{"id":13943,"date":"2019-10-26T20:35:48","date_gmt":"2019-10-27T00:35:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/?p=13943"},"modified":"2019-10-26T23:36:35","modified_gmt":"2019-10-27T03:36:35","slug":"newitz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/2019\/10\/26\/newitz\/","title":{"rendered":"Traveling Back In Time To Fight The Patriarchy In Annalee Newitz\u2019s \u2018Future Of Another Timeline\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tess has time-traveled to 1992 to attend a riot grrrl concert at the start of Annalee Newitz\u2019s new science fiction novel \u201cThe Future of Another Timeline\u201d<\/a> (Tor Books). She\u2019s snuck back to muck around with her own past in an effort to head off the gory craziness that explodes when her teenage self and friends murder a date-raping boyfriend. Getting away with that crime of self-defense launches the clique on a string of vigilante murders of abusive men.<\/p>\n

But Tess isn\u2019t really supposed to be in 1992. She\u2019s part of a time-traveling feminist collective called the Daughters of Harriet who are trying to fend off efforts by a time-traveling group of misogynists to lock-in a future in which women\u2019s civil rights are throttled. In her own time, the United States of 2022, abortion is illegal and doctors are barred from providing information about birth control in most states. A traveler from the future arrives warning that things will get much, much worse for women if changes aren\u2019t made.<\/p>\n

When she\u2019s in 1992, Tess is AWOL from her \u201creal\u201d mission, to travel back to 1893 Chicago to rally a group of burlesque dancers, working on the midway of Chicago\u2019s Columbian Exposition world\u2019s fair, against a popular moralizing misogynist who catalyzes a whole anti-women movement. Can Tess organize political actions that discredit his ideas enough to lock-in a major shift in the gender politics of the future?<\/p>\n

\"Annalee<\/a>
Annalee Newitz’s “The Future of Another Timeline.”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cThe Future of Another Timeline\u201d arrives as part of an invigorating group of recent feminist reimaginings of science fiction and fantasy\u2014Kelly Barnhill\u2019s 2017 Newbury Medal-winning novel \u201cThe Girl Who Drank the Moon\u201d; Naomi Alderman’s 2017 novel “The Power”; Katherine Arden\u2019s 2017 book \u201cThe Bear and the Nightingale\u201d; Naomi Novik\u2019s 2018 novel \u201cSpinning Silver.\u201d In each book, grrrl power heroines battle the patriarchy\u2014from domineering fathers to village elders to fairy tale deities.<\/p>\n

Newitz\u2019s book seems to build on Margaret Atwood\u2019s 1985 dystopian novel \u201cThe Handmaid\u2019s Tale.\u201d With the popularity of the Hulu television series based on the book, the story has reemerged as a premonition of repressive forces on the rise. (Atwood herself just published a sequel titled \u201cThe Testaments.\u201d)<\/p>\n

Atwood has said she imagined world of \u201cThe Handmaid Tale\u201d by spinning out the ultimate conclusion of existing misogynist practices. \u201cIn \u2018The Handmaid\u2019s Tale,\u2019 nothing happens that the human races has not already done at some time in the past, or that it is not doing now, perhaps in other countries, or for which it has not yet developed the technology. \u2026 The projected trends on which my future society is based are already in motion,\u201d Atwood wrote in her essay \u201cWriting Utopia\u201d in her 2005 nonfiction collection \u201cWriting With Intent.\u201d<\/a> Newitz takes another spin with that idea here: What if American women couldn\u2019t vote, what if abortion was never legalized?<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Future of Another Timeline\u201d is a thrilling page-turner, but it\u2019s grim. It\u2019s not an antidote to our timeline, with an abuser-in-chief in the U.S. White House and the forces of misogyny, bigotry and authoritarianism on the march. Tess\u2019s successes feel tentative, easily undone. Instead, the book is a warning: Things could get worse, much worse. It gets you thinking about the changes we can make in our own time to improve our lives, our communities, our world, our future.<\/p>\n

Previously:<\/strong> \u2018The Handmaid\u2019s Tale\u2019: A Walking Tour Of The Novel\u2019s Cambridge Settings<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

If this is the kind of coverage of arts, cultures and activisms you appreciate, please support Wonderland by contributing to Wonderland on Patreon<\/a>. And sign up for our free, weekly newsletter<\/a> so that you don’t miss any of our reporting.<\/em><\/p>\n

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\"Annalee<\/a>
Annalee Newitz. (Sarah Deragon photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tess has time-traveled to 1992 to attend a riot grrrl concert at the start of Annalee Newitz\u2019s new science fiction novel \u201cThe Future of Another Timeline\u201d (Tor Books). She\u2019s snuck back to muck around with her own past in an effort to head off the gory craziness that explodes when her teenage self and friends […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14113,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[107],"tags":[98,622],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13943"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13943"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13943\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14119,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13943\/revisions\/14119"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13943"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13943"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}