SFF Hot from Printers: New Releases discussion

This month we have four novellas. They are all quite short, so I decided no need for a special spoilers thread, but use spoiler tags instead

I've already read this one, but I will re-read it with the group, cause I dearly enjoyed it. Who has the chance to get hold of the audiobook should go for it. Adrian narrates it himself and he does a good job with his lovely British intonation.

Gabi wrote: "Adrian narrates it himself and he does a good job with his lovely British intonation."

Sounds great, no pun intended

My library doesn't have this one. I requested it...

eta: I just checked and it was approved! But they still don't have it yet...

I’m in the same boat, I requested once we decided to read it but they haven’t processed it yet and might not (I request the max number of books every month 😂).

Rebecca wrote: "I’m in the same boat, I requested once we decided to read it but they haven’t processed it yet and might not (I request the max number of books every month 😂)."

Go you! That's awesome. I guess I'm pretty lucky that my library usually has everything I want to read, but for some reason Tchaikovsky just doesn't seem to be an auto-buy for them. But at least I have the request slots available to use!

This is a novella, so do not be afraid to get it later in the month, for it will be a quick read

I started it today. At the beginning the protagonist says "a new model I picked up a month ago, rusting in a Soviet barn back in nineteen sixty-two." I'm not sure why he chose it over 60s models from other countries, because the Soviet system of spare parts was in chronic deficit, so an order was set, the first to get stuff was exports, than military, etc and the last was agriculture. The USSR produced more tractors every (!) year than the total number o tractor in France - that's because they don't lasted long. I guess the author assumed they were as good as Soviet tanks, but that's a misconception

I just listened to it for the second time and after some 150 books I've read this year it is still my favourite. There is some Connie Willis-ness about it, some understatement-Britishness which gives it together with Adrian Tchaikovsky's voice in the audionarration a well-rounded perfection I'm craving for. Totally delightful.

Gabi wrote: "Totally delightful."

Agreed, even while some of the choices (view spoiler)[like getting Stalin and Hitler where one need thugs (hide spoiler)] where weird, they fit well into the story

Oleksandr wrote: "Gabi wrote: "Totally delightful."

Agreed, even while some of the choices [spoilers removed] where weird, they fit well into the story"e

I guess that's because those are such typical topics for timetravel. He put all the clichés for this subgenre in his novella.

Gabi wrote: "I guess that's because those are such typical topics for timetravel. He put all the clichés for this subgenre in his novella.
"

In the 90s I adored Time Patrol, which sounds like a more serious version of what Tchaikovsky did here, but more interested in key time points (which allowed for entertaining studying of history). And with romance part I initially expected (view spoiler)[All You Zombies idea (hide spoiler)] that shows that there are some cliché triggers

I would love to read this with you, but no Kindle version available a library. I have written the source, but I am not sure what will happen. They have failed recently (with other books) to obtain the Kindle versions.

Have fun. It will probably go on sale at some point and then I will get to read it.

My library doesn't have this one either, and the ebook was something ridiculous like 10€, so I hemmed and hawed and didn't know what to do. On the other hand, it is AT doing a time war novella, something I always enjoy (I liked This Is How You Lose the Time War, for example). On the other hand, 10€ for a novella is highway robbery.

In the end I caved and shelled out the 10€. I don't know if it was worth it. I mean, sure, it was a fun read, but this isn't going to be a future classic. This is a light work, a bit too full of pop culture references, without really anything mind-blowing. It played with the time-travel tropes in an entertaining way, but also went a bit too far with the tongue-in-cheek attitude (yeah, I'm thinking about that bit with the Stalins and a Hitler).

The ending was pretty good, though. I thought (view spoiler)[ that Zoe would turn out to have played a long con and had been on the Utopians' side all along, and trick the protagonist into falling in love with her and having unprotected sex after all. But this was a far better ending. The Utopians could be right bastards, too! (hide spoiler)]

Oleksandr wrote: "I guess the author assumed they were as good as Soviet tanks, but that's a misconception"

No, I'm pretty sure the author knew that Soviet tractors were unreliable and pains in the ass, and that's exactly what the protagonist wanted: he enjoyed repairing the thing over and over again, since he did have all the time in the world. I mean,
he calls the damn thing "The Soviet Speedster"! If that isn't sarcasm, I don't know what is. Also, the protagonist daydreams at one point of acquiring an even older and worse model of that Soviet tractor.

Antti, I feel your pain about the price! Try to get access to a good US library and at least some of your problems will be solved.

I agree it won't be a classic, but so far it is the best 2021 novella I've read.

As for tractor, I guess you're correct even if he talks elsewhere that he tries to get best from each time period

So I got my library to purchase it….but somehow a bunch of other people got in line ahead of me and there is a ten week wait. :-P

Kristenelle wrote: "So I got my library to purchase it….but somehow a bunch of other people got in line ahead of me and there is a ten week wait. :-P"

Yes, this happens, but no solution is perfect

Now that I've had a couple of days to think about the book, I've come to the conclusion that this book's plot made no sense at all.

(view spoiler)[ I don't mean the Time War or the Utopia, but the protagonist hanging out in the farm, killing all the other time travellers and altering timelines so that their time machine was never invented. Nothing about that makes internal sense.

