development, as if the author had to correct downwards to arrive at the number of words agreed with the editor; the plot twist near the end is not entirely impossible to guess, but it does restore the unity of the novel to some extent.
Afterthought. I think she's got the twin paradox backwards. It's the traveller who comes back younger than the companion who stayed behind.
The first half of the book depicts the culture shock of the "traditional" (i.e., early 20th century) English gentleman thrown into a technologically advanced society which, despite being set in the year 2045 and having a time machine at its disposal, is not altogether different from ours.
As such, it combines psychology and introspection with an outside view of our own mores. I was happily reminded of Robert Heinlein's brilliant Stranger in a Strange Land.
The second half is a space opera about the exploration of a hostile faraway planet. It appears more hastily written, with more plot and less attention to character development, as if the author had to correct downwards to arrive at the number of words agreed with the editor; the plot twist near the end is not entirely impossible to guess, but it does restore the unity of the novel to some extent.
Afterthought. I think she's got the twin paradox backwards. It's the traveller who comes back younger than the companion who stayed behind.
June 17, 2023
The White Darkness walked so Revise the World could trip over its own feet, fall down the stairs, and land on its face.
The multiple breaks I took from reading this is the only reason I’m not fully convinced it wasn’t some sort of death dream. I took months to read the first 35%, then tore through the rest in one night, only realizing the next day that it would be over 600 pages if it were a physical book. My geology textbook had better pacing than this episodic slog—plot threads were started and then immediately dropped like popcorn from the mouth of a greedy child, and yet each one felt like an eternity.
For all the talk of “revising the world” (I counted three title drops, two of them in the first quarter), there seems to have been very little revising or worldbuilding. Clough seems to think that worldbuilding means making up a few futuristic-sounding words and calling it a day. I’m all for throwing in casual details to make a setting unique, but when you’re going for a near-future (less than 50 years after the story was published) setting, brain chips and human settlements on Mars aren’t really the kind of thing you pepper in and immediately move on from. The overall tone was more bleak and depressing than what it seemed was intended. None of the lighthearted moments work because the author tries to milk pretty much every joke for all it’s worth. The exception is the scene where Oates tries to eat a hand wipe. That had me snickering out loud in a hotel room at 1 am, afraid I was going to wake up my family, and it’s unironically my second-favorite part.
Revise the World doesn’t have a plot so much as a series of loosely-connected episodes. The only thing holding the various subplots together is the romance between Oates and one of the scientists who brought him into the future. Titus and Shell’s dynamic somehow managed to be so toxic yet so boring that I found myself wishing for the good old days of The White Darkness. Shell acknowledges that she’s older and more experienced than Titus and barges ahead without doing anything about it, and Titus spends the majority of the story acting like he owns Shell. He’s quite literally asleep the first time they sleep together, and even though he technically consented while he was still fully conscious, I still did not like that. The story almost acknowledges how bad they are for each other, but it immediately moves on because tHeY’rE iN lUv.
There’s a weird plot twist (one of many, but if I tried to list every example of the madness this book pulls you’d hate me) where Titus thinks Shell is only sleeping with him for science. It sounds really dumb, and it is, but it leads to my favorite part of the book—they break up. I’m not even being facetious; the time between Titus leaving Shell and the two of them getting back together is genuinely compelling. This is the first and only inkling we see of Titus having anything resembling trauma from his attempted suicide in Antarctica or attachment to the rest of the Polar Party—he heads off to Antarctica intending to go back in time and *drumroll* revise the world so his friends don’t die. This subplot goes absolutely nowhere, but we do get to see some character development, not to mention Oates acting like his weird self. If it had taken up more of the book, I’d have raised the review a star or two.
I briefly considered calling Revise the World “the biggest disappointment of an ending since the actual Terra Nova expedition,” but at least that had some meaning and dignity to it. I knew the aliens would turn out to be evil from the first time someone declared how not-evil they were. When the actual foreshadowing started around ten to fifteen pages before the “twist,” I wanted to reach into the book and shake the characters for being so blind. There was no meaningful resolution, and it felt like the author didn’t know how to use an open ending.
