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Samurai, Octopuses, and Time-Traveling Lesbians: An Interview with Annalee Newitz and Ali Wilgus

2019 has been a wild year so far, and it’s made a lot of us crave well…a different timeline. Thankfully, Tor authors Annalee Newitz and Alison Wilgus have wrote this year about one of our all-time favorite SFF subjects: TIME TRAVEL.


So…Why time travel?

Annalee Newitz (The Future of Another Timeline):

Honestly, I never wanted to write about time travel—it’s so difficult to plug up all the plotholes. But then I conceived of this alternate timeline, where my characters live, and realized that the only way it could have happened was because of time travel. So I kind of tricked myself into it.

Alison Wilgus (Chronin, Volumes 1 and 2):
Place holder  of - 27It’s a mechanism that keeps sneaking up on me honestly—I’ll start out building a story about some other thing entirely, and then whoops, turns out that time travel is once again necessary to make the machinery of the story work. Different systems, different genres, radically different plots, but I just can’t seem to resist hurtling my characters around through time. That said, I do think there are some core themes that knit all these stories together, themes which I’m clearly interested in — most time travel stories are about exploration, or regret, or control. Chronin has a little bit of all three — the mechanism is a time travel program used by academics, and the antagonists are either picking at the scabs of the past or desperately trying to reshape the future.

What were some of the challenges of writing time travel? 

Image Placeholder of - 86AN: Definitely plotting was the hardest part for me. In the world I built, time travel is mundane and has been going on for thousands of years. So everybody knows that history is constantly being edited, though there is some debate over how much and how difficult it is. Plus, it takes years to become a time traveler so it’s not like anybody can just jump into a Machine and muck things up. I kept finding myself having to explain how time travel works, including paradoxes and limitations and the Machines themselves—and that’s hard to do without boring infodumps. I still think there are some plotholes in the book. The fun part was researching the different periods my characters visit, like Chicago in 1893 and Petra in 13 BCE. I love research. It’s my favorite way to procrastinate on writing.

AW: So I’ll confess that I’ve been reading your book, and one of the things that’s really impressed me about it so far is that you aren’t shying away from the consequences of your conceit—you’ve clearly put a lot of thought into how this technology would have shaped the world and the perspectives of your characters. It’s a great illustration of what I see as the real key of building a good time travel story: coming up with a system that compliments the story you want to tell, that is interesting to learn about in the text instead of a chore, and that only breaks in ways that your readers don’t care about. Because the thing is, unless you’re writing a very specific kind of closed-loop-zero-free-will plot, basically all time travel stories are kind of bullshit if you think about them too hard; your time travel magic systems will break if you pull at them the right way. They key is to kind of narratively wave your arms around and yell such that your reader isn’t looking for that loose thread—ideally, they’re too caught up in your cool book to notice. (And to be fair, a version of this is true for nearly all works of fiction, it’s only that travel stories are especially vulnerable—so many moving parts, so much complicated causality!)

What are some of your favorite (or least favorite!) time travel stories?

AN: I’m a huge fan of the feminist time travel tradition, so I love all the classics like Octavia Butler’s Kindred, Joanna Russ’ The Female Man, and Marge Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time. Plus, modern masterpieces like Lauren Beukes’ The Shining Girls and Charles Yu’s How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe.

And there are so many more! I’m a huge fan of the bureaucratic time travel system that Kelly Robson invented for Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach. Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone’s This Is How You Lose the Time War was fascinating and I’m still mulling it over. And obviously, I freakin love Doctor Who. I even put a futuristic tool that’s basically a sonic screwdriver in my novel.

AW: See, this is great, because now I have a few new titles to put on my to-read list. As for me…well, on the books front, the classic go-to is Connie Willis for a reason, her Oxford stories are all so interesting. I was told to read them by my friend Gina Gagliano back when I first started working on Chronin in my mid-twenties—she was like, “People are going to assume that you were influenced by these books, so you should probably read them anyway.”

I’ll admit that, as a former film-student, movies are also a huge influence for me. The Back to the Future movies are classics for a reason, they hit all the major sub-genres of time travel stories and were definitely a huge influence on me as a kid. I absolutely adore The Edge of Tomorrow, which I think was bizarrely retitled “Live. Die. Repeat” at some point. It had all of the time-loop-story-competency-porn of Groundhog Day with bonus aliens and the terrifying badassery of Emily Blunt’s character, Rita. I also have a lot of respect for the film Primer as a tightly-written closed-loop story, but I wouldn’t say that I enjoy it exactly—it’s like the vegetables of time travel movies for me.

