FORMAT: HARDBACK (REVIEWED), DIGITAL | RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW
Acclaimed sci-fi and fantasy writer Adrian Tchaikovsky, best known for his 2015 novel Children of Time, makes nothing less than the end of time itself the subject of his latest work. One Day All This Will Be Yours is an absurdly funny, sharply written novella about a time-travelling war veteran who, having set up camp at the end of time, has made it his personal mission to ensure anyone trying to time travel is never born.
The unnamed narrator is the only survivor of the Causality War, a literal ‘war to end all wars’. And the biggest casualty? Time. Nobody remembers how any of it started but, in the end, time had been broken and history obliterated into unanchored shards. The protagonist’s rustic oasis, complete with top-of-the-line robots, a Soviet-era tractor, and one’s very own pet Allosaurus, is at the edge of undamaged time, and determined to never lets anything like the war happen again. To say much more of the plot would spoil the many surprises in store.
The exploration of classic science fiction themes like time travel, paradoxes, and alternate timelines are of course enough to entice even the most casual genre fans. Yet what proves most engaging about Tchaikovsky’s tale is the narrator’s jaded attitude towards these grand and thought-provoking ideas. Infused with all the world-weariness and observational astuteness one would expect of a well-travelled time-traveller, One Day All This Will Be Yours’ narrator lends a darkly comical tilt to the end of the world.
Tchaikovsky’s newly released offering is a richly original and humorous must-read for genre newbies and die-hard sci-fi fans alike.