I haven’t read the original short story, but I feel like it would have worked better than the book. The various subplots felt extremely disjointed, and character arcs were stretched and folded back on themselves like silly putty. The idea of a time-traveling Heroic Age Antarctic explorer was a great concept, especially the conflict around whether he could, or should, go back and save his companions, but it was bogged down with too much filler and repetition to really shine.
The multiple breaks I took from reading this is the only reason I’m not fully convinced it wasn’t some sort of death dream. I took months to read the first 35%, then tore through the rest in one night, only realizing the next day that it would be over 600 pages if it were a physical book. My geology textbook had better pacing than this episodic slog—plot threads were started and then immediately dropped like popcorn from the mouth of a greedy child, and yet each one felt like an eternity.
For all the talk of “revising the world” (I counted three title drops, two of them in the first quarter), there seems to have been very little revising or worldbuilding. Clough seems to think that worldbuilding means making up a few futuristic-sounding words and calling it a day. I’m all for throwing in casual details to make a setting unique, but when you’re going for a near-future (less than 50 years after the story was published) setting, brain chips and human settlements on Mars aren’t really the kind of thing you pepper in and immediately move on from. The overall tone was more bleak and depressing than what it seemed was intended. None of the lighthearted moments work because the author tries to milk pretty much every joke for all it’s worth. The exception is the scene where Oates tries to eat a hand wipe. That had me snickering out loud in a hotel room at 1 am, afraid I was going to wake up my family, and it’s unironically my second-favorite part.
Revise the World doesn’t have a plot so much as a series of loosely-connected episodes. The only thing holding the various subplots together is the romance between Oates and one of the scientists who brought him into the future. Titus and Shell’s dynamic somehow managed to be so toxic yet so boring that I found myself wishing for the good old days of The White Darkness. Shell acknowledges that she’s older and more experienced than Titus and barges ahead without doing anything about it, and Titus spends the majority of the story acting like he owns Shell. He’s quite literally asleep the first time they sleep together, and even though he technically consented while he was still fully conscious, I still did not like that. The story almost acknowledges how bad they are for each other, but it immediately moves on because tHeY’rE iN lUv.
There’s a weird plot twist (one of many, but if I tried to list every example of the madness this book pulls you’d hate me) where Titus thinks Shell is only sleeping with him for science. It sounds really dumb, and it is, but it leads to my favorite part of the book—they break up. I’m not even being facetious; the time between Titus leaving Shell and the two of them getting back together is genuinely compelling. This is the first and only inkling we see of Titus having anything resembling trauma from his attempted suicide in Antarctica or attachment to the rest of the Polar Party—he heads off to Antarctica intending to go back in time and *drumroll* revise the world so his friends don’t die. This subplot goes absolutely nowhere, but we do get to see some character development, not to mention Oates acting like his weird self. If it had taken up more of the book, I’d have raised the review a star or two.
I briefly considered calling Revise the World “the biggest disappointment of an ending since the actual Terra Nova expedition,” but at least that had some meaning and dignity to it. I knew the aliens would turn out to be evil from the first time someone declared how not-evil they were. When the actual foreshadowing started around ten to fifteen pages before the “twist,” I wanted to reach into the book and shake the characters for being so blind. There was no meaningful resolution, and it felt like the author didn’t know how to use an open ending.
I haven’t read the original short story, but I feel like it would have worked better than the book. The various subplots felt extremely disjointed, and character arcs were stretched and folded back on themselves like silly putty. The idea of a time-traveling Heroic Age Antarctic explorer was a great concept, especially the conflict around whether he could, or should, go back and save his companions, but it was bogged down with too much filler and repetition to really shine.
November 22, 2013
Huge miss. The idea is exciting, but the author doesn't capitalize on the opportunity. Starting with the similarities between time travel and space travel (a concept I've never thought about before), and bringing a real person into a fictional imagining of the future, this book had nothing but promise. But instead of flying forward and exploring possibility, the author harps on the fish-out-of-water cliche for ages. It's not interesting, it serves as a road block, and honestly, if anyone from the past would be open to the possibilities this world may offer, it would be an explorer! I imagine that if Titus Oates had actually found himself 150 years in the future, the shock would have worn off and he would have set off in exploration of this new world instead of dwelling on how things were back in his day. And with the premise set out as a mission to communicate with alien life on another planet, why did the author abandon us in Wyoming for a million pages? Titus Oates as a misogynistic cowpoke... snooze.
