The Sea of Tranquility: One of My Favorite Books of 2022 That Made Me Cheer

This might be my favorite book of fiction for 2022 and I didn’t even pick it.

I’ve been a part of a four-guy science fiction book club since 2009. Each month, one of us picks a book and we meet the first Tuesday of each month. Over the past year or so, I’ve started a new thing: on the books I don’t select, I don’t read the book description. I just download the audiobook and start listening.

I want the book to reveal itself it me without any preconceived notions. Now, typically, around the 20-25% mark, I might circle back and read the description but not always. I ended up doing that for this book because after the first section, I was genuinely curious what kind of book this was.

Think about it: when you hear the words “Sea of Tranquility,” what do you think of? The moon, right? Me, too. Well, there are scenes in this book set on the moon, but I think the title speaks to something more.

So, what is this book about? Well, it involves multiple characters over multiple times. Oh, and there’s time travel (but don’t worry: there’s not a lot of science to get in the way of a good story).

In 1912, a British scion from a prominent family is walking in the woods in British Columbia when, suddenly, he has the feeling of being somewhere else. He’s inside a great room he interprets as a train station. He hears something mechanical that he cannot identify. And he hears violin music.

In late 2019, at a party in New York, a woman is approached by a man. He asks her about her brother, a performance artist, who includes a snippet of video they shot in the forests of British Columbia when they were teenagers. On the video, the camera catches something that appears to be a hanger, and a few notes of violin music.

In 2203, a famous author is on a book tour and she’s in an airship terminal in Oklahoma City and, as the airships disembark, she sees a man playing violin and she has the sudden feeling that she's in a forest.

And in a future time (honestly I forgot what year this part takes place in), a time travel agent volunteers to research the strange anomalies that may or may not link all of these people.

Had I read the description, I would have been all in, but experiencing it the way I did—just the opening chapters set in 1912 then instantly jumping to 2019 with a reference to the upcoming pandemic—was a bit jarring. But I was hooked.

And the book didn’t let up. With each shift of characters, Mandel also shifts the point of view. Oh, and the audiobook was fantastic: with each POV change, it was a different narrator, so if you enjoy audiobooks, you’ll love this one.

I am not going to give away any more details because if I do, you might be able to infer the ending. I’m happy to say that I didn’t see it coming, but when it did, I literally cheered in my car as I drove to the office. It is a great ending to a wonderful book.

In the days since, I’ve told the story to my wife, my parents, and to a fellow saxophone player in my orchestra who went out and bought the book herself.

Of all the books I’ve read in my SF book club, if I’m measuring by emotional impact, then John Scalzi’s Redshirts still takes the prize. But The Sea of Tranquility will now be ranked as one of the best books I’ve read, both this year and of the entire and ongoing book club.

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@Barrie Summy

Recursion by Blake Crouch: A Time Travel Book with Heart and Thrills

 

(Imagine my surprise yesterday when I finished this review and went to post it on DoSomeDamage...only to discover my fellow author, Beau Johnson, also reviewed it. No, you are not suffering from False Memory Syndrome. Perhaps that is yet another key indicator of how good this book is.)

How often do you read a book in which the last sentence is the perfect end to the story?

Well, I finished one this week, and the last line was awesome.

Recursion by Blake Crouch is a thriller with a huge scoop of science fiction, specifically time travel. It was the most recent selection for my SF book club although I wasn't the chooser. We generally keep our selections within the genre--I actually picked the Sherlock Holmes book The House of Silk by Anthony Horowitz--but occasionally we get books like this one. But this is one that really leans into the thriller aspects and it kept me engrossed all the way through.

As the story opens, New York police detective Barry Sutton has lived eleven years without his teenaged daughter who was killed in a hit-and-run accident. He's meeting his now ex-wife to commemorate their daughters birth. There have been a lot of things called False Memory Syndrome, a condition where folks remember whole other lives. 

In the reality of the story, these are alternate timelines.

Soon, Barry meets Helena, a scientist with a mother who suffers from Alzheimer’s. Her goal is to invent a tool that can help map her mom's memories before they are all gone. What another character realizes is that this machine can be used to travel back in time to a specific, vivid memory. And, when a time traveler arrives at the point in time where the traveler actually left, all the other timeline's memories cascade on them...and everyone else.

