Time's Agent
A speculative novella about pocket worlds with altered time, it follows a displaced scientist through grief, estrangement, and the commodification of discovery. The story pairs intimate emotional stakes with a sharp critique of corporate control and the extraction of value from science.
Work Information
In a world where time itself can be commodified, a broken family gets one more chance to reckon with what was lost.
In a world where pocket worlds with different rates of time flow have been discovered, investigator Raquel is forced to face the family she has lost and the future of science as it is absorbed by corporations. Set against a society that treats time itself as a resource, the novella quietly explores loss, memory, and the possibility of reconnecting with what was broken.
Review Summaries
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Many readers value the originality of the premise and the imaginative pocket-world concept. At the same time, the character focus and deliberate pacing divide opinion, leaving the story best remembered for its emotional urgency.
Book Information
- Publisher
- Tor.com
- Published
- 2024-08-13
- Pages
- 208 pages
- Language
- 英語
- Size
- 12.7 x 1.24 x 20.32 cm
- ISBN-13
- 9781250854315
- ISBN-10
- 1250854318
- Price
- 2969 JPY
- Category
- 洋書/Science Fiction & Fantasy/Science Fiction/Adventure
"All at once a meditation on motherhood, grief, war, environmental collapse, dread, and the nature of memory and time. I ate it up."—Lauren Groff, New York Times bestselling author A multiverse story of love, loss, time travel, and final-stage capitalism from award-winning author Brenda Peynado. Pocket World—a geographically small, hidden offshoot of our own reality, sped up or slowed down by time. Following humanity’s discovery of pocket worlds, teams of academics embarked on groundbreaking exploratory missions, eager to study this new technology and harness the potential of a seemingly limitless horizon. “What would you do, given another universe, a do-over?” Archeologist Raquel and her wife, Marlena, once dreamed the pocket worlds held the key to solving the universe’s mysteries. But forty years later, pocket worlds are now controlled by corporations squeezing every penny out of all colonizable space and time, Raquel herself is in disgrace, and Marlena lives in her own pocket universe (that Raquel wears around her neck) and refuses to speak to her. Standing in the ruins of her dream and her failed ideals, Raquel seizes one last chance to redeem herself and confront what it means to save something—or someone—from time.
Brenda Peynado's genre-bending short story collection, The Rock Eaters —featuring alien arrivals, angels falling from rooftops, virtual reality, and sorrows manifesting as tumorous stones—was named one of NPR, the New York Public Library, and Electric Literature's best books of the year. Her stories have won an O. Henry Prize, a Pushcart Prize, the Chicago Tribune 's Nelson Algren Award, and inclusion in The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy . She teaches creative writing at the University of Houston.
Reviews
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Engrossing and evocative
I gobbled up this book in just a handful of sittings. The prose is exceptional, lucid and lyrical without getting bogged down, and with so many lines that made me stop and read them again because they were just that beautiful. The premise sent my mind spinning--and it's the kind of thing that makes easy conversation with other people, too (fun at parties!). But most of all, I loved the frankness and flaws of the narrator, her transparency and her grief. I loved the love she felt for her wife and daughter. I cared deeply about their fates, and the story kept me guessing until the end. I'll definitely be picking up this author's next book and reading her backlist.
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Great workdbuilding. Fantastic story
Like every post-capitalist arc, we have characters struggling to simply be human, alive, and free. To love and live. Such a powerful story in a fresh sci fi setting. I'm eager to read Ms. Peynado's other work.
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Too Much in Too Little Space...
I really wanted to like this book! I read The Rock Eaters and I loved her short fiction, but this one just didn't do it for me. It just felt like this book was trying to do too much in too little space. I would get engaged for a bit only to later find myself confused and disinterested in the story. I will keep an eye on her future work, though.
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Concept encompasses so much
Not only is the concept of "pocket universes" with varying relative times well-done and intriguing, but she covers so much that is environmental and also human (love, loss, grief, aging, death, change and growth). An ambitious novella excellently done!