I also really love some of the time travel Star Trek episodes. They’re just so much FUN. Star Trek is already so hand-wavey about its own science fiction to begin with, it’s a perfect tonal fit for “Don’t Worry About It” time travel nonsense. “Yesterday’s Enterprise” from TNG and “Children of Time” from DS9 are a couple of my favorites, they’re so deliciously melodramatic but also, have some genuinely wonderful character moments and compelling moral dilemmas.

If you could time travel to any period when would you go to?

AN: I want to visit Cahokia, an indigenous city near today’s East St. Louis, which was the biggest city in North America in the 1000s. Its people built massive city grids, huge earthen pyramids, and had a very cosmopolitan social life. But we don’t know very much about them, and they left no writing behind. I just want to visit the city on an ordinary day and say hi to everybody (assuming my time machine helps me speak a proto-Siouan language). And also ask them ALL THE QUESTIONS ABOUT EVERYTHING.

AW: Oh, that sounds fantastic. I mean, the past is always unknowable, but some things have been more thoroughly lost to us than others. My first thought when I saw this question was that I’d love to visit a Neanderthal community, and see what their lives were like. My second thought was embarrassingly Basic but…listen, I wanna see some dinosaurs, okay? I never really left that phase behind me. And if the future is an option? I’d be desperate to travel forward to when we discover some evidence of life on a planet other than Earth. In my heart, I’m kin with Eleanor Arroway.

Both of your books also feature LGBTQ+ characters—was that a conscious decision, or always a part of how you approached the stories?

AN: I think we all know that time travel is very gay. I mean, that’s just a fact. As evidence, I will cite David Gerrold’s classic early 1970s novel The Man Who Folded Himself, about a guy who time travels so much that he meets dozens of versions of himself and they buy a giant mansion together and have gay orgies.

I think we all know that time travel is very gay

Also, the whole Doctor Who/Captain Jack situation is another piece of evidence. And various subplots on Legends of Tomorrow. Plus, as Amal El-Mohtar pointed out in a recent article, this year alone there were like four new novels with time-traveling lesbians. It’s gays all the way down.

AW: Yep yes enthusiastically seconded, this here is a thoroughly queer genre. If anything, Chronin is a testament to this fact — I started working on it over a decade ago, when I was still telling myself how very straight I was (spoiler: I was incorrect). There’s a secondary pairing in the book which I always intended to be gay, but at the time I had no self-awareness whatsoever that I was writing a deeply queer story that was full of queer characters. That realization came more than halfway through the process of drawing it, and involved a pretty major revision of the second book in order to be more deliberate and effective with what I was doing. It all was much more closely tied to my own experience than I’d realized, and my own experience turned out to be a deeply gay one.

Did you see any particular challenges or benefits to adding LGBTQ+ characters to stories that deal with different historical periods?

AN: My main goal in this novel was to center groups who are traditionally ignored in time travel stories. So for example, the pivotal historical events that change the timeline in my novel involve women’s reproductive rights and universal suffrage. When women get the vote at the same time as freed slaves in 1870, Harriet Tubman becomes a senator and changes the course of history. But as a result, there’s a stronger anti-feminist backlash in the 20th century, which results in abortion never being legalized. There’s a trope in time travel stories now about how people of color and queer people have a hard time going back into history, but my point is that there have always been pockets of resistance and tolerance, and we do have a place in history if you just look.

AW: It’s easy to forget how aggressively curated the history that’s taught to us in schools and by pop culture tends to be — as a white American from the Boston area, I had a very specific version of the world presented to me that centered a white, straight, colonial perspective and often erased or mischaracterized everyone else. There have always been queer people, and the homophobia that’s caused so much damage for, say, the people in my own circle, is a relatively recent invention that was then forced onto other cultures and communities. The cast of my book is a mix of time travelers from the future and natives to the past, and I didn’t want to present queerness as a modern invention — my book is set in Japan, during a period when romantic attachments between men were very common.

What are some of your favorite science fiction approaches to LGBTQ+ identities and issues?

AN: I’m not too picky. I like it when a story with an ensemble cast assumes that there will be queer characters and romances. Basically, give me some gay love stories and hot smooches and I’m happy. Throw in some human-alien romance, or human-monster romance and I’m even happier.