August 9, 2017
Captain Titus Oates, a member of Robert Scott's 1912 British Antarctic expedition, is best known for his last words: "I am just going outside and may be some time." He was the protagonist in Clough's 2001 novella "May Be Some Time" (which I reviewed at https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...). This wonderful novella also serves as the opening part of the novel. "Revise the World" isn't quite up to that level, but it's an excellent novel. If you liked the novella, you should read the novel.
July 23, 2016
I devoured Brenda Clough's novella "May Be Some Time" and I always judge my liking of a story based on how pissed off I am when it ends. When I reached the end of "May Be Some Time" I was all "DAMN IT I WANT MORE." And then I found out that there was a whole book and I was all "YASS!" Because I have a big thing for time-traveling Englishmen, culture shock, and, for some reason, early 20th century Antarctic exploration.
Titus Oates would make an awesome Doctor Who story arc...
Titus Oates would make an awesome Doctor Who story arc...
May 12, 2020
3.5 stars...so C+. The book is in 3 parts...the first two parts really deal with an Antarctic explorer (think a Man's Man) from the past brought forward to the too sensitive and politically correct future. Makes for some interesting experiences....but the ending felt lame.
June 2, 2023
I just started this one. The premise is right up my alley -- turn-of-the-century polar expedition member snatched from certain death on the ice and given a new (warm & healthy) license on life. So far it's centered around his internal fight to "get with the times," which on the surface sounds like a light battle, but this Brit -- very much a product of his time -- is struggling, that's for sure. So far he's been slapped and almost stranded in NYC to fend for himself when he offended his tour guide -- a woman. The author's slowly introducing the sci-fi element -- aliens transmitting a signal that enables the chap's abduction through time. It'll be interesting to see how this bigger threat is developed and the role the MC plays in fighting it. Enjoying the read thus far!
Update after finishing: Loved the love story in this one. No explicit sex, mostly fade to black, but an adult, complicated love story that spans time and space...and an alien that's not a stereotypical "foe" or "villain" but does pose a danger to us. I loved the execution. Thoroughly recommend. Enjoy!
Update after finishing: Loved the love story in this one. No explicit sex, mostly fade to black, but an adult, complicated love story that spans time and space...and an alien that's not a stereotypical "foe" or "villain" but does pose a danger to us. I loved the execution. Thoroughly recommend. Enjoy!
April 18, 2025
Great imagination, a book of what ifs that is a fun read
June 17, 2009
Despite the updated cultural background and the focus more on romance than adventure, Revise the World continually reminded me of a Golden-Age-SciFi space opera, in the vein of Doc Smith and his contemporaries. It has the same great sense of fun, and the same lack of attention to the mundane details of characterization and plotting.
The premise of the book (and the earlier novella it's built on) is that humanity has been contacted by an alien race that has told us how to bend time and space in order to accomplish faster-than-light travel. Before going whole hog and building an FTL starship, the world's governments decide to test the theory by pulling someone out of Earth's past. They settle on Titus Oates, an Arctic explorer who died on Robert Scott's polar mission in 1912; because his body was never found, they figured he was completely out of the biological and historical stream of things, and so snatching him wouldn't change anything. (It's worth noting here that the scientists in the book don't seem to be very good ones, though they're supposedly the best. Never mind that nothing on Earth is ever completely out of the life cycle; no one ever even comments on the classic time-travel-novel paradox they've gotten themselves into regarding why his body was never found. And that's par for the course for these geniuses.)
Oates's adjustment to the world in 2045 makes up the meat of the novel; in fact, we get so involved in character development that he doesn't even get to go on the foreshadowed exciting space adventure until four-fifths of the way through the (six-hundred-page!) book. Which is admittedly a departure from the Golden-Age-SciFi sensibility I'm attributing to the book, but on the other hand, putting a heroic, stereotypically manly figure like Titus Oates at the center of things makes it feel like we're on a heroic, stereotypically manly journey whether he's exploring himself and his new social situation or exploring a new world. And there's a lot to enjoy about Titus's inner journey: how he learns to think outside of himself, and the ways in which his thinking never changes; how advanced modern folk react to his antediluvian notions despite their determination to be understanding; ruminations on how a man known for stoic heroism might make his way differently than someone else of his era; all done with a nice ironic humor. (At least I hoped it was being ironic in, for instance, Titus's notion that Edwardian British men were absolutely straightforward...and in some instances I was probably only wishing it were ironic.)
