I don’t have a classical education, meaning that I don’t know many of
the literary classics of the past several thousand years, and while I
know many of the names dropped in this book, they didn’t have the impact
they might have had if I was familiar. I also know American history in
passing, and only some of the famous names were familiar. But while the
story visits so many of these historic characters, and rescues artworks
from history, this book is more about how characters react to the
history. More recent acts, like ill-fated civil rights marches, hurt
more, compared to the destruction of the library in Alexandria. I wonder
how much of the events were fabrication versus speculation versus
documented personality and location traits. I liked the ways they got
out of predicaments by using time travel, borrowing some techniques from
Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. However, I found the characters were
too casual about it all. They were excited to meet people from history,
but took everything in stride, and used Shel’s father as an excuse,
rather than doing a real search. The people they met were curious about
their cameras and cell phones, but barely anything more. Even the police
that captured them weren’t inclined to call in experts. Certain events
held some awe, but I suppose they couldn’t spend all their time gawking.
In the end, I liked how they maneuvered history to their benefit, with a
Back to the Future III vibe.
Spoiler review:
It was neat
to see so much history. This story was the exact opposite of
The
Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, where time passes her by, and we don’t
get to witness any history of significance. There, it was about love and
survival. This story is about cramming as much history into the book as
possible. Fortunately it also has character, and some of the history is
recurring enough to make an impression.
The best parts of the
story were when Shel and Dave react to history, either participating in
it, getting caught by it, or maneuvering their way out of it.
While their excuse is to go back in time to find Shel’s missing father
Michael, they spend very little time on that exploit. Michael invented a
time machine, and after disappearing, Shel gets a note to destroy the
three remaining devices. Of course he doesn’t, seeing a chance to rescue
his father from whatever prevented him from coming back. In fact, I
don’t think we get to find out why he didn’t return, except to say that
he fell in love with the Italian village near Galileo and grew old
there, and eventually died.
But the book is titled Time Travelers
Never Die, because anybody with a converter can go back and talk to
them. The catch is that paradoxes aren’t allowed to occur, sometimes
causing people who try to create one to die, another time dumping Shel
into the ocean. It’s a neat way to try and limit any damage they could
try to cause.
Shel and Dave make their mark, though, in small
ways, taking on roles of people who might have been there but didn’t
matter, or shoving their way between people who were there.
They
spend a lot of time in Alexandria, meeting with Aristarchus before the
library was burned by the Christians. Aristarchus greets them as fellow
scholars, and they take pictures of previously unknown plays to bring
back with them, essentially allowing them to survive the chaos to come
in later centuries. Aristarchus isn’t nearly as shocked or terrified as
he should have been, but maybe that’s because of his inquisitive nature.
Meanwhile, Shel and Dave take it all in with excitement, but maintained
a professionalism all the while. It seemed just another day in the life
for both sides.
There is a subplot to this as they anonymously
give the plays to an established Greek literarian, who is skeptical but
ultimately won over by their seeming authenticity, helped by a computer
analysis program. She comes under fire for accepting them by the
academic community, but those who go see plays enjoy them. In the end,
David brings Aristarchus into the future to see one of them performed
live.
The only time Dave gets passionate is during the civil
rights march in Selma Alabama. He is so caught up in the march that he
ends up at the front line, where he hits a police officer and is struck
to the ground. Of course the police are skeptical of him, with his fancy
converter and cell phone, not to mention his futuristic driver’s
license. Shel has to do some fancy time traveling to get him out of
jail, going back in time to get a converter before they use it, and
remembering to put it back afterwards, much like in Bill and Ted’s
Excellent Adventure. Shel has to go back multiple times to figure out
what happened to Dave, and manages to break him out of prison with the
converter.
Similarly, Dave has to rescue Shel when his converter
stops working as they try to visit Thomas Paine in American
pre-revolutionary history. He does the same when Shel is caught by the
Inquisition.
For the most part, Shel and Dave visit historical
figures well outside their normal ranges, where they would have been at
their peak historical significance. They meet Churchill in New York as a
member of Parliament, Galileo after he was put in house arrest, Paine
before the revolution, Benjamin Franklin before he discovered
electricity, and so on.
The book takes a darker turn when Shel
turns up dead, his house hit by lightning, and his body charred beyond
recognition. Dave finds out that Shel has been spending time in the
twenty second century, living a good but lonely life, but will
eventually return to this fate. The next time travel sequences betray
this anxiety, as Shel wants to come back to the woman he just proposed
to, but is afraid to get caught in the house, and is even more afraid to
cause a paradox.
So Dave takes matters into his own hands,
enlisting the help of Helen, Shel’s fiancé, after the funeral. He shows
her the past, and they search Shel’s bucket list of times/places, but
only find him watching Socrates’ last moments, before he drinks the
poison that will end his life. It’s a poignant moment, knowing his fate
but accepting it the way they couldn’t accept what was happening in
Selma during the march and riots.
In the end, Helen and Dave find
a charred body in a highway accident, change Shel’s dental records with
those of the other victim, and cheat Shel’s fate. He and Helen go off
traveling through time together, much as Doc and Clara did at the end of
Back to the Future III. They even leave Dave a note in his apartment.
Dave shows his own sometimes girlfriend how to travel into the
past, and she loves it, too. So it turns out that truly, Time Travelers
Never Die, though I suppose they grow old, like Shel’s father, and end
up settling down in a quaint peaceful time to die peacefully of their
own choice.