And there's a race...against time. 

I really enjoyed it. Loved it, actually. As recent as this past weekend, I hadn't even started it. I started listening while doing chores...then started finding new chores to do so I could keep listening. The Houston Texans helped by sucking so I stopped watching and started listening to this book. The premise drew me in pretty quickly and just kept me going.

The alternating narrators really worked in the audio. Enjoyed both of them. 

Really liked the moments when a certain timeline caught up with a character. When I was explaining this to the wife, what came to mind (but not during the reading) was the end of the movie Frequency back in 2000. Also had lots of echoes to Replay by Ken Grimwood.

Go no further if you don't want the spoiler, so if you don't, I thoroughly enjoyed Recursion and would highly recommend it.

SPOILERS for the end

Lastly, it is very rare that a last line of a book is this awesome, but this one is. Again, this is where listening to an audio version really brought it home. I was standing in line at the DPS on Tuesday. Outside, morning sun, looking at all the other folks doing what I'm doing. Crouch is talking from Barry's POV and building it up to talk to Helena. This is after he's killed the bad to prevent the whole thing from even starting. And he has realized that life has pain and that, as humans, we just have to deal with it. 

And then the last line! "And he says...."  I barked out a "HA!" as the credits rolled, grinning big time. Loved it! Crouch let the reader finish the story, creating our own, unique timelines.

Palm Springs: A Time-Loop Rom-Com Full of Emotion and an Intriguing Ending

Friday night is movie night at the Parker house. Last Friday, the wife selected the film: a brand-new movie released on Hulu called Palm Springs. It's a film starring Andy Samberg and Cristin Milioti that is part rom-com and part Groundhog Day. I knew nothing about the film, but it only took me seeing half the trailer to jump on board.

Boy, I’m sure glad my wife found this utterly delightful film.

Samberg spends much of his time on camera in the same yellow swim trunks and red Hawaiian shirt, but he also wears this to a wedding. Who the heck wears a swimsuit to a wedding? A guy who’s stuck in a time loop.

But we don’t know that at the movie starts. All we see is Samberg’s Nyles bored with life and love. Lazy time in a pool, snatching a microphone during the wedding toast, speaking directly to Milioti’s Sarah. Samberg is never without a beer (which made me wonder just how many he opened on set). But Sarah finally meets him as Nyles does a funny dance with all the guests at the party.

They talk, they go out in the desert to make out, only to be stopped by a shadowed man who shoots Nyles with a bow and arrow. The hunter (J.K. Simmons) flees into a cave with a bright orange glow. Nyles follows, but he implores Sarah not to follow him.

She does.

And wakes up on the same day (9 November) in her same bed. She freaks out (who wouldn’t?) and finds Nyles. It is he who tells her they (and Simmons’s Roy) are stuck in a time loop on the day of the wedding. She does what anyone else would do to try and stop it. When she discovers she can’t, she accepts it and she and Nyles begin their courtship.

The Journey in a Rom Com

In just about every romantic comedy, the question isn’t if the pair will end up together, it’s how. Still, it’s fun to see these two enjoying life. Nyles now wakes with a smile on his face and slowly but surely, so does Sarah. But they’re just spending time together and not sleeping together.

Until one night, natch. There’s a short sequence here that is magical that I won’t spoil here, but it left me grinning ear to ear. Even my wife loved it.

But in every rom-com, you have the breakup. Yes, it happens here. Nyles goes back to moping, finally realizing that his life-in-the-time-loop philosophy of carpe diem is wrong and that he’s actually fallen in love with Sarah. He even seeks out Roy to see where his day always starts. Sarah, on the other hand, goes to school. She starts to spend every day on the internet learning about quantum physics, determined to find a way to escape.

Now, at this point, I’m going to say that Palm Springs is a wonderful film. Writer Andy Siara has taken a pair of fun tropes and mixed them together in a nice, twisty film that is pretty darn funny and emotional. Director Max Barbakow unfolds the story in such a way as to reveal new facts the deeper into the movie you go.

