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lbrex's review against another edition
5.0
I'm a little embarrassed by how long it took me to read this, but I'm happy to say that it's a very impressive study of the way that time travel stories and novels, as popular narrative forms, confront many of the questions that have been central to narrative theory. In its very nature, time travel fiction works through many of the same concerns about plot, point of view, character, and structure that have been the focus of narratology for many years.
It's probably best if readers know a little something about narrative theory before starting this book, but nothing beyond an introduction is probably necessary. Many of the insights that Wittenberg provided about written science fiction stories were outstanding, and his reading of "Yesterday's Enterprise" from Star Trek: TNG seemed very convincing to me. The _Back to the Future_ chapter, while its conclusions weren't hard to swallow, seemed a bit too abstract when it came to the argument it was making about the camera, capitalism, and the studio system. The psychological interpretations in from the _Back to the Future_ chapter were compelling, and these were worked out further in the final chapters.
There were two aspects of his discussion that will really stick with me. First, I appreciated the notion of "fabular apriority"--in other words a privileging of the fabula, or the idea that there is an imagined historical occurrence that proceeded in chronological order behind every arrangement of narrative--in fiction. Time travel fiction, however, often makes the fabula incoherent, leaving readers only with the actual physical structure of the book to provide the story with what seems like a coherent shape. This wasn't something that I'd even stopped to consider before.
The second aspect was the conclusion that Wittenberg comes to after discussing time travel fiction: that time travel stories tend to be conservative, in the sense that they sublimate psychological and political issues that could be addressed directly. Instead, time travel stories focus instead on the idea of time travel as a phenomena with fascinating and complicated narrative effects. Many of Wittenberg's readings show us exactly what kinds of political and psychological meanings are being ignored when we focus on the mechanics and narrative effects of time travel. This discussion is a nice complement to his opening assertion that time travel stories evolved out of utopian romance, but broke off from the utopian romance when the time travel story focused almost entirely on the romance's "macrologue": "that portion of utopian fiction which contains any and all efforts towards framing the requisite travel to a realistic utopian future, and therefore all the (macrological) explanation required to realize time travel adequately."
This is a great book. I felt jealous reading it because I wished I could have written it. I encourage those interested in science fiction, popular culture, narrative, and the evolution of the novel to check it out. Star Trek fans will find it interesting as well.
It's probably best if readers know a little something about narrative theory before starting this book, but nothing beyond an introduction is probably necessary. Many of the insights that Wittenberg provided about written science fiction stories were outstanding, and his reading of "Yesterday's Enterprise" from Star Trek: TNG seemed very convincing to me. The _Back to the Future_ chapter, while its conclusions weren't hard to swallow, seemed a bit too abstract when it came to the argument it was making about the camera, capitalism, and the studio system. The psychological interpretations in from the _Back to the Future_ chapter were compelling, and these were worked out further in the final chapters.
There were two aspects of his discussion that will really stick with me. First, I appreciated the notion of "fabular apriority"--in other words a privileging of the fabula, or the idea that there is an imagined historical occurrence that proceeded in chronological order behind every arrangement of narrative--in fiction. Time travel fiction, however, often makes the fabula incoherent, leaving readers only with the actual physical structure of the book to provide the story with what seems like a coherent shape. This wasn't something that I'd even stopped to consider before.
The second aspect was the conclusion that Wittenberg comes to after discussing time travel fiction: that time travel stories tend to be conservative, in the sense that they sublimate psychological and political issues that could be addressed directly. Instead, time travel stories focus instead on the idea of time travel as a phenomena with fascinating and complicated narrative effects. Many of Wittenberg's readings show us exactly what kinds of political and psychological meanings are being ignored when we focus on the mechanics and narrative effects of time travel. This discussion is a nice complement to his opening assertion that time travel stories evolved out of utopian romance, but broke off from the utopian romance when the time travel story focused almost entirely on the romance's "macrologue": "that portion of utopian fiction which contains any and all efforts towards framing the requisite travel to a realistic utopian future, and therefore all the (macrological) explanation required to realize time travel adequately."
This is a great book. I felt jealous reading it because I wished I could have written it. I encourage those interested in science fiction, popular culture, narrative, and the evolution of the novel to check it out. Star Trek fans will find it interesting as well.
ayafr's review against another edition
refer back to intro for the multiple worlds stuff
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