Making History

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What I loved about Fry's story is that he did not rely on a naive plot, but actually put a lot of thought into his conjectures, where one change effects so many things that outcomes are not predictable. And, yet, despite the sensitive subjects that Fry brought up, there is an overarching tone of hope for humankind, even if the book focuses on the balance between the good and the bad that comes with every action. A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact. All in all, it’s an interesting book with an interesting premise and if you enjoy alternate histories, I highly recommend it. Who knows - you may even enjoy the scripted sections…

Edith Peers and John McLinden both have authority in dual roles, while Ruaraidh Hastie’s raisin-scoffing spook has a nice line in misleading bonhomie. All of the roles, down to Sheila Thomson’s blink-and-you’ll-miss-it pancake server, contribute to a finely tuned ensemble. praiseworthy This is not really a science-fiction book though. Apart from some techno-babble, we're never really told how the time-machine works, and that's not the point of the book either. It focusses on the consequences, which, despite the rather neat tech, are pretty horrible all around. Fortunately, a bit of human decency and compassion has survived. So this eventually turns into a bit of a romance too. There are those who wonder if the whole of history is now valuable only as a politically correct lesson in the stupidity and cruelty of monarchs, aristocrats, industrialists and generals. Stern, loveless voices tell us that history as we know it is an irrelevance, with its obsession with dead white men, or with Judaeo-Christianity, or classical antiquity, or the West, or enlightenment, or wars, dynasties and treaties. Marxists, Althusserians, formalists, revisionists, historians of Empire or against Empire - forget them all. You don't even have to dignify it with ideological abstractions any more; history is really the story of a series of subjugations, oppressions, exploitations and abuses. In a rather circular, roundabout way, Fry makes the point that cultural conditions result in so many things that the removal of one person won't necessarily mitigate the development of some particular outcome. While he did a great job illustrating, in a small way, how some small changes would result in a world that is more or less racist/bigoted or homophobic... he left out all the super interesting bits about what was happening in Germany after WWI that resulted in the rise of nationalism and cultural rebirth -- which created a really excellent environment for a charismatic leader. I like the alternate history told in first person perspective, and I like the extra implications for even worse and more dire consequences of the protagonist's attempt to "fix" history. Sadly, as a lover, seeker and searcher of time travel fiction, this one doesn't make the recommendation list. perhaps it is that Fry just ain't my guy. Perhaps it's that two tangential minds that have the propensity to live on the extremes of mood and emotions, don't really fit. I've tried with you Stephen, I really have.Ocr tesseract 4.1.1 Ocr_detected_lang en Ocr_detected_lang_conf 1.0000 Ocr_detected_script Latin Ocr_detected_script_conf 0.9838 Ocr_module_version 0.0.7 Ocr_parameters -l eng Old_pallet IA19891 Openlibrary_edition

There are a lot of liberties taken, of course, with regards to the alternate history of the world and the whole science and technology aspect of the book, but I don’t think those are the points to ponder about. The heart-wrenching truth and circumstances surrounding the darkest period of human history and just the very idea of rewriting life as we know it, already gave a plethora of moments where I had to keep the book aside to digest the narrative.It is an entertaining read. He is a talented and cultured man and that it is what you see while reading. So far, so good. The protagonist has been well established, with plenty of depth. We have met with Leo and there’s been a couple of interesting plot twists – and then the novel prose comes to abrupt end and I was confronted with a film script. The action immediately speeded up as I witnessed a major emotional confrontation spool through in this script mode – feeling completely unconnected to the characters. Later in the novel, there is another, longer film script interlude, which also had the effect of alienating me from the action – a real shame as I’d really enjoyed the book up to this point. Together they realise that they have the power to alter history and eradicate a great evil. But tinkering with timelines is more dangerous than they can imagine and nothing - past, present or future - will ever be the same again. When I started the book, the misgivings I had with the premise continued: I liked Fry's writing but I still couldn't get to grips with reading what was in part a biography of Hitler, which, well, I had not planned on ever reading. I even found myself skimming some of those parts. It was written really well, but not something I would have engaged with if it had been by any other author.

But ... isn't history now just point of view, tribal assertion, cultural propaganda? After all, the days of Burke, Macaulay, Gibbon, Trevelyan and Froude are over. Historians are no longer grandees at the centre of a fixed civilisation; they are simply journalists writing about celebrities who haven't got the grace to be alive any more. Certainly, some people sense in our world, even if they can't prove it, a new and bewildering contempt for the past. In the high street of life, as it were, no one seems to look above the shop-line. Today's plastic signage at street level is the focus; yesterday's pilasters, corbels and pediments above are neither noticed nor considered, save by what some would call cranks and conservationists.The book does an excellent job of capturing the human emotional level of the whole insane thing, and it's much funnier than you'd expect this kind of book to be.

I think I read somewhere once that the first rule of timetravel is that you try to kill Hitler, and the second rule is that it either doesn't work, or things get even worse.

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The second half of the book had me gripped. If I had not arranged to meet with a friend for lunch, I would have read this book straight through all morning.