For me, having never watched Andy Samberg in anything other than Saturday Night Live, it was fun to watch him morph from his usual type personality on SNL to show some genuine emotion. I only know Milioti from the opening story on last year’s Modern Love TV series (highly recommended), but she shines here. I really appreciated how she changed over the course of the film, and she shows that change with her voice.

Really enjoyed this film, and it felt good to watch something new. I’m going to talk about the science fictional elements in the section below, but make no mistake: it barely factors into this delightful show. Unlike, say, Back to the Future or Star Trek, this is a movie focused on characters. The SF stuff is just there to make the characters interact. So if you don’t like SF, don’t worry. It’s barely there.

But be sure to stay through the first half of the credits....

SPOILER WARNING:

From here on out, I talk the ending. Go watch the film and then come back. And this is all my own conjecture. I’ve not read any other articles, assuming they’re there (I’ll be checking after I write this). And all of this is just a fun thought experiment. The movie stands on its own.




Ready?



So, Sarah figures out how to get out of the time loop. She’s conducted the experiment with the goat. She knows it works because the goat no longer shows up in their time loop.

Okay, I got that. Then she and Nyles shuffle into the cave and as they kiss, she ignites the C4. Boom. Next thing we see, Nyles and Sarah are in the neighbor’s pool…and the neighbors show up. Nyles remarks that he guesses they return on 10 November, which is proof her experiment worked.

Cut to long shots of the desert…and I’ll tell you right now, I was starting to be not 100% satisfied with the ending. What about Roy? (As a dad, after Roy’s little speech, I felt sorry for him.)

The mid-credits sequence proves he also gets out.

But how?

So Sarah and Nyles are now in Regular Time, presumably 10 November and beyond. In the mid-credits scene, Roy comes up to Nyles (now dressed in a suit) and says “You’re girlfriend told me about the way to get out of this loop.” Nyles turns…and doesn’t appear to know Roy. Roy then breaks into a huge grin, knowing the escape is possible.

Again, how? How does Sarah and Nyles essentially go back in time to get Roy out of the time loop?

My first idea is that Nyles was lying to Roy, pretending not to know him but really being Nyles of Time Line A (the one of which we see only one day). That is, the Nyles we’ve seen for 90 minutes. But that still doesn’t explain how Sarah communicated to Roy. Nor how they basically went back in time to 9 November to relay the information. The only explanation I could come up with is a parallel universe.

Side question: assuming Time Line A is what we see—and Nyles and Sarah are caught in an infinite loop—can we assume everyone else in Time Line A just goes about their lives on 10 November and beyond, wondering where Nyles and Sarah are? Ditto for Roy’s family. To everyone else, the trio will have simply disappeared. Erased from existence, to quote Doc Brown.

The other idea is that Nyles and Sarah lived 9 November in as many parallel universes as they did, with every other person living out their days wondering whatever happened to Nyles and Sarah.

But somehow, Sarah communicated to Roy. The only explanation I can come up with is that Sarah figured out a way to go back in time. Heck, she figured out how to break out of the time loop. What’s to say she couldn’t figure out how to go back in. Or at least communicate through time. Perhaps the only thing she can do is communicate back in time, giving Roy instructions on what to do and how to do it.

That’s the only explanation I can come up with.

What are your thoughts?

Back to the Future and George McFly: When Did He Know?

On Friday, when asked what movie he wanted to watch that night, my boy suggested Back to the Future. Easy sell for me. BTTF is one of my all-time Top 10 movies. It is wonderfully self-contained and perfect. The music. The acting. The actors: Christopher Lloyd's facial expression! Lea Thompson's Loraine as a teenager. Her falling in love with George after he belted Biff. Even Biff's transformation in the new 1985 was spot on.

But I got to thinking about the time travel aspect as well as the characters themselves. Despite what Avengers: Endgame posited, let's keep BTTF's time travel idea in mind: Marty travels back to 1955, meets his parents, and, as a result of the differences, returns to 1985 with a new life. In this new life, his siblings are successful and his parents are happy and in love. We already know George loved science fiction. We know that George as a teenager was visited by an alien named Darth Vader from the planet Vulcan. Which brings us to a simple question:

When did George McFly know his own son Marty was the same Marty from 1955?

