Paul Di Filippo Reviews Time’s Agent by Brenda Peynado

Time’s Agent, Brenda Peynado (Tordotcom 978-1250854315, trade paperback, 208pp, $16.99) August 2024

Would it be possible to write a piece of fiction that exhibited or contained no emotions? That seems highly unlikely. Humans are made of emotions—and intellect. Those two realms are—to truncate the famous phrase coined by Stephen Jay Gould when he was trying to categorize the barrier between science and religion—“overlapping magisteria.” Two vast territories with a fluid, permeable border. Possibly, the further from the border you move in one direction, you may run into one hundred percent emotions; while moving in the other direction, you may reach one hundred percent intellectualism.

And since fiction, even if its protagonists are purely alien, is intended to be read by, and appeal to, humans, emotions must play their part in all narratives.

Now, science fiction has often been called “the literature of ideas,” seeming to imply that it downplays the emotions. And quite often, especially in the past, it did. But even so, something that seems pure intellect, like Stapledon’s Star Maker, evokes emotions in the reader. And even something that appears to be structurally arid, like Ballard’s story “The Index” (a literal index), magically conjures up various passions.

Now, there is some contemporary or modern science fiction which has more emotional heft than other instances of its kind. And in the best of these, the emotions are intimately intertwined with the novums in play. What do I mean by this? Well, suppose you’re reading a space opera, and you’ve really built up some resonance with the protagonist, and then the spouse of the protagonist dies by simple, conventional murder or accident. Okay, you’re going to feel some emotions. But the situation that evoked them isn’t stefnal, per se. You might as well be reading the scene in A Tale of Two Cities when Sydney Carton goes to the guillotine.

However, take three magnificent counter-examples: Simak’s “Desertion”, Bradbury’s “There Will Come Soft Rains”, and Shaw’s “Light of Other Days”. The emotions the reader feels from those tales would not exist without the technological novums—avatars, atomic apocalypse, and slow glass. And they are not the pure mimetic emotions either, but strangely tinged by bizarreness.

Anyhow, this long preamble leads us to Brenda Peynado’s debut novel (her first book was a story collection called The Rock Eaters). It is an extremely emotional book—dare I say, even tearjerking?—whose turbulence of feelings arises directly from the science. She has interwoven the disparate strands into a beautiful hybrid garment.

Sometime in the medium-distant future, science has discovered “pocket worlds”. Bubbles of space-time budding off from our continuum, these come in a variety of sizes: some are not even as big as a coffin, while others are acres and acres in extent. The majority feature biosphere conditions identical to Earth’s. Despite these limitations, scientists theorize that there might be a PW portal that leads to Universe Two, a full-sized infinite cosmos alongside ours.

With this discovery comes the formation of the Global Institute for the Scientific and Humanistic Study of Pocket Worlds. A noble venture with idealistic intentions.

Oh, yes, two other features: many pocket worlds exhibit time dilation. In some, time runs slower, and in others, faster. One has to be very careful about the consequences of this aspect. And a pocket world can be entirely contained in a discrete object. See that rock? It could be way bigger on the inside.

Our protagonist is Raquel, an archaeologist. Of what use can she be to the Institute? Many pocket worlds show signs of previous human habitations, ancient visitors who stumbled into fairyland. Raquel’s specialty is the Taino people, long extinct. Her partner in life and in the Institute is Marlena, a biologist. Between them, they have a young daughter, Atalanta. Living in the very pleasant Dominican Republic, the three have almost a picture-perfect “suburban” lifestyle.

Then comes disaster.

One day Raquel is investigating a brand new pocket world contained in “an almond-shaped object the size of [a child’s] palms.” She happens to be wearing around her neck, for reasons of comfort and safety, the very pocket world in which Marlena is currently working. Incautious, Raquel falls into the new PW, and the portal closes. She and Marlena are trapped.

When she emerges—in a great scene resembling something out of the first Indiana Jones film—she quickly discovers that forty years have passed in the real world. Atalanta is dead, a world war has caused devastation, society is vastly degraded, and that includes the Institute. Pocket worlds have become commodified. Need a cold-storage warehouse? Just rent a frigid PW. And so on.

Now a stranger in a strange land, with her wife Marlena hating her, Raquel embarks on a quest to maintain her sanity, make sense of her new life—and just maybe discover Universe Two along the way.

Instantly, we can see that her travails and emotions are inseparable from this unearthly condition. Time dilation has been used for a deracinating effect in SF before, most notably in Haldeman’s The Forever War. But Peynado ramps it up to new amplitude. Raquel is the narrator, and so she is on every page. The intensity and range of her feelings (and thoughts) are understated but hard-hitting, and conveyed in precise language, limning a journey into self-awareness.

I put my head in my hands over the kitchen table. I was alone with this. I wanted Marlena to come out [of the PW], but it was a selfish want. I wanted her to bear part of this weight with me. Yes, there had always been tragedies around us before our time leap. But they had never touched me. I had never reached out to them…. I had been content with being an archaeologist, and unearthing the past’s sins from inside my kernel of joy. Now, I longed for the tinkle of bone artifacts falling into a jar from my hands.

But while Raquel’s spiritual hegira assumes prominence, Peynado does not neglect to exfoliate all the aspects of her novum in many ingenious ways. Here’s just one mindbender: conjure up a tiny PW (for scientists can now create them), contained in, say, a cube the size of a die. Get inside. Let a drone transport the die to your destination at minimal energy costs while you relax. Then get out.

Full of thrilling incidents and a host of finely wrought subsidiary characters, as well as keen-edged world-building, Time’s Agent might very well be its own self-contained mini-universe.

While you are here, please take a moment to support Locus with a one-time or recurring donation. We rely on reader donations to keep the magazine and site going, and would like to keep the site paywall free, but WE NEED YOUR FINANCIAL SUPPORT to continue quality coverage of the science fiction and fantasy field.

©Locus Magazine. Copyrighted material may not be republished without permission of LSFF.