AW: Same Gay Hat. Also, while I both understand and accept and support other people’s desire to explore queer trauma through fiction, I personally prefer to write and read stories where my characters’ problems are unrelated to their queerness. Which doesn’t mean that I want only sanitized, frictionless narratives, just that I want the friction to be coming from someplace else. I deeply, deeply love Anne Leckie’s novels, in which everyone is gay and awful things are constantly happening. Those awful things are just, you know… “My best friend’s dad was murdered and he isn’t taking it well” or “I used to be a space ship and now I’m not and it feels really weird.”

What is your dream project – what would you like to tackle but haven’t had the time or opportunity?

AN: I really want to write a non-fiction book about social behavior and communication in non-human animals, maybe ants or crows or cats. Or all three! Octopuses and whales are interesting to me too. I’m a science journalist and I try to keep up with the latest research on animal communication. At some point, I’d like to spend a field season with scientists who are spending time among the animals they study, listening to them and observing. I’m so sick of hearing humans talk about themselves; it would be nice to spend a few weeks listening to what other species have to say.

AW: I’ve had some short fiction published over the years, but for the most part my professional work has been All Comics All The Time. This is the most cliche possible sentiment, but I’m trying hard to make space in my life for writing a prose novel—I have a story about lesbian wizard podcasters that’s been rattling around in the back of my head for a while, and I think it’ll be a lot of fun to write once I have the momentum going. I adore comics, don’t get me wrong—I edit them as well as writing and drawing them, I made a podcast about the graphic novel industry, like I have leaned all the way in—but the medium is better suited to certain kinds of stories and ways of telling them. I’ve been saying “This is the year I will Do A Novel” for basically a decade, but….okay THIS TIME I mean it.

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The Power of a Great Time Travel Story

The Power of a Great Time Travel Story

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Time-Travelers-AlmanacWritten by Ann VanderMeer

Fiction is to the grown man what play is to the child; it is there that he changes the atmosphere and tenor of his life. —Robert Louis Stevenson

A few months ago I was interviewed on BBC4 Radio along with Dr. Ronald Mallett, a physicist from the University of Connecticut. Our subject was time travel. Some might find it odd that a fiction editor promoting a new anthology would be appearing on a show with a noted scientist to talk honestly about time travel. But Dr. Mallett isn’t just any scientist. His life was changed completely after encountering The Time Machine by H. G. Wells.

Prior to the interview I had spent several months completely engrossed in the subject. Time travel stories exhibit an astonishing variety. The very conundrum of time travel—Can you actually change the past or future? What happens if you meet yourself in the past?—has resulted in a number of amazing stories. Time machines may be the most popular vehicle for such travel, but hidden doors, mutations, or rips in the space-time continuum can also send travelers hurtling into unexpected moments of history—or into the future. And not all time travelers go willingly.

Then I read Dr. Mallet’s book, Time Traveler: A Scientist’s Personal Mission to Make Time Travel a Reality. When Mallett was ten years old, his father passed away suddenly of a heart attack. Greatly affected, he lost himself in reading, a pastime his father strongly encouraged, and discovered The Time Machine. Motivated by a powerful desire to see his father again, and maybe even prevent his death at the all-too-early age of thirty-three, Mallett dreamed that he could build his own time machine. As he has said, “My fundamental goal in life has always been to build a time machine” (quoted from the YouTube video, “Dr. Mallett Builds a Time Machine”).

As we talked in the interview, it struck me that reading a science fiction story so deeply shaped his future and set him on this journey. Often stories are influenced by real life, but in this case, a story that was over 100 years old not only gave hope to a young boy, but eventually led him to become part of a team of scientists trying to create a real, working time machine.

I was happy to discover that all of Dr. Mallet’s classic favorite time travel stories were in The Time Traveler’s Almanac. And he shared with me that he found many new stories in the anthology that he enjoyed.

Some of the best time travel stories, indeed the best science fiction stories, are about the connections that people make with each other through science. Reaching into the past to better understand history, sending a message or warning to prior generations or just having the opportunity for a do-over. For more than a century, readers have been enthralled by time travel stories. Whether adventurous, cautionary, or thrilling, these imaginative what-if tales transport us to other worlds.

Today, time travel is as familiar a concept to readers as space travel. Such stories are more popular than ever, including such recent bestsellers as Stephen King’s 11/22/63, Charles Yu’s How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, and Audrey Niffenegger’s The Time Traveler’s Wife attest. The resurgence of iconic TV series like “Doctor Who” has fed into this trend. Time travel also has been popular with teens ever since the publication of such classics as Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time, extending to the present-day and such popular youth novels as When You Reach Me by Newberry winner Rebecca Stead. Meanwhile, movies like The Terminator, Back to the Future, Looper, Time Bandits, Donnie Darko, and Safety Not Guaranteed have shown the cinematic range of such tales.

