The Memory Collectors (SF) - Dete Meserve ****

Dete Meserve structures her novel around four characters, each getting their own chapter in rotation until storylines start to cross. This is a difficult approach to engage with, as after the first four chapters it's hard to have any connection to a character, but in the context of the storyline it makes sense, and after a while everything does start to fit into place.

Each of our four is making a journey back in time using new technology developed by Californian startup Aeon Expeditions (founded by ex-husband of one of the four, Elizabeth). This is not time travel as science fiction usually portrays it. It is reminiscent of Daphne du Maurier's striking time travel novel The House on the Strand. In that book, the protagonist is able to mentally travel back to the fourteenth century, while his body remains in the present (putting him in danger, as his physical body moves across the landscape following the mental one in the past). in Meserve's book, the characters do travel back to a point in their past where they experience an hour being themselves at that point in time (not with their present bodies), but are able to act independently from their past lives, even though as soon as they return, the timeline snaps back to the way it was.

As we get into the plot, Meserve beautifully handles weaving together the four stories, ending up with a real page-turner for the chapters where, during a single day, all four live new versions of a life-altering event. I had to stay up late to get through these chapters - the whole thing is done with flair. My only slight moan plot-wise is the ending, which ties everything up with a bow and skirts over the apparent implication that at least one of the characters should be charged with murder. But that doesn't really matter - at the heart of the book is a 'what-if' of what would we do if we were sent back to a crucial turning point in our lives, with the potential to experience it differently, even though it won't change the real world.

Time travel is theoretically possible but not practically doable, so even with modern physics in mind, SF resorts to McGuffins to make it happen. Although there may be a scientific sugar-coating, under the hood whether it's the TARDIS, a DeLorean with a flux capacitor or Wells' Time Machine, what we experience is no more scientific than Mark Twain's use of a bump on the head in Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. Meserve weaves in suitable scientific terms like closed time-like curves, but leaving aside the practical impossibilities of using these, the physics would not enable travel to before they were invented - and they would not magically transform you back into your past body. But as there isn't a true hard science time travel story, we have to just go with the flow.

Overall, the premise is fascinating and despite the unlikely time travel mode, it was an engaging read, climaxing with the fateful day where it becomes an energetic page-turner. 

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Review by Brian Clegg - See all Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly email free here