Review: Engines Of Survival
ENGINES OF SURVIVAL - Strange Horizons,
Like a lot of science fiction buffs I’ve been a fan of time travel ever since I first picked up a copy of The Time Machine by H.G. Wells. The Morlocks really did it for me and I’ve been hooked ever since. Doctor Who certainly didn’t help things. Doctor Who did a lot of things right.
Having said that, time travel, as a plot device, generally sucks. It’s wonky, it doesn’t always make sense and even when it does it’s too often used as a convenient, albeit cheesy, way for writers to write themselves out of a situation they couldn’t otherwise write themselves out of (I’m looking at you Avenger’s: Endgame, Star Trek too - and I say that despite the fact that Star Trek IV is my favorite Star Trek movie, so I’m not completely immune to its charms - I’m just, um, realistic about it I guess).
Still sometimes it’s like the writer cops out and says, “well, I can’t think of a way to fix this, so let’s just go back in time and change it! Wheeeee!”
So yeah, it’s hard to use time travel as a device and still do something original. So A lot of times, as a result, time travel stories just plain suck.
Except when they don’t.
Not only does Engines Of Survival by Larissa Kelly not suck, it is, in my humble opinion, one of the coolest time travel stories ever written. Something, I guess, about only being able to travel forward in time maybe. But no, it’s more than that.
The thing about this story though is that time only flows in one direction: you can never go back, so the story utilizes a lot of flashbacks and it does this very well, weaving a larger story that if you don’t pay close attention to you might just miss. She jumps around a lot.
But going back in time never really did make sense anyway. It just doesn’t seem physically possible. Going forward in time however is a completely different animal. After all we’re doing it all the time. We’re even doing it right now.
It’s also worth noting that the writer of this story was once a contestant on Jeopardy.
The main character takes advantage of time travel’s forward nature by smuggling goods into the future and selling them at a premium. She also makes a lot of bank investments.
It’s not actually a bad way to make a living if you don’t mind the fact that everyone you get to know is sometimes dead on arrival and it’s hard to recognize the world you just came from even when you’re only jumping forward in twenty year intervals.
In other words it’s lonely being a traveler and that loneliness is at the heart of the story. It’s not just a story about time travel that way; it’s also a story about the human condition.
As the protagonist says:
One day I will arrive and find no member of the RamÃrez family to greet me. One day the business that purchases my wares will close its doors forever. The city will die, be reborn, die again. The language and the people will develop into unrecognizable forms. The portals will cease to be maintained, and my last trip will not be to the future, but to oblivion.
That’s heady stuff, folks. And yet despite all this she continues to travel forward knowing that one day it will destroy her.
But then again don’t we all?