The Future of Another Timeline by Annalee Newitz

In a world that’s just a step away from our own, time travel is possible. But war is brewing – a secret group is trying to destroy women’s rights, and their access to the timeline. If they succeed, only a small elite will have the power to shape the past, present, and future.

Our only hope lies with an unlikely group of allies, from riot grrls to suffragettes, their lives separated by centuries, battling for a world where anyone can change the future. A final confrontation is coming.

Okay, right out of the gate let me just say that this book made me so fucking mad. It ruined several of my days, had me in a perpetually bad mood, and to be honest, I hated most moments I spent reading it.

Does that mean it’s a “bad” book? No.

So why did I hate it?

Well, because it shouldn’t have to fucking exist.

In an ideal world there would be no need for The Future of Another Timeline to have been written. Maybe there’s another alternative reality out there where the world is actually equal and nobody gives a shit about gender. Where there is no need to fight for equal rights for women, because they already had those rights in the first place.

But to quote the marketing campaign for this book — “We’re in the wrong timeline”.

In The Future of Another Timeline, time travel is possible and everyone is aware of it. It’s seen as something of a natural phenomenon, as there are a number of large rock-like time machines that allow qualified individuals to travel back (but never forward) in time. These individuals can (but aren’t supposed to) “edit” the timeline by changing something in the past. Time travel is so ingrained into the culture of the world that it’s seen as little more than another branch of geology. If something uncommonly fortunate were to happen to someone, they might exclaim that it’s “a lucky edit”.

And so we have our premise. We have a group of women and non-binary persons fighting to further women’s rights by changing the past. Unfortunately, there are also a group of men who seek to carry out edits that will destroy women’s and queer rights completely, and there’s reason to believe that they’re also trying to destroy the time machines so that their edits will be “locked in”.

There two main point-of-view characters, each living in a different timeline.

There is Beth, a teenager a few years off college age that lives her life on eggshells due to her father’s hair trigger temper and constantly changing house rules. She seeks refuge in her friends and in the punk music scene, but is dragged into some pretty brutal circumstances.

Tess lives a few decades in the future, and is part of the aforementioned pro-women’s-rights group: The Daughters of Harriet. Tess is more cerebral than Beth, and spends a lot of time thinking things through, often to only give in to her impulses in the end. She’s a less empathetic character than Beth, but her cause is one that all readers should be invested in. Tess is the one who first encounters the anti-women group while in the past, and is tasked with outmaneuvering them.

But while Tess’s arc was perhaps more important to the overall plot, I have to admit that Beth’s story tugged at my heartstrings a whole lot more. While Tess’s battle is the more flashy and fantastical, the startling realism of Beth’s was all too easy to imagine.

So yeah. Time-travelling 4-chan-esque incels, complete with “chad” memes and all, try to destroy the world. It sounds almost comical when I put it like that.

But it’s not. If anything, one of the main points of the story is to show how unfunny the existence of those people actually is. This book is consistently fucking brutal, and it’s all amped up for max creep factor and visceral reader reaction. Please, if you’re intending to read this, make sure you go in with some energy to spare. It touches on some really heavy shit, and if you don’t have the energy there to convert into anger, it could prove an emotionally exhausting read.

The Future of Another Timeline really drives home the message that we should be outraged at the suppression of women’s rights and doing something about it. It purposefully stokes that outrage, to make you see that if you aren’t outraged by what’s going on, then there’s something wrong.

It also sort of seems to advocate a violent response to these issues (within the constraints of this fictional world, obviously), whilst simultaneously shying away from committing to this attitude completely. It’s almost as though it says: “I’m not saying we should kill all of the rapists and incels, just that the world is much better off for all of the rapists and incels that we have killed.”

It doesn’t shy away from much else though. At one point, the characters are forced to appeal to the interests of rich, white men to make any meaningful change, which is obviously a very pointed piece of commentary. It also treats its male characters in much the same way that many children’s books treat adults — either showing them as willfully evil or oblivious, self-centered idiots — which feels like a massive middle finger to all those other books that have treated women characters in this same way.

But while I’ve played up how bleak and violent this book can be (and it is), it’s not all doom and gloom. Even just the existence of a group to fight back against misogyny and everything that comes with it shows that there is a fight to be had. The amount of bullshit the protagonists have to fight against is disheartening in how real it feels, but it’s inspiring to see that they are fighting against it.

It’s not a pleasant read, and it’s definitely not for everyone. But it’s an important read. It’s the type of book I can see picking up a few awards next time the award scene rolls around. The prose is quite simple and accessible, but in this instance that kind of style adds a sense of gravity to the heavier scenes.

If any of the above sounds exciting or interesting to you, then I strongly encourage you to read this. If it sounds a bit too heavy for you, or if you don’t have the emotional energy to spare, I’d maybe sit this one out.

To be completely transparent, I’ll include some content warnings below. Most things included are pretty graphic, and presented in a way as though to say “this stuff actually does happen like this in real life”.

However, the very last one here I felt was needless. It’s used as something that eventually leads to a healing moment, but in a book that already explores so many other sensitive subjects in graphic detail, it felt a little gratuitous in my opinion.

Content warnings below (hopefully in white text, depending on your device, highlight to read):

Content warnings: Rape, graphic murder, abortion, child molestation.

We received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for a fair and honest review. Thank you to Orbit Books for the review copy!