The Star Trek Coincidence

I think most of us over the past 34 (!) years have wondered about a couple of things, both of which have to do with his parents. Let's zero in on George McFly in particular. As a teenager in 1955, he meets Marty who basically appears out of nowhere and helps George learn how to stand up for himself. A part of that is Marty, dressed up in his radiation suit, visiting George's room. He refers to himself as "Darth Vader from the planet Vulcan."

Now, what do you suppose George thought when, as a science fiction fan (and future writer), he watches the 1966 debut of the new TV show Star Trek. "Hey, that's funny. That weird guy I met eleven years ago mentioned he was from the planet Vulcan, just like this Spock character. What are the odds of that?"

The Rug Fire

Cut to, say, the summer of 1976. His youngest child, Marty, is named after that strange kid he knew for a week back in 1955. Sure, he and Loraine named their second son after their friend Marty, but you have to assume George rarely if ever thinks about his high school days. Then, the young Marty accidentally sets fire to the living room rug. A memory ticks at him. Marty, back in 1955, mentions that if George and Loraine had a kid who did what their youngest child just did, to go easy on the boy. Maybe the Vulcan thing is a coincidence, but this? No, this is something more. George's mind turns it over and over. How in the world could Marty the Teenager accurately predict Marty the Eight Year Old would set fire to the living room rug?

How indeed?

Star Wars and the Darth Vader Coincidence

Cut to 1977 when George, now a dad of three kids, takes the family to see the new SF movie, Star Wars. In that film, he learns there is a character called Darth Vader. Maybe's he's shrugged off the Vulcan thing or it rarely enters his mind, but you have to know the memory of that night in his bedroom back in 1955 with that strange alien who called himself Darth Vader.

Now we have two pop cultural references and a very specific moment in young Marty's life that George has experienced. One can assume, considering George's first book was science fiction, that he continued to read and watch science fiction books and movies and TV shows. One can also assume that he would be aware of the concept of time travel over the 60s and 70s and into the 80s. It was in the Twilight Zone, Planet of the Apes, and, of course, H.G. Wells's book and movie.

Time travel was always in the back of his might, right?

His Son Learns the Guitar

Sometime in his high school years, Marty McFly gets the music bug. He picks up a guitar and learns how to make it talk. He's got Van Halen as his modern inspiration, but he also loves the classics. And what better classic riff is there that Chuck Berry's 1958 song "Johnny B. Goode"? Naturally, young Marty sits in his room, guitar in hand, and learns all the chords to that song. You can imagine George, who is now empowered, listening to his youngest son up in his room work out the notes until he has the song down pat. One might even assume a proud Marty invite his parents and siblings up to his room for a mini concert. "I've been working on this for a bit, but I finally got it," Marty might say before breaking out the opening riff.

George's mind would naturally return to that night in 1955 at the Enchantment Under the Sea dance when he and Loraine fell in love.

And that friend of his, Marty: 1955, played this same song. What are the odds of that?

Seeing His Son Look Just Like Marty: 1955

We parents see our children grow older gradually, day by day. But there is always that one moment when you look at your child and it hits you: the child is no longer a kid. He's a youth. He's a teenager. He's all grown up.

Marty McFly and I are the same age. That means the summer of 1985 was the summer between my sophomore and junior year of high school. If you want, we can make Marty a grade older, say, the summer between his junior and senior year of high school.

Seeing his son age daily, perhaps George might not have "seen" Marty: 1985 as Marty: 1955. But he or Loraine snapped that photograph we see all during the movie. Let's say it was Loraine. She gets the film developed and shows George that night. "Look at how old our kids are, George," she might say.

George would look at the photograph and see not just how old Marty His Son had become but he would also see Marty: 1955.

And it would click.

George Would Know

By the summer of 1985, George has already written his novel, inspired by his real-life events from thirty years before. Chances are good George might've changed what "Darth Vader from the planet Vulcan" said in 1955 because there's already a Vader and a planet Vulcan in pop culture. But he would have realized that the alien who visited him had to have been a time traveler.

And that time traveler was his own son.

George isn't dumb. He would have easily deduced Doc Brown the Inventor was the man responsible for building a time machine. Doc Brown and Marty: 1985 spend lots of time together. It is the only answer.