Overall, Revise the World is quite good at a few of the things it sets out to achieve. It paints a relatively believable near future (and near future is the hardest future to do well), its exploration of different lenses on reality (and how we take them as truth) is interesting and well-thought-out, it has a few great jokes, and the author manages to engage the reader in her obvious feeling of having a rollicking good time playing with a nifty premise. But the novel falls down in the details, again and again; it's clumsy in pretty much every small way I could think of. The supporting characters are caricaturish, the dialogue frequently wooden, the pacing bizarre, the point of view inconsistent, and the philosophizing and psychologizing overly belabored, and there's a plot hole, inconsistency, or implausibility on nearly every page. (Not to mention the typos.) The ending doesn't cap the story arc (what there is of it); once the romantic plotline has been concluded, the narrative just stops without resolving the mysteries about the aliens that have been built up throughout the book. (Perhaps the author is planning a sequel...?)
Many of the book's problems could have been solved by a good edit. While I like Book View Café's direct-as-possible from-author-to-reader publishing philosophy in some respects, the interference of a traditional publishing house that's paying for paper and ink isn't always such a bad thing. A few memorable moments and the author's infectious sense of fun certainly gave me enjoyment in the reading, but it was counterbalanced by slogging through writing that could have been so much better with some polishing.
The premise of the book (and the earlier novella it's built on) is that humanity has been contacted by an alien race that has told us how to bend time and space in order to accomplish faster-than-light travel. Before going whole hog and building an FTL starship, the world's governments decide to test the theory by pulling someone out of Earth's past. They settle on Titus Oates, an Arctic explorer who died on Robert Scott's polar mission in 1912; because his body was never found, they figured he was completely out of the biological and historical stream of things, and so snatching him wouldn't change anything. (It's worth noting here that the scientists in the book don't seem to be very good ones, though they're supposedly the best. Never mind that nothing on Earth is ever completely out of the life cycle; no one ever even comments on the classic time-travel-novel paradox they've gotten themselves into regarding why his body was never found. And that's par for the course for these geniuses.)
Oates's adjustment to the world in 2045 makes up the meat of the novel; in fact, we get so involved in character development that he doesn't even get to go on the foreshadowed exciting space adventure until four-fifths of the way through the (six-hundred-page!) book. Which is admittedly a departure from the Golden-Age-SciFi sensibility I'm attributing to the book, but on the other hand, putting a heroic, stereotypically manly figure like Titus Oates at the center of things makes it feel like we're on a heroic, stereotypically manly journey whether he's exploring himself and his new social situation or exploring a new world. And there's a lot to enjoy about Titus's inner journey: how he learns to think outside of himself, and the ways in which his thinking never changes; how advanced modern folk react to his antediluvian notions despite their determination to be understanding; ruminations on how a man known for stoic heroism might make his way differently than someone else of his era; all done with a nice ironic humor. (At least I hoped it was being ironic in, for instance, Titus's notion that Edwardian British men were absolutely straightforward...and in some instances I was probably only wishing it were ironic.)
Overall, Revise the World is quite good at a few of the things it sets out to achieve. It paints a relatively believable near future (and near future is the hardest future to do well), its exploration of different lenses on reality (and how we take them as truth) is interesting and well-thought-out, it has a few great jokes, and the author manages to engage the reader in her obvious feeling of having a rollicking good time playing with a nifty premise. But the novel falls down in the details, again and again; it's clumsy in pretty much every small way I could think of. The supporting characters are caricaturish, the dialogue frequently wooden, the pacing bizarre, the point of view inconsistent, and the philosophizing and psychologizing overly belabored, and there's a plot hole, inconsistency, or implausibility on nearly every page. (Not to mention the typos.) The ending doesn't cap the story arc (what there is of it); once the romantic plotline has been concluded, the narrative just stops without resolving the mysteries about the aliens that have been built up throughout the book. (Perhaps the author is planning a sequel...?)
