Chekhov's Journey

Ian Watson's "Chekhov's journey" could be described as an ironic critique on ideology and the malleability of history, blended with metaphysical playfulness. A science fiction novel, "Chekhov's journey" narrates the story of a future, time-travelling spacecraft getting into trouble and causing the (historically documented) Tunguska-explosion in Siberia around the turn of the 19th century. At the same time, the novel presents the reader with a Soviet film crew who set out to make a film commemorating Anton Chekhov's historical journey to Siberia (also around the turn of the 19th century), and who use new hypnotic techniques to make an actor relive Anton Chekhov's experiences. However, this experiment, too, goes badly wrong, and the actor impersonating Chekhov starts producing a history that is profoundly unhistorical. The different sub-plots get interwoven in interesting ways, but it is up to the curious reader to find out exactly how...By way of appreciation, what recommends Ian Watson's novel is (I feel) its ability to combine its science fiction plot of time travel with an ironic vision of history, which is in principle formed by factual historical events, but, in fact, turns out to be extremely unreliable. That is, history can be changed by future generations - something that is true in a very literal sense in the case of time travel, but that is also true as far as any representation of history is concerned. The Soviet film crew is quite painfully confronted with this fact, and struggles (rather comically) to find the "safe" rather than the "true" version of history. Another of the novel's strong points is the way the different sub-plots are presented to the reader. The novel continually switches from one sub-plot to the other (a formal reflection, perhaps, of the thematic confusion of different time-levels). The result is a highly varied whole; and it is probably this technique which keeps keeps the reader curious for what the next chapter will have to offer. A minor point of criticism, perhaps; some of the novel's characters remain a little sketchy - which is perhaps due to the concentration of ideas in the story. I found this not troubling, however. The novel is certainly very enjoyable, and thought-provoking, without ever being dull or hard to read. I definitely recommend this book.