I love it when books put a fresh face on sf tropes, like time travel in this case.  The Future of Another Timeline is a novel by Annalee Newitz about a woman who works with a group called The Daughters of Harriet to edit the timeline and promote the rights of women and non-binary people.

There were a few things that I thought were super interesting in this book’s take on time travel.  First of all, time travel is an ancient part of earth that has been there since the beginning.  This means that all the characters, no matter how mundane, know that time travel is possible, happening around them, and they don’t think too much of it.  The longevity of time travel also makes it possible for different cultures to have different theories, uses for, and beliefs about time travel.

This brings me to my favorite part of this book.  Throughout the story, the Daughters of Harriet their attempts to change the timeline by traveling back in time to their period of expertise, and creating small “edits” through collective action and organizing with other women.  Many people in this world believe in the “Great Man” theory, which posits that it’s useless to go back in time and kill Hitler, as has been done many times, because another man will inevitably take his place in the historical narrative.  Because of this theory, the consensus is that because these so-called great men are easily replaceable, it’s impossible to make major edits to the timeline.

This book makes the powerful argument that editing the timeline is possible, but only through collective action.  The “Great Man” theory assumes that only powerful, usually white, men can drive important changes in history, but the Daughters of Harriet prove that organizing collective action makes changing the timeline possible.

The themes of this story reminded my a lot of Octavia Butler’s Earthseed books, especially Parable of the Sower, another book that I love.  The “great man” in the Earthseed books (the president who is uncannily similar to Donald Trump) may have been easily replaced by another demagogue, but Lauren Oya Olamina’s community eventually change’s the timeline more powerfully than he ever did.

In both of these books, women and non-binary authors imagine futures (and pasts) where collective action and community can thrive while undermining powerful men.  I’m still ruminating on this – maybe a topic for my manifesto?