The power of a great time travel story is that not only can it change the reader, as we see with Dr. Mallett, it can also change the course of the world.

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* This post originally appeared in the March 17, 2014 newsletter.

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Time Salvager eBook is Now on Sale for $2.99

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Time Salvager by Wesley ChuThe ebook edition of Wesley Chu’s Time Siege is on sale for only $2.99!*

About Time Salvager: In a future when Earth is a toxic, abandoned world and humanity has spread into the outer solar system to survive, the tightly controlled use of time travel holds the key maintaining a fragile existence among the other planets and their moons. James Griffin-Mars is a chronman–a convicted criminal recruited for his unique psychological makeup to undertake the most dangerous job there is: missions into Earth’s past to recover resources and treasure without altering the timeline. Most chronmen never reach old age, and James is reaching his breaking point.

On a final mission that is to secure his retirement, James meets an intriguing woman from a previous century, scientist Elise Kim, who is fated to die during the destruction of an oceanic rig. Against his training and his common sense, James brings her back to the future with him, saving her life, but turning them both into fugitives. Remaining free means losing themselves in the wild and poisonous wastes of Earth, and discovering what hope may yet remain for humanity’s home world.

Buy Time Salvager today:

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Sale ends July 29th

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Sneak Peek: Time Siege by Wesley Chu

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Time Siege by Wesley Chu

Having been haunted by the past and enslaved by the present, James Griffin-Mars is taking control of the future.

Earth is a toxic, sparsely inhabited wasteland–the perfect hiding place for a fugitive ex-chronman to hide from the authorities.

James has allies, scientists he rescued from previous centuries: Elise Kim, who believes she can renew Earth, given time; Grace Priestly, the venerated inventor of time travel herself; Levin, James’s mentor and former pursuer, now disgraced; and the Elfreth, a population of downtrodden humans who want desperately to believe that James and his friends will heal their ailing home world.

James also has enemies. They include the full military might of benighted solar system ruled by corporate greed and a desperate fear of what James will do next. At the forefront of their efforts to stop him is Kuo, the ruthless security head, who wants James’s head on a pike and will stop at nothing to obtain it.

Time Siege is a fast-paced time-travel adventure from Wesley Chu—available July 12th. Please enjoy this excerpt.

ONE

THE SLOG

Roman struggled to keep his footing in the ankle-deep slog of the muddy riverbank. The tainted water, mixed with rubble, dirt, and debris, had been accumulating broken bits of the ruined city for centuries. The resulting mixture was a slow-moving speckled brown mush that folded over itself repeatedly as it flowed down the steep slope.

He slipped on a metal plate embedded in the goo and fell onto his belly, sliding several meters and losing whatever small progress he had made climbing up the hill. He spat out a mouthful of the gunk and cursed as a mushy tide swelled, rolling over and caking him in its grime.

Black abyss, he was going to smell like shit until his next shower. Unfortunately, his next hygiene maintenance wasn’t scheduled until the morning after tomorrow. That meant he was going to stink like a latrine until then. Probably meant he was going to have to rack outside of quarters tonight as well.

Someone above him laughed. “Chaki, you bunking with Roman, right? Have fun.”

Chaki’s face appeared at the top of the hill as Roman tried to reclaim his footing. “Damn clumsy fodder. Stop playing in the mud. The collie’s here.”

Roman looked at the green metal plate that precipitated his fall and scowled. There were some letters on it in an archaic form of solar English. He wiped the gunk off with his sleeve and read it slowly: NEW LONDON.

“Are we on the right continent?” he asked in a loud voice. “I thought we’re on one of the Americas.”

“What kind of a stupid question is that?” Renee called down.

“I don’t know,” Roman said. “This is my first tour on this planet. I just thought London was a city in Europe. Or was that Africa?”

Overhead, a gray box-shaped ship struggled to fly around the many obstructions to their position. On top of the hill, fallen poles, loose wires, hanging vines, and building fragments jutting up and out were scattered all over the landscape, often making it difficult for the collies—flying boxes not known for their maneuverability—to reach their landing zones.

They were near a river mouth, and the soft ground had sunk so much that many of the buildings on both sides of the river leaned in over the water until they formed a triangular roof above it. Several of these buildings looked ready to collapse and probably wouldn’t stand much longer.

“Why is our extraction point always on top of hills?” Roman grumbled. “Why can’t it just come down to us for once?”

