The Tourist

August 29, 2016
British author Dickinson makes his U.S. debut with a murky, dystopian thriller, which depicts a 24th-century world replete with brutal, militaristic societies of slaves and biomechanically enhanced superhumans. Time-travel technology allows visits to eras before the NEE (Near Extinction Event), which transformed the world and its surviving inhabitants. Spens is a guide at a time-travel “resort,” where tourists can visit early 21st-century England. When a visitor vanishes from a group excursion, Spens must pursue her. He slowly realizes that his quarry may be an agent from another time whose actions in the past may change the future, causing humanity’s near annihilation—or preventing it. The leaps of time, identity, and chronology create a dark, chillingly claustrophobic atmosphere, but the choppy chronology and elaborate sci-fi imaginings overshadow and obscure the plot and meaningful character development. “Travel is confusing,” is a frequent refrain, and the same can be said for this ambitious but unsatisfying vision of the future. Agent: Oli Munson, A.M. Heath (U.K.).

Welcome to the 21st century. Please don't feed the natives.Dickinson's twisty conspiracy thriller turns an often troublesome narrative device--time travel--to wonderful advantage, wittily exploiting the trope's opportunities for structural inventiveness, worldbuilding, and sly social commentary. Hundreds of years in the future, after a "Near Extinction Event," the surviving humans have sufficiently rebuilt to the impressive extent that time tourism exists as a feasible vacation option for all. The easiest era to get to (and the cheapest) is our own familiar early 21st century. In the novel's drollest construction, the current era is an underwhelming novelty attraction, a drab, stinking curiosity; visitors content themselves with a visit to a shopping mall, a handy distillation of human achievement and values to this point. When a tourist goes missing, her minder is plunged into a bewildering, temporally Byzantine plot with apocalyptic implications. Standard stuff, but Dickinson gets there in style, employing alternating points of view (or...are they?) and tantalizingly doling out details of the evolved future humans (they are tall, pale, and have trouble with our food) and society (numbered cities administrated by Orwellian departments of Happiness, Safety, and Awareness). The characters are well-drawn and distinctive, Dickinson's literary prose glides through the plot thickets with graceful assurance, and the whole immersive enterprise concludes on a satisfyingly poetic note. Echoes of Bradbury and Orwell, in the service of a crackerjack conspiracy plot; a seductively intriguing work of speculative fiction. COPYRIGHT(1) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

October 1, 2016
In the mid-twenty-fourth centurylong after a series of calamitous events ended civilization as it was knowntime travel is common, with the early twenty-first century a popular destination. Tri-Millennium rep Spens is escorting a group to the 21st when he discovers, on the return, that he has lost one client. And this is not just any client but a woman who had been selected to be trained by the Defense Committee but was eventually imprisoned for a host of offenses, including sabotage and murder. In this world it is not permissible to try to change the past during travel to it, nor is it possible to change future events even though they are known. The narrative of Spenswho wants to go back for a Beethoven concert on December 22, 1808is in the first person, while the tourist's is in the second person, and inevitably the two threads converge. Dickinson has created a bleak future world and spins a plot most appropriate for readers who appreciate ambiguity.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)