First of all, the past is already broken into these little shards, mostly just some days or weeks long - there shouldn't be enough time to alter that past in order to make the time machine not get invented. Second, it's stated that when you travel through time, you get disentangled from continuity, so changing the past shouldn't affect anyone already travelling in time. Therefore, unless their first trip was to the End of Time, the protagonist should meet all these different travellers all over history. And let's not forget the big one: if all these Greeks or Neanderthals or Victorians could invent the time machine, why didn't they do so in the original timeline? If they only appear in the altered timelines, why didn't they take part in the Continuity War (or, indeed, start their own Continuity War?).
(hide spoiler)]

I mean, yeah, I get that this is a humorous tongue-in-cheek book, but I still would've appreciated if it had made some sense. I'm actually somewhat annoyed that this book turned out to be built around The Rule of Funny, as TV Tropes calls it: logic can get thrown out of the window, as long a you can make a joke. And it's not like the humor is Pratchett quality or anything: this feels more like I had spent a day reading a meme webpage.

Great questions, Antti!

My view
(view spoiler)[Antti wrote: "the past is already broken into these little shards, mostly just some days or weeks long - there shouldn't be enough time to alter that past in order to make the time machine not get invented"

I guess most shards are longer, like the one from which the first time traveler we meet came. Or at least they have memories. And quite possible each shard have a potential to grow into a full timeline
Antti wrote: " Second, it's stated that when you travel through time, you get disentangled from continuity, so changing the past shouldn't affect anyone already travelling in time. "

Therefore you kill them upon arrival, and then go back to change their time
Antti wrote: " if all these Greeks or Neanderthals or Victorians could invent the time machine, why didn't they do so in the original timeline?"

Maybe they did or maybe the smaller is a shard the easier to travel - like you will have much more water travel on archipelago
(hide spoiler)]

(view spoiler)[I don't think the rationale for killing time travelers is about the past, but the future. Even though the protagonist calls it "The End of Time" it isn't really, it's just the end of the History (or so he suspects until being introduced to the future utopia). So he's protecting the future from humanity reaching forward to the era where time continuity isn't broken and then deciding to move there and colonize it.

I do think your summary of the other plot holes makes sense, I just enjoyed it enough I didn't think about them (hide spoiler)]

Kalin wrote: "I do think your summary of the other plot holes makes sense, I just enjoyed it enough I didn't think about them"

My approach is similar. After all it is largely a parody

Well, my library finally got a Kindle version last week, but there are too many holds on it. I will try to read it later.

I finally started this! I'm about 20% and kind of digging it. It seems to be a thought experiment more than anything at this point. But it's an interesting thought experiment.

Kristenelle wrote: "I finally started this! I'm about 20% and kind of digging it. It seems to be a thought experiment more than anything at this point. But it's an interesting thought experiment."

Yes a thought experiment as well as making fun of time-travel sub-genre

Wow, this is so nihilistic! But I'm pretty nihilistic and it is kind of working for me, but that's also a little uncomfortable. 😅(I'm at 43%)

(view spoiler)[ I feel like the way time travel functioned asked us to just accept too much. Time travel takes you out of the continuum and you continue to exist no matter what? Ok... Utopia can continue to exist after its progenitors cease to exist? Ok...The Causality war "broke" time, but time travelers keep showing up? Ok... And then it is still useful to go back in those time shards and stop the invention of time travel? Uhhhh...

I was wondering why Zoe and the MC didn't just kill themselves. Seems like that would have been the simplest solution. Or maybe the utopians went back in time before they did that?

But I mean, ultimately time travel doesn't ever actually make much sense. I liked that this story really explored how wrong it could go and how it wouldn't just be one person with one machine.

And the writing was really humorous and nihilistic. It started reminding me of Kurt Vonnegut. I think it was trying to do something similar, but I think I don't vibe a ton with Tchaikovsky's prose. There is something dry and foreign to it. Maybe I'm just not British enough. Because I find Vonnegut's prose to be much more readable and relatable while doing similar things. (hide spoiler)]

Kristenelle, the solution you suggest is hard to accept but more important, if any time traveler will come after that all his labors were in vain

Oleksandr wrote: "Kristenelle, the solution you suggest is hard to accept but more important, if any time traveler will come after that all his labors were in vain"

True, but in theory he would eventually die anyway and that would still be true. When is it safe for him die? Or would he really live forever because he is outside of time?

Maybe he is eternal (even if absent in utopia), but more likely, he has an attitude "over my dead body"

I think it was kind of implied he was immortal, since time didn't really progress back at his farm the way it usually does.

I didn't even consider Kristenelle's solution, since that would've been so off-character for the MC. I mean, he's basically a psychopath with delusions of grandeur and an inflated sense of his own importance, not to mention an ego the size of Eurasia: not a sort of person who would sacrifice himself for any reason.

Yeah….I was trying to perceive him in a complicated but sympathetic way… I wanted to believe that he had a complicated morality where he really believed the best thing was for humanity to end and was living altruistically in a sense. Seems like he was just a raging narcissistic psychopath though. :-P

Kristenelle wrote: "Yeah….I was trying to perceive him in a complicated but sympathetic way…"

Me too. Yes, he is a psychopath and a sociopath, but he is a protagonist and by default I, as a reader, root for them (even if in some cases I think "when they finally be done with you!")

I think there was a point in MC's life when he honestly did believe he was doing the right thing and protecting the future. But by the time the book's events happen, he's way past that point and now he's only using that justification as an excuse to be the ultimate judge, jury and executioner of the time/space continuum.