From Time to Time

This sequel to Time and Again was published 25 years after the original, and while it does have the same characters, it does not possess the same intensity and drive as the first book. Simon does time travel, and again meets with Rube. The purpose? To save the man who maybe could have stopped The Great War. But Rube also gives Si additional incentive. And if that isn’t interesting enough, why not add in the great ship, The Titanic? With all this going on, and with the wonderful characters developed in the first book, this sequel should have been a knockout, but alas, it is not. It bogs down in the middle, before it finally comes back to life at the very end. Real fans of first book will probably enjoy this one, too, but will likely be show more disappointed in its comparison to the first. show less

This sequel to Time and Again wasn‘t as compelling as the original story was. This time around, Si, the same main character in the original, time-travels to 1912 New York City. Not on a whim, of course, although he has his own motives for doing so.

It started out strong, but became weaker as I continued to read. I wonder if this would have been a stronger book if it had been written/published sooner after the original -- as it was, they were out about 20 years apart.

I had heard that this book was not nearly as good as it's predecessor, Time and Again. Since I didn't think Time and Again was so great, I wasn't even sure there was a point to reading this one. But I was curious, so I did. And in some ways, I actually thought this book was better than the first one, or at least it had more potential.

This book begins with a group of people gathering to compare evidence of what I'll call "echoes" from alternate timestreams. I thought this was a very interesting way to begin: those who had read Time and Again would, of course, suspect that the echoes were caused by Si Morley's presence in the 19th century, but group didn't seem to have any idea what was causing the echoes. If Finney had chosen to continue show more with the thread of this question, this could have been a really interesting book.

Unfortunately, this line of thinking is never really developed. Instead, Finney gives us something that is really just an echo of the first book. First Finney essentially changes the ending of Time and Again, so that the Project exists, and then sends Si back to the present because he wants to find out what's going on with his old friends. He finds Rube, who has evidence of a timestream where WWI never happened (this is the only furtherance we see of the plotline from the beginning) and Si agrees to go back to 1912 to see if he can prevent the Great War.

In some ways it was more interesting to follow Si on his first time travel adventure, when all he was really trying to do was observe, rather than change things. Ultimately, however, Si's efforts to change things don't amount to much, so all he really does is observe things in a different time, making this largely the same story that Finney told already, but with more unfulfilled potential. show less

This is the sequel to Finney's story "Time and Again" and was published in 1995, 25 years after the original and shortly before his death. It is set with the present being 3 or 4 years later than the prior book's 1970. When I started to read this I completely got sucked in and thought it was even better than the first. Unfortunately what seemed like an excellent story soon lost steam and went astray by the middle of the book. There is some excellent intrigue in here including bits involving the Titanic, a mysterious operative or two, some good bits on early aviators, and the New York Theater and Vaudeville scene of 1912, so I don't want to really knock the book, but some of it such as the theater stuff goes on too long. One of the show more strengths from the first book that is missing here is the romance that developed between two of the principal characters.

The characters and setup in the opening pages here showed a lot of promise. History was getting reset and some people were noticing. Some are investigating what is going on in their small way. One old gentlemen has dual memories concerning the Titanic. He has extraordinarily vivid memories of skipping a day of school and being at the dock with his father as The Titanic came into New York and the passengers disembarking. Yet, he also knows the ship sunk. These characters then disappeared from the story. I wanted more of them. We see an important event from the first book that was reset, get reset again (slightly confusing). The book didn't quite start sinking like the Titanic; more like it was adrift without quite enough steam. A big idea within this book is that World War One was avoided - it didn't happen according to some evidence in the story but then it did because someone travelled back in time and changed something.

I would not recommend that this book be read as a standalone. It could be ... but so much groundwork was established in the first novel "Time and Again" that this book would come across as much weaker without that background.