He renewed his efforts, using his hands to claw his way up. His arms sunk elbow-deep into the muck, getting even more grime onto his now completely filthy uniform. Not that it mattered anymore; he couldn’t get any dirtier.

Roman and the other half-dozen jackasses with him were just finishing an eight-hour patrol of a region southwest of the city of Boston. Surveillance had picked up movement from what could possibly be the wastelander tribe they had been searching for over the past six months, and of course, his was the unlucky squad sent here to investigate.

The Cooperative Forces, or Co-op, was created after the failed attack on Boston to retrieve the temporal anomaly to fulfill the agency’s contractual obligation to the megacorporation. It was supposed to be a joint operation by both Valta and ChronoCom. However, those Valta assholes—their leader, Securitate Kuo, specifically—did not seem to know what “joint” meant. Almost all the heavy lifting was carried out by ChronoCom monitors while Valta’s troopers just sat on their collective asses. Kuo had even had the audacity to tell the lead monitors to their faces that the Valta troopers were too valuable to waste. Black abyss, everyone in the agency hated that woman.

Ever since they cleared out all of Boston and realized that the savages had fled, the patrols had had to expand their search perimeters to include the areas surrounding the city. Now, Co-op troops were forced to blindly chase the hundreds of random energy signatures that popped up, in the hopes that one of them was the tribe of savages they were after.

Roman finally reached the top of the hill and was helped to his feet by Renee and Pau. Chronman Mong sniffed him irritably as he continued to eye the collie making its way to their position. “Next time, be more careful, fool. If the collie pilot insists we clean his ship, you’re the fodder doing it, you hear?”

“Easy for you,” Roman muttered. “Not every asshole gets exos to fly around.”

Roman wouldn’t dare say that aloud. Mong was a Tier-5, fresh out of the Academy, and like most chronmen, thought he was a big deal. If Roman had to guess, the guy was probably nineteen years-old. Definitely green and inexperienced, but already as arrogant as a Tier-3. Still, even the lowest chronman outranked the most experienced monitor.

The squad brushed themselves off and waited as the collie lowered itself to the ground. Fortunately, this patrol had been uneventful, though part of him wished the damn savages would just show up so they could end this hellish mission working under those corporate Valta assholes.

“I can’t wait to get transferred off-planet,” he ranted. “I didn’t sign up to escape from the hellhole on Naiaid to end up in an even worse hell hole on Earth.”

A couple of the other monitors chuckled in agreement. Mong just sniffed and continued staring at the collie. No doubt the kid probably felt insulted having to patrol with a bunch of monitors instead of running time salvages, which was what chronmen were supposed to do. The collie landed with a splat in the mud and the squad, exhausted and glad the day had ended without incident, made its way on board.

Mong looked Roman over and stuck his hand out. “Wipe yourself off first, damn it.”

“Yes, chronman.” Roman sighed. “Just give me a…”

His voice trailed off as a dark flash arced up into the air. He squinted and raised an arm just in time for the object to thud into his shoulder, the impact knocking him on his back once more into the mud. Roman groaned and stared in shock as a thick wooden shaft stuck out of his body. Another shaft sunk into the soft ground near his feet. He began to scream.

More spears rained down, bouncing off the collie’s roof and sticking in the soft ground. There was a loud bang and Chaki fell, clutching his leg. A blaster shot narrowly missed Renee. The rest of the squad scattered for cover, their wrist beams pointed outward at the ruins surrounding them.

A swarm of savages appeared, seemingly crawling out of every nook and cranny of the ruined buildings. They peppered Roman’s squad with small-arms fire, ranging from thick spears to primitive firearms to blaster rifles. Mong activated his exo and launched into the air. Most of the enemy attacks bounced ineffectually off his shield.

“Defensive positions around the collie,” he roared. “Renee, get Roman. Gouti, suppression fire the building to the north.”

Two kinetic coils appeared on both sides of Mong as if he had grown wings, and he barreled toward the main group of the charging savages head on. The coils cut the savages down as he swept through them, knocking a score of them off their feet. He changed direction and shot upward along the nearest building. Redirecting the coils into the opened windows, the chronman began to pluck savages out and drop them down into the streets below.

Roman whimpered as rough hands grabbed his injured shoulder and hauled him to his feet. “Come on,” Renee said, dragging him toward the collie’s opened hatch. A savage charged at them from the left, only to fall to her wrist beam. Another came from their right, which Roman was just able to hit before the savage could bury a hatchet into his face. More came from every direction, forcing Renee to drop him halfway to the ship so she could engage them.