George McFly, lifelong lover of science fiction and writer of a brand-new science fiction novel, now would know time travel is real and his son has done it.

Which means there is the obvious question: when would George ask Marty:1985 and Doc Brown about it. Because if you're George McFly, you absolutely want to travel through time, right? But George would have to know the exact date Marty left 1985 and traveled back to 1955. For that, he might hit a brick wall. How does he find out?

A Conversation Between George McFly and Doc Brown

If he asks his son about time travel before Marty leaves, George knows he could risk disrupting the space-time continuum. C'mon. He's seen lots of movies and TV shows. He's seen the original Star Trek episode "City on the Edge of Forever" and knows all about not disrupting the timeline.

So he does what any normal parent would do: ask Marty's friend, who just happens to be the inventor of the time machine. Ostensibly, George could show up at Doc's doorstep and just talk, man to man, about the relationship between Marty and Doc. A concerned parent would want to know, right?

But George would have to assume Doc's already working on or have already invented the time machine. George wouldn't know what form it takes, but it has to be in the window from the time Marty met Doc and they started hanging out together (not sure when. Maybe a year or two? So, the freshman year of high school.) and that very day.

George, being a smart man, might indirectly ask Doc about time travel or this and that. Doc would, naturally, be cautious. Why is the dad of my teenaged friend asking me questions about time travel?

But this is the More Enlightened Doc Brown. He read the note Marty: 1985 left in 1955. He knows about the night of the first test of the time machine. He's made preparations and already bought the bulletproof vest.

And Doc's just now realized George McFly, standing in his laboratory, knows about not only the time machine but that Marty is the time traveler.  There's that moment between them. Likely no words are spoken. It's just eyes of a father staring at the eyes of the man who invented time travel.

Doc would be the one to speak first, addressing the one answer any father would want to hear. "I get him back safely."

George would nod. "Thanks. When I finally figured it out, that explains why the Marty in 1955 just vanishes." He pauses, wanting to ask more questions, trying not to jump the most obvious one. "How does it work?"

And Doc would tell George McFly about the flux capacitor and show him the Deloren. He would explain the science and tell his side of things from 1955. He might also remind George about those few times over the past decades where Doc Brown would show up, say, at town picnic or a parade, to see and make sure George and Loraine are still together. Maybe Doc even shows George a newspaper clipping announcing their engagement and marriage.

Doc would then ask George when and how he knew. George would explain. At the end of the afternoon, the two men would have had a nice conversation, stimulating and mind-bending in its repercussions.

George would then, finally, ask his question. "Can I go?"

Doc would smile knowingly. He already knew the question was coming. He just waited for the younger man to ask it. He would already have his answer ready.

"Not until after Saturday, October 26. That's when Marty leaves and to which he returns. After he gets back, I'm going to want to have a go at it." He would smile. "I want to see what 2015 looks like."

George's eyes would get bigger. "The future," he would say in a whispered tone. "I want to see the future, too."

Doc would clap George McFly on the shoulder. "I'll look you up when I get there." He would squeeze George's shoulder and bring him face to face. "But you can't say anything to Marty until after October 26th. You can't even let on that you know. You can't even tell your wife." He pauses, looking at George. "Does she know?"

George knows Loraine is a smart woman, but admits he's not brought it up to her.

"Make sure she doesn't say anything to Marty. We can't risk upsetting the timeline." If he hasn't already, Doc would explain how the photograph of the three McFly children changed and reverted back again.

"It's fixed now?" George asks.

"Yes. But if you let on to Marty you know about him, it'll all be erased from existence."

George would nod. "Got it."

He would inhale and look at the time machine. Maybe he notices the calendar hanging from the wall and notes how far away October 26 is from that day.

Then, maybe a thought strikes George. He frowns.

"What is it?" Doc asks.

"When Marty returns to this time, will he remember the original timeline?"

Doc's eyes narrow in thought. "Maybe. Here, come over to this chalkboard, and let's talk through the possibilities."

Summary

This is really a thought experiment. It's all just occurred to me since I re-watched BTTF on Friday night. Maybe there are websites that go into detail about this--I'm sure there are--but I don't know them.

What do you think? Do you think George McFly knew about Marty? What would you do in George's place? And where would you go in time?