An enjoyable book, but as I have noted, just not up to par with the first. The end was OK and seemed to leave the door open for another sequel. show less

"It was glorious, all black dark and flowering color, marching leather shuffling on cobbles, drums banging, cymbals smashing. Only a political parade, the election weeks ahead, but fun. Another band moving past now, this one in tall flat-topped shakos with plumes and tiny peaks, the snares rattling, lots of powerful horn and trumpet and that bell-like thing that tops it all off. Splendid blaring sound, very close, and once again that night I felt the actual chill right up the spine, and the slightly embarrassing eye sting, of easy emotion about nothing." p34

A group of seemingly regular people meet after hours in the basement of a university to discuss matters otherworldly. One has a photo from a Clark Gable movie that doesn't exist; one show more has a campaign button from Kennedy's second term; one has a recording from a man who saw the Titanic pull into New York. They are the remnants of "The Project", a former secret government organization dedicated to traveling back in time with supposed ulterior motives.

This sequel to "Time and Again" has our protagonist Simon Morley living happily in 1880s New York, having ensured that "The Project", never comes into existence. Someone travels back though to put the original timeline back in place. Through a series of events Morley travels forward in time only to find himself confronted with the same group he tried to disband. He is then convinced that he could help to avert World War I and travels back to New York in 1912. He is set to find an agent due to travel to Europe who has important papers that will quell any ideas of warmongering among the governments of the day. Simon does his best to track down the mysterious "Z" and eventually finds himself aboard the RMS Titanic, knowing full well what her fate entails.

There are some beautiful descriptions in this book as well as historic photos, ads and drawings that help to give a sense of the atmosphere and attitude of the time. They show a people dressed to the nines and a world opening up with the advent of aviation.
Simon also happens to run into some well known personages such as Al Jolson, Teddy Roosevelt. We see history through his eyes when he meets aviator Frank Coffyn and wonders when Charles Lindburgh is going to show up.

I'm a fan of speculative fiction and loved the little details that Finney inserts, having obviously done quite a bit of research on the period for Simon to have so many cultural experiences in 1912. We get a sense of how he travels back in time but much is left to the imagination when delving deeper into the how and why.

The problem with the book is Finney seems to get wrapped up in his historic figures and photos. The details are wonderful and the reader feels they're being safely led down one path when suddenly the book ends. Finney's conclusion leaves much to be desired as well as room for another book, in which the whole mess of Simon's time traveling experiences might have been explained. show less

This was a disappointing sequel to the author's Time and Again. It started off very well with tantalising clues about fake historical memories lodged in the minds of rare individuals, e.g. memories of the Titanic safely docking in New York or of JFK's second term re-election in 1964. The first 130 pages were very good. But then the novel digressed into a social history of New York of 1912, with a particular obsessive interest in vaudeville. The author clearly did extensive research, but this halted the plot almost totally for 100 pages. The final resolution on the Titanic seemed rather rushed and rather unconvincing. A pity.

Although I haven't read the predecessor, I had high hopes for this time travel novel. Well, those hopes were tough to fulfill; this book was a small disappointment. DO NOT READ THIS BOOK FOR THE PLOT!! This novel is for time travel geeks only (like me)! Finney can paint a humanly realistic mural of a historic setting in a unique first person narrative, and that's where this book shines. But it lacks a reasonable plot. Many of the character decisions are rash, half-hearted attempts to do something, usually accompanied with some driving force, either a desperate ploy to avoid futility or an obsessive zeal for some trivial detail. The main character seems to tell himself on every page, "I have no idea what I'm supposed to do here, so I'll show more just play along until something happens." Like a session of any 'adventure' computer game (Myst and Starship Titanic come to mind), the hero stumbles around haphazardly, lost in a puzzle as big as the world, until he succeeds out of serendipity rather than clever resourcefulness. Despite the plot's shortcomings, I did enjoy the playfulness with which Finney approaches history. He treats it as a thing of wonder, like the awe a child feels upon visiting Disneyland. He truly loves the past, loves thinking about the past, and loves using words to turn a time period in his hands like a whimsical toy. If it is possible to feel nostalgic about an era 70 years before I was born, this book has accomplished that. [Pasted from my blog from the original 8 June 2006 post] show less