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Summary
Summary
"A rare treat: a time travel tale that brings something new to the subgenre. . ..A wry social commentary and an uneasy tale of escalating paranoia." Guardian
THE FUTURE IS ALREADY WRITTEN.
THE FUTURE HAS ALREADY HAPPENED.
"Welcome to the 21st Century. Please don't feed the natives. . ..Echoes of Bradbury and Orwell, in the service of a crackerjack conspiracy plot; a seductively intriguing work of speculative fiction." Kirkus
TIME TRAVEL IS CONFUSING.
"Leaps of time, identity, and chronology create a dark, chillingly claustrophobic atmosphere." Publishers Weekly
PROCEED WITH CAUTION.
WHO WILL SOLVE THE PUZZLE OF THE TOURIST?
Author Notes
Robert Dickinson lives in Brighton, England, and his life to date has been shockingly uneventful. His two previous novels were published by a small press. The Tourist is his third novel.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
British author Dickinson makes his U.S. debut with a murky, dystopian thriller, which depicts a 24th-century world replete with brutal, militaristic societies of slaves and biomechanically enhanced superhumans. Time-travel technology allows visits to eras before the NEE (Near Extinction Event), which transformed the world and its surviving inhabitants. Spens is a guide at a time-travel "resort," where tourists can visit early 21st-century England. When a visitor vanishes from a group excursion, Spens must pursue her. He slowly realizes that his quarry may be an agent from another time whose actions in the past may change the future, causing humanity's near annihilation-or preventing it. The leaps of time, identity, and chronology create a dark, chillingly claustrophobic atmosphere, but the choppy chronology and elaborate sci-fi imaginings overshadow and obscure the plot and meaningful character development. "Travel is confusing," is a frequent refrain, and the same can be said for this ambitious but unsatisfying vision of the future. Agent: Oli Munson, A.M. Heath (U.K.). (Oct.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Guardian Review
In the closing years of the 21st century, in a Britain suffering the consequences of global warming and subsequent flooding, society is further divided by the invention of "the fix", a pill that allows a privileged minority to live vastly extended lives. In Laurie Penny 's Everything Belongs to the Future (Tor, [pound]9.50), the rich and famous co-opt not only the -- albeit dubious -- benefits of longevity, but dictate the cultural and political mood of the nation. Nina is part of an anarchist cell in flooded Oxford, who, alongside the pill's inventor, are scheming to subvert the use of the drug. Meanwhile Nina's lover, Alex, has his own agenda. Penny skilfully presents characters torn by desire, both emotional and intellectual, and packs more into a hundred pages than is found in many a bloated trilogy. Everything Belongs to the Future is a brilliant fiction debut, a searing indictment of the misuse of privilege and a dire warning about the consequences of allowing power to fall into the hands of a self-elected elite. Robert Dickinson's third novel, The Tourist (Orbit, [pound]12.99), is another rare treat: a time-travel tale that brings something new to the subgenre. In the 24th century, after a near-extinction event, humanity lives in a totalitarian dystopia in numbered cities ruled by Departments of Safety, Happiness and Awareness. As a form of relief, the authorities allow time tourism, and the 21st century is a popular destination. Spens is a guide with the Tri-Millennium Tour Company. When a tourist goes missing in our own time, he's charged with her recovery, and soon finds himself entangled in a bewildering conspiracy plot where nothing is as it appears. What starts as a familiar SF run-around morphs into a wry social commentary and an uneasy tale of escalating paranoia: imagine Orwell and Zamyatin filtered through the existential lens of Camus. In the Tao quartet, Wesley Chu set the groundwork for a series of intriguing novels: millennia ago, the alien Quasings crash-landed on Earth and, in a bid to return to their homeworld, inhabited the heads of human hosts, manipulating leaders as well as ordinary citizens, to spur human invention. But the Quasings are divided into factions: the Genjix use humans mercilessly, fomenting wars to spur technological progress, while the Prophus are more altruistic. In The Rise of Io (Angry Robot, [pound]8.99), Chu begins a related but standalone trilogy with a fresh setting and new characters. Ella Patel is a streetwise orphan living by her wits in a teeming slum city in future India. While on the run from gangsters in the action-packed opening, she inadvertently becomes host to a Prophus called Io. What follows