Roman fell onto a knee and held his right arm with his left to steady his trembling body. His nerves screamed as he forced his arm up to aim with the wrist beam. He hit an old-looking savage in the chest and took out another that didn’t even look old enough to shave. That last one came perilously close to sticking him with another spear. He watched, dismayed, as the young savage fell at his feet.

An involuntary shudder coursed through his body. He had almost become dinner just now. At least that was the rumor among the monitors; these wasteland tribes were cannibals, and civilized people were a delicacy. He couldn’t think of a worse way to go than roasting over a fire. He bet he tasted awful.

Gouti screamed at them from the collie’s hatch, “Get your asses inside!”

Renee picked Roman up again and the two desperately tried to sprint to the collie. To his right, Baeth shot a charging savage point-blank in the stomach, then fell to a vicious club to the side of his face. Roman watched in horror as a savage woman towered over his squadmate, ready to strike the killing blow. It never came. They must like their food alive when they cook them. Those bastards. It was too late to help Baeth now. The rest of the squad converged on the collie. Chaki was limping badly while Gouti desperately tried to provide covering fire.

Mong was still flying through the air, acting as a battering ram and launching his body at groups of savages, trying to keep them at bay to buy time for the rest of the squad. Roman, himself a failed initiate at the Academy, had often seen chronmen and auditors in battle. Mong wasn’t one of the more skilled exo wielders, but he was getting the job done. Roman and Renee had almost fought their way to the waiting collie when it began to take off, jerking unsteadily into the air.

“We’re not in yet!” Renee screamed, dropping Roman and sprinting toward the ship. It was too late. By the time she reached it, the collie was already five meters off the ground. Before it could speed away, something slammed into it, knocking it out of the air. It crashed to the ground on its side, almost crushing Renee and Roman as it slid down the slope. The two were just able to dive out of the way at the very last moment.

“Black abyss, no.” Roman stared at a new figure floating in the air above him. It was the traitor, James Griffin-Mars. Before Roman could react, a coil wrapped around his feet, lifted him off the ground, and tossed him into the mud. Renee tried to flee down the hill but was pulled back and flung into the embankment next to him.

“Chronman.” The traitor’s voice echoed through the ruins. “Leave the Elfreth alone and face me.”

When Mong, who was still busy tearing through scores of savages, didn’t respond, the traitor shot forward in a streak of yellow and collided with the chronman. The two of them, exos flaring, slammed into the side of the hill, spewing mud and rocks into the air. A second later, they exploded out and crashed down at the bottom of the riverbank.

The men’s coils were interlocked, but it wasn’t difficult to tell who was winning. The traitor had the chronman wrapped in what looked like ten coils. Somehow, Mong was able to slip away and launch up into sky. Just as quickly, the traitor shot half a dozen coils after him. The chronman created four of his own coils to fend them off, but it was obvious the former Tier-1 was much more skilled than the Tier-5. The traitor’s coils tied up Mong’s coils, and then the remaining sunk into his shield and dragged him back down to earth. As much as Mong tried, he couldn’t get away a second time.

“Go ahead, you abyss-plagued traitor,” Mong spat. “Finish the job.”

By this time, the rest of the savages—and they numbered in the dozens—had the monitors surrounded. Most of his squad were beaten up pretty badly. Baeth had suffered a concussion and was awake but woozy. Blood poured down Chaki’s leg, and Roman still had this stinking spear sticking through his shoulder. Two of the savages were carrying an unconscious Renee up the embankment. The remaining monitors—Gouti and Pau—were being rounded up. A few second later, the pilot of the crashed collie was pulled out of the wreck and also joined the prisoners. Roman squeezed his eyes shut. This was when the savages would decide which one of them looked the most delicious.

Roman had been with ChronoCom for almost fifteen years, and nothing made the hair on the back of his neck stand up more than savagery, either from the pirates along the Ship Graveyard or the commies in Venus or these primitives here on Earth.

The traitor suspended Mong in the air. “Release your bands to me and I will spare you and your people.”

“How about you go fuck yourself,” Mong replied.

“Actually,” Pau said, “that’s not a bad trade.”

The chronman shot him a glare. “Be quiet.”

“Give him the stupid bands,” Gouti said.

“Shut up, monitors,” Mong snapped.

“Just give him the fucking bands!” Roman screamed.

The rest of the squad joined in with their pleas. Mong looked furious, but Roman didn’t care. It was better to give up the stupid bands than become dinner. Chronman or not, this kid was risking their lives for no reason.

