Memories

A thoroughly fascinating story of love and time travel woven throughout the entire breadth of time. David Wolfe is a bitter psychiatrist, and Silv is a crippled woman from the future. Together they must stop a psychotic soldier named Hersch, who blunders around through time and eventually takes up residence in Napoleon Bonaparte. A great twist on the time travel theme. Highly recommended.

I remember reading this novel some ten years ago; it left an impression. As I recently re-read it, it all came flooding back to me. Rare is the novel that manages to move this cynical 33-year-old, but I pity the sardonic heart that is not touched by the story.

Memories is not your ordinary science fiction. Indeed, to me the best science fiction or fantasy is not about technology or magic but about human relationships and interactions; they are stories speak to universal themes and truths even while couching the context in a certain milieu. This novel is one of those stories that transcends the genre. The story seems as far-fetched as a science fiction novel might be. It centers around a modern-day psychiatrist named David Wolf, a typical self-absorbed rich guy trapped by his own class and background. Then one day, along comes his sister, acting very strangely and claiming to actually be one of his descendants from the far future, Silv. Silv has invented a drug that allows a person to travel through his own lines of ancestry -- to time-travel, in essence, and inhabit any one of his ancestors for any length of time. And of course, she needs David's help to stop a third time-traveller, Hersh, who stole the drug and has ensconced himself in the person of Napoleon Bonaparte and is proceeding to screw up history. If so far it sounds like a cheesy "Star Trek" episode, well, that's how it struck me, at first. But it quickly becomes about far more than mere time-travel paradoxes. It's a vast what-if story. What if: you could be anybody in any place, any time? What if you could see Jesus or Alexander the Great or Genghis Khan, what if you could influence world events? What if you couldn't die? What if you could dwell for eternity in the lives of any of your ancestors? What would life *mean*? What would *existence* mean? And what if you saw the hopelessness, the repetitiveness, of human history? What if you say the endless killing, the wars, the famine, the disease? What if you had the power to see the infinite varieties of death and suffering in the world? Where would be the meaning, the joy? Fortunately McQuay doesn't exactly tackle all of these themes at once or even in-depth. But the plot develops from a rickety time-travel story into a philosophical exploration and, ultimately, a romance of a sensual and spiritual nature that is beautiful to read. And psychologically, the story moves the characters from one of base struggle and manipulation, through joyful exploration, to a mature and, dare I say, enlightened experience of the world as it is -- and ending, of course, in death, for that is something from which none of us escape. But in the end, as I read back across the timescape that McQuay has crafted, I saw how life in general goes -- really, in that sequence, from struggle to exploration to enlightenment. (Think Bill Murray in Groundhog Day.) So few stories really touch on a context for life and existence so deep and so broad, and I am grateful to this author for offering this to us. Memories is the winner of a Philip K. Dick Award, and I definitely see why.