is a compelling, breakneck action-adventure, in which feisty Patel has to come to terms with Io's residence and they attempt to fight off the scheming Genjix. With The Shadow of What Was Lost by James Islington (Orbit, [pound]12.99), we're in epic fantasy territory. Twenty years before the novel opens, the godlike Augur were defeated in a great war. The rebel victors imposed conditions upon the Gifted: never again can they use their magical powers to do harm. Young Davian is in a school for the Gifted, but on the eve of being cast out he discovers that he has powers that might derive from the Augurs themselves. Davian ventures on a quest to learn the truth of his powers and defeat an invading army. This first volume of the Licanius trilogy treads familiar territory with a story-telling assurance rare for a debut novelist; epic fantasy is an inherently derivative subgenre, so it would be unfair to accuse Islington of the same, and fans of Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson will find much to admire. Another fantasy series which began in a school for adepts and featured youngsters coming to terms with magical abilities -- this time in a world evoking The Arabian Nights -- is Sabaa Tahir's Ember series of young adult crossover romances. In the oppressive Empire, the people are kept in check by the totalitarian Martial regime governed by a brutal dictator. The first book in the series followed healer apprentice Laia, who agreed to become a spy for the resistance when her brother was taken by the regime. The sequel, A Torch Against the Night (Harper Voyager, [pound]12.99) follows Laia and her soldier-cum-love-interest Elias as they travel north to Kauf prison in an attempt to rescue her brother. Too easily dismissed as Arabian Nights -lite, this page-turning series is building to something more than the sum of its cliched parts. Tahir does political intrigue very well, paints her villains in various shades of grey, and shows us the terrible sight of a populace crushed by slavery. * Eric Brown's latest novel is Jani and the Great Pursuit (Solaris). - Eric Brown.
Kirkus Review
Welcome to the 21st century. Please dont feed the natives.Dickinsons twisty conspiracy thriller turns an often troublesome narrative devicetime travelto wonderful advantage, wittily exploiting the tropes opportunities for structural inventiveness, worldbuilding, and sly social commentary. Hundreds of years in the future, after a Near Extinction Event, the surviving humans have sufficiently rebuilt to the impressive extent that time tourism exists as a feasible vacation option for all. The easiest era to get to (and the cheapest) is our own familiar early 21st century. In the novels drollest construction, the current era is an underwhelming novelty attraction, a drab, stinking curiosity; visitors content themselves with a visit to a shopping mall, a handy distillation of human achievement and values to this point. When a tourist goes missing, her minder is plunged into a bewildering, temporally Byzantine plot with apocalyptic implications. Standard stuff, but Dickinson gets there in style, employing alternating points of view (orare they?) and tantalizingly doling out details of the evolved future humans (they are tall, pale, and have trouble with our food) and society (numbered cities administrated by Orwellian departments of Happiness, Safety, and Awareness). The characters are well-drawn and distinctive, Dickinsons literary prose glides through the plot thickets with graceful assurance, and the whole immersive enterprise concludes on a satisfyingly poetic note. Echoes of Bradbury and Orwell, in the service of a crackerjack conspiracy plot; a seductively intriguing work of speculative fiction. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
In the mid-twenty-fourth century long after a series of calamitous events ended civilization as it was known time travel is common, with the early twenty-first century a popular destination. Tri-Millennium rep Spens is escorting a group to the 21st when he discovers, on the return, that he has lost one client. And this is not just any client but a woman who had been selected to be trained by the Defense Committee but was eventually imprisoned for a host of offenses, including sabotage and murder. In this world it is not permissible to try to change the past during travel to it, nor is it possible to change future events even though they are known. The narrative of Spens who wants to go back for a Beethoven concert on December 22, 1808 is in the first person, while the tourist's is in the second person, and inevitably the two threads converge. Dickinson has created a bleak future world and spins a plot most appropriate for readers who appreciate ambiguity.--Leber, Michele Copyright 2016 Booklist