“Fine,” Mong snarled. “You want the bands? Here you go.”

He held his hands out, and with a snap, all his bands broke in two.

Roman’s legs gave way and he collapsed to the ground. That fool. Now they were all going to be dinner. He felt his pants grow warm as he wet himself. This time, his body shook from fear instead of pain. He couldn’t decide what was worse, being boiled alive or roasted over a fire.

He flirted with the idea of pulling the spear out of his body so he could bleed out. Roman gripped the shaft with his working arm and took a couple of deep breaths. He gritted his teeth and willed his arm to pull the spear through his body. The stupid thing wouldn’t budge; his arms felt like noodles. He tried once more, and again, his hands felt so weak, he could barely hold the shaft, let alone budge the damn thing.

Roman just couldn’t do it. He was too frightened to kill himself. That was why he had failed to tier at the Academy. He was good enough, everyone said so. He had surprised his teachers by failing. And now his stupid cowardice was going to get him killed in the worst way possible. His frustration and the tension in his body built up, begging for a release. Roman’s arms shook as he stared at his own blood sliding down the shaft and dripping onto the ground. He did the only thing he could think of at this very moment. He began to bawl. All eyes turned to him as his sobs grew louder.

Pau leaned in to him. “Pull yourself together.”

“Please … please don’t eat me.” Roman sniffed loudly. “I’ll taste terrible.”

A buzz spread through the crowd of savages. A few of them seemed to understood what he said and translated to those who didn’t. A chorus of laughter erupted. Several of the savages began rubbing their bellies. An apple bounced off his head. Even the traitor was masking a smile.

The traitor floated Mong to the rest of the squad and picked up the broken bands, examining them one by one. He sighed and tossed them to the ground. “You’re making my life a lot harder than it has to be.”

Mong stuck his chin out defiantly. “Just get it over with and kill us.”

“Speak for yourself, “Gouti grumbled.

“If we had wanted you dead, you’d be dead,” said James.

Roman looked over at the rest of his squad. He hadn’t realized this at first, but it was true. All of them were alive, and it probably wasn’t a coincidence. In fact, these savages took extra precautions, at the risk of their own lives, not to kill any of them. Why?

The traitor motioned to a group of savages standing nearby. “You have seven minutes. Get to work.”

Roman watched open-mouthed as two dozen savages swarmed the collie, like burn ants over a corpse, and began to strip it bare. To his shock, they moved efficiently, as if they knew what they were doing. These were primitive savages. How could this be possible? However, within minutes, many of the collie’s modules were dismantled. All that remained was its frame, engine, and structural components.

“Wrap it up,” James said. “Co-op forces will be here any minute.”

Just as quickly as they appeared, the savages disappeared back into the ruined city. The only one left was the traitor. He surveyed the sky and then the squad. “Your people will be here soon.”

Mong looked confused. “Why not just kill us and be done with it?”

“Shut up before he changes his mind,” Roman hissed.

The traitor studied Mong’s face. “How many years out of the Academy, chronman?”

Mong hesitated before answering. “Five months.”

The traitor nodded. “You use the exo well for a Tier-5. You’ll make a fine chronman one day. Just make sure you live long enough to make a difference.”

“Why are you letting us go?” asked Mong.

James sighed. “Because at the end of the day, you’re just trying to do the right thing, and so am I.” Then he shot into the air in a streak of yellow and was gone.

Five minutes later, a Valta Valkyrie appeared, followed by three collies. The area was soon flooded by monitors. Roman looked in the direction he had last seen the traitor as he and the rest of his squad were led to safety. This was the first time he had seen the traitor, this James Griffin-Mars. He had to admit he was surprised. All the intel had described the man as an unstable, greedy, self-serving lunatic. This man seemed anything but that. He glanced over at Mong, whose troubled face spoke volumes as well.

Roman crawled into the medical collie and was soon in the air. His last thought before he passed out was that now that he was injured, did he still have to wait two days to shower?

Copyright © 2016 by Wesley Chu

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Sneak Peek: Time Salvager by Wesley Chu

Time Salvager by Wesley ChuRead an excerpt from Time Salvager, a fast-paced time travel adventure by Wesley Chu, the award-winning author of The Lives of Tao.

Chapter One: End Times

A sliver of light cut through the void, shooting toward the center of the battle display. Every soul on the bridge, breaths collectively held, eyed its path as it streaked across space. The room was dead quiet, except for the droning voice counting down to the point of impact. An explosion the size of a thumbnail blinked and flowered to fill half the display, then darkened again.