Many of the book's problems could have been solved by a good edit. While I like Book View Café's direct-as-possible from-author-to-reader publishing philosophy in some respects, the interference of a traditional publishing house that's paying for paper and ink isn't always such a bad thing. A few memorable moments and the author's infectious sense of fun certainly gave me enjoyment in the reading, but it was counterbalanced by slogging through writing that could have been so much better with some polishing.
July 29, 2015
Why doesn’t Titus (who left England for the Antarctic in 1910) know about elevators? Why would he assume that doctors were due a social respect, which transcended their class (germ theory was just beginning to make its way). Before germ theory, physicians were ethically limited to letting blood (primum non nocere) and only had aspirin after 1897. Surgeons were a step below physicians, and a step above barbers, although probably not more valued than a good barber. Still, while the Scott Expedition research is admirable, it may have created the narrative’s main problem: Clough couldn’t let go of the research, and so made Titus Oates her POV character.
The Edwardianisms and Oates “heroic” struggle with his androcentrism wear thin by the end of the novel. We all want the reader to taste Oates, but this might have been accomplished more effectively in the dialog, and if Shell had been the POV character. It’s always hard to write transgender, but especially if you let romance rear its ugly head. I think you might see what I mean by comparing Connie Willis’s Blitz novel from her Oxford cycle—the reader gets a flavor for WWII England, without having to wash up afterwards.
I should also admit that this is the first, and possibly the only novel I’ll try to read electronically (Kindle). I like the fact that I can highlight a word and get a dictionary definition (providing it isn’t one of the Edwardianisms) but this doesn’t make up for the text formatting problems, at least with my reader. Because of this, I started the novel several months ago, and only finished it now because I was waiting for a book to come into my library. I decided to try the electronic reader because I like Clough’s work, and this novel isn’t available in print. I feel like a horrible curmudgeon saying this, but an electronic medium is an awful way to read a novel.
The Edwardianisms and Oates “heroic” struggle with his androcentrism wear thin by the end of the novel. We all want the reader to taste Oates, but this might have been accomplished more effectively in the dialog, and if Shell had been the POV character. It’s always hard to write transgender, but especially if you let romance rear its ugly head. I think you might see what I mean by comparing Connie Willis’s Blitz novel from her Oxford cycle—the reader gets a flavor for WWII England, without having to wash up afterwards.
I should also admit that this is the first, and possibly the only novel I’ll try to read electronically (Kindle). I like the fact that I can highlight a word and get a dictionary definition (providing it isn’t one of the Edwardianisms) but this doesn’t make up for the text formatting problems, at least with my reader. Because of this, I started the novel several months ago, and only finished it now because I was waiting for a book to come into my library. I decided to try the electronic reader because I like Clough’s work, and this novel isn’t available in print. I feel like a horrible curmudgeon saying this, but an electronic medium is an awful way to read a novel.
June 25, 2016
The audio book was good enough to finish, and Eric Garcia is a very good narrator. I thought she could have done a lot more with the story, and it got tiring being beaten over the head with Scott's inability to tone down his bigotry and sexism. The obviously intelligent man should have been able to learn from his mistakes and even seems to do so occasionally just to fall back into obliviousness for no explainable reason.
Read
August 1, 2009I recently read an awesome book by Brenda Clough called Revise the World. It's near-future SF, featuring the Antarctic explorer Titus Oates, and it fills me with astonishing glee. Note: This is an e-book only: http://www.bookviewcafe.com/option,co...
August 25, 2010
Not just for scifi fans, but the best book I've read this year.
Merged review:
Best science fiction I've read in years.
And not just for scifi fans. Anybody who loves great writing should read this book.
Merged review:
Best science fiction I've read in years.
And not just for scifi fans. Anybody who loves great writing should read this book.
May 29, 2013
While the protagonist's situation was interesting at the start, ultimately the developments didn't hold my interest.
find-and-read
July 12, 2012Polar exploration and spaceships? Relevant to my interests. DRM-free ebook for sale at Smashwords.
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