The Map of Time by Felix J. Palma

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The Map of Time by Felix J. Palma succeeded for me in so many levels that it will be a challenge, albeit a pleasurable one, to adequately explain how satisfying it was. Curiously, my admiration for its execution has increased the more I reflect upon it.

If you’re a science fiction fan, most especially an H.G. Wells fan; if you love time travel stories; if you love Victorian novels (the way novels were written in the Victorian era and novels set in that time) – this is the book for you. The Map of Time is a dazzling, entertaining read for the summer ... or for all time.

I must caution, however, not to pay too much attention to the official synopsis. While it is not technically misleading, it only applies to a quarter of the book. If you read with the synopsis in mind, you’ll read most of the novel wondering where it’s going.

The Map of Time is roughly divided into three main story arcs which at first seem very loosely interwoven. Set in 1896 London, the first part of the book is about the doomed love affair between a young society gentleman, Andrew Harrington, and the beautiful prostitute Marie Kelly. On the brink of suicide over the way the affair ended, Harrington seeks the services of Gilliam Murray’s Time Travel company, which claims the ability to transport those willing to pay a fortune to London in the year 2000, for a brief glimpse of the future. Of course, once we hear the description of what the world is like in the year 2000, we immediately know that the Time Travel company is a sham, but the novel detours from Harrington’s tragic story to Gilliam Murray’s adventurous tale in how he was able to find the hole in the fabric of time. From Murray’s Time Travel Company, the desperate Harrington then ends up at the door of H.G. Wells himself, the famous author of The Time Machine, to demand that he help him travel back in time.

The second major story arc involves a surprisingly poignant romance between one of Gilliam Murray’s hired hands, handsome but poor Joe Blunt, and a young society lady who falls too successfully for the Time Travel Company’s sham, Claire Haggerty. If you’re a fan of the movie, Somewhere in Time, like I am, you will love this part.

In addition to H.G. Wells, other figures of that era enliven the narrative, Jack the Ripper, John Merrick the Elephant Man, Bram Stoker, and Henry James.

For about two-thirds of The Map of Time, the author plays around with the idea of time travel, setting up extraordinary scenarios before drawing the curtain aside to reveal wizardry at work different from magic or science. The final, and most breathtaking, part of the novel is where all the themes of the tangential storylines merge and the uniting figure of H.G. Wells, the father of time travel fiction, takes full, center stage. And just to encourage all of you hard core science fiction fans to persevere through the seemingly picaresque parts that come before – this is where all the playing around comes to an end and we get the full time travel treatment in concentrated form – parallel universes, loopholes in the time continuum, alternative histories, as well as the truth of the titular, elusive Map of Time.

"'What would the world really look like in a hundred years' time?' he wondered...It was a pipe dream of course, but there was nothing to stop him from pretending he could do it, he told himself, settling back in his seat and ceremoniously pulling the lever down, experiencing the inevitable frisson of excitement he felt whenever he performed the gesture.

"However, to his astonishment, this time when the lever had come to halt, a sudden darkness fell on the attic. The flecks of moonlight shining through the window seemed to withdraw, leaving him in total dark. Before he was able to understand what was going on, he was overcome by a dreadful feeling of vertigo and sudden giddiness. He felt himself floating, drifting through a mysterious void that could have been the cosmos itself. And as he began to lose consciousness, all he managed to think was either he was having a heart attack or he really was traveling to the year 2000 after all."

I got my science fiction fix by the end, but The Map of Time also offered some fascinating thoughts: that love, in a sense, is an equal or greater force than the mythical ability to cross time. Love can bridge distances and transcend obstacles time travel cannot; it can change a predestined future as powerfully as going back in the past to render a different outcome in the present.

And, as The Map of Time involves several characters as writers, would be ones and real-life ones, even the power of one’s imagination, its "infinite capacity," is comparable to time travel. The novel ends aptly, with H.G. Wells pondering on the miraculous experience of reading – that we, as readers are not merely spectators, but in having reading a book set in 1896, have also, in a way, journeyed through time and space ourselves.

Thank you very much to Atria Books for providing a copy for me to review!