Perfect genre-defying book

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“When we say small things change, we do not mean that they are insignificant.”

The Future of Another Timeline is a sci-fi novel steeped in political movements, collective action, and how the personal change we make can have a much bigger impact on our lives than massive systemic political change. Also, there are frequent mentions of UCLA, so it’s just about the perfect novel.

When I went to UCLA, many students from Orange County complained about the “Orange Curtain” and it’s lack of personality. It’s boring and too tidy and nothing ever happens there. I developed a negative view of an entire region before I ever set foot there. Eventually I lived in OC for a short period and while I certainly was indoctrinated by my classmates to loathe the area, I couldn’t imagine anything more disgustingly bland after grocery-shopping, coffee-drinking and movie-renting (look, it was the early aughts, Blockbuster was still around) in the heart of Orange County. It was like taking a home built in 1900 and removing the personality by replacing all the original light fixtures, doors and cabinets with plastic Hello Kitty schlock.

It’s been twenty years, give or take, and now I’m a parent and no longer harbor rage against a California county. It may not be my first choice but I can more than understand why people live there. Yet reading FoAT gave me some bizarre mix of a knee-jerk eye roll combined with horror movie-chills when it opened in Irvine, CA, unofficial capitol of boring OC. There is no city more vanilla. Even the characters in the book say this, especially at UCLA, where I met the real-life younger siblings of these fictional OC-bred students who had the same complaints.

When I realized a few of the characters went to my UCLA, and not too many years before I did, I mentally went back to that time and scratched my head wondering about the grunge bands the kids in the story were discussing. I had to get near the end of the novel before I realized it was an invention of an altered past. I thought I’d mellowed on OC only to become so unhip that I didn’t know an amazing feminist punk band whose lyrics were in the book.

That’s a lot of preface to say this book is effing amazing. It illustrates why the personal is political, it features a group of bad ass feminists trying to expand women’s rights, and in the book, Harriet Tubman was elected to Senate in one timeline. It’s hardcore sci-fi, and historical fiction, and romance (only a bit) and an ode to friendship and the rage that women rightfully feel. It’s about what we are willing to do for our friends.

It’s about how hard it is to break free of the crap that holds you back. And about how quickly major changes can seem normal, even though it can be so arduous and even painful to make them.

It’s got a bit of a Sliding Doors element too. But the absolute best part was the finale, where the book endorses collective action, where a big change is made by many people, sharing the load.