Archive for the ‘Robert Dickinson’ Category
The Tourist, by Robert Dickinson
Posted on: August 12, 2017
The Tourist, by Robert Dickinson
published June 2017
where I got it: received review copy from the published (Thanks Hachette!)
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Welcome to the 24th century, where the most exotic vacation a person can take is to a 21st century mall. Experience germs and cell phones, risk mild food poisoning and interactions with sullen gothy teenagers, and then spend the night safely ensconced in a resort hotel. There are tons of travel companies that offer these types of tours. The companies and their employees choose to ignore all the smuggling that often takes place right under their noses. Time travel has become so easy and common, it’s not even called “time travel” anymore, it’s just called “travel”, and you get to your destination via a high energy technology called translation.
“It’s the logic of travel: the past is just another country, and, if you can afford the translation, you can always go back. Nothing is lost, nobody really dies. You die, of course: but, if they have the right resources, other people can always come back and see you. You remain alive.”
The Tourist, page 310
The opening chapters of The Tourist fall somewhere between Kage Baker’s Company novels and the movie Twelve Monkeys, complete with a shadowy future century no one is allowed to see, rumors of a genocide in recent history, a near extinction event, and the challenges of how to tell someone you are from the past or the future. There is a “map” of sorts in the front of the book, that on first glance looks like a map of a shopping mall, but then you realize it’s a chart of a time line. The time line is U shaped, with the character’s lives jumping back and forth all over the place. Ahh, the tricks you can play in a time travel book!
Spens is a rep with one of the travel agencies, his job is to shepherd his charges to the mall, show them how paper money works, and warn them against 21st-ers who know how to trick naive idiots. For shock value, he buys a muffin at a coffee stand and eats it. This is just a job for Spens, he lives at the resort and gets together for drinks with the other reps at night to share stories of their idiot clients. He’ll work at the resort forever if it means he never has to work the tunnels again.
And then one day he loses a client.
the Little Red Reviewer 
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