The bridge erupted into cheers as the Neptune Divinity flagship’s holographic avatar disappeared. But the celebration was short-lived. Captain Dustinius Monk’s voice cut through the chatter.

“Station status!” he demanded. The grim news of the health of the ship trickled in.

(more…)

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Linguistic Landmines: A Time Traveler’s Guide to Regency England

A School for Unusual Girls by Kathleen Baldwin
Written by Kathleen Baldwin

Part 2

For you brave souls who are planning to time travel back to the Regency era I’ve put together this short linguistics guide. But first a warning…

Hide Your Brains

No, not from zombies!

If you want to flirt with a dashing duke or snag a handsome viscount for a waltz, I suggest you disguise your smarts. During the Regency era, intelligence in a young lady was generally viewed as a liability. Brainy women were dangerous to society. Consequently, brilliant women of the time, such as Jane Austen, often lived their entire lives unmarried.

Image Placeholder of - 14Besides, you wouldn’t want to be considered a bluestocking now would you?

What is a bluestocking, you ask?

A bluestocking is a woman who dares to discuss controversial issues like war and politics. Oh my! She even reads books about philosophy and science. Can you fathom such behavior? Not only that, but a bluestocking insists on talking about what she has learned. Appalling!

It all goes back to the problem of being exceptional. You may remember from A Time Traveler’s Guide to Regency England, Part 1, being declared “unexceptional” was a high compliment. As the young ladies in A School for Unfortunate Girls learned, one must vigorously guard against appearing too exceptional or end up getting carted off to a school to reform one’s manners.

Talking the Talk

French—ah, the romantic language, the language of nobility.

Yes, yes, I realize I’ve just warned you against appearing too smart, and now I’m telling you to learn some French. It sounds contradictory, but sprinkling a few elegant French phrases in your conversation will make you seem sophisticated and upper crust.

You needn’t get too good at it. It is perfectly all right to butcher the accent or mispronounce a word here and there. After all, Britain was at war with France and you wouldn’t want to be viewed as a sympathizer even though the English dressed like Josephine, Napoleon’s wife, and adored French lace, French wine, French silk… well, really, they admired all things French. It’s a pity England was at war with them.

Oh Sir You Flatter MeBaby Talk and Lisps

For young ladies of the ton (society’s upper ten-thousand) a baby-talking lisp was en vogue. It was considered très chic to lisp like a toddler while lacing French phrases into one’s conversation.

I ask you, what could be more appealing to a roguish Regency buck than a young lady who sounds like a lisping four year-old and knows a smattering of French. “Oh thir, you flatter me. Merci beaucoup, er, I mean, merthi beaucoup.” She blushes and lowers her fan (translation: I really think you’re hot).

Language of the Vulgar Tongue

On the other hand, young gentlemen preferred to act tough by using a cant popularized by common thieves. If a young man wanted to be seen as a cool dude by his friends, otherwise known as a Dandy or a Corinthian, he must get his hands on a coveted cheat sheet, called Dictionary of The Vulgar Tongue. From this scandalous dictionary he’d learn to sling around phrases like, “My, but aren’t you a prime article.” This means he thinks you’re really good-looking. Unless he’s talking to a horse. In that case, he thinks the horse is fast, a “real goer.”

Idioms and Colloquialisms

Baldwin-Article2-Img3If a handsome earl shakes his head and says, “Mr. Smiley, poor fellow, stuck his spoon in the wall yesterday.” Whatever you do, you mustn’t laugh. This does not mean Mr. Smiley had an unfortunate accident with his eating utensils. It means the earl’s dear old chum has given up the ghost, curled up his toes, shuffled off this mortal coil. There, did I use enough idioms? In short, poor Mr. Smiley has died.

On to cheerier expressions. If someone invites you to nuncheon, they are not planning to engage you in a tournament with nunchuks. You may breathe easy. A nuncheon is a midafternoon snack with tasty biscuits and tea. It might even be held out of doors if the weather is balmy.

Which brings us to the word barmy, not to be mistaken for balmy. If someone looks down her nose at you and whispers behind her fan to a friend, “I do believe that young lady is barmy.” She’s insinuating that you are daft, looney tunes, or just plain Alice in Wonderland nutty.

I’ll be back with more semi-sage advice for all of you brave Regency time travelers.

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Follow Kathleen Baldwin on Twitter at @KatBaldwin, on Facebook, or visit her online.

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