Timepieces

What he creates instead is a small time travel device capable of moving a single person backwards and forwards through time. On a lark, Tom goes back to 1787 to see the Constitutional Convention in process and is surprised to be recognized by Benjamin Franklin. While Franklin is coy on his first meeting with Tom, Tom learns enough to know that he’s obviously been using the time travel device in his future and has had a companion he hasn’t yet met. After Tom’s return to 2022, his daughter and son are also soon caught up in the time travel adventures along with Audrey, Tom’s companion that Franklin had mentioned during Tom’s subjective first meeting with him. Audrey is from a dystopian 2275 and finds one of Tom’s time travel devices left specifically for her that takes her back to 1776, where Tom eventually meets her. The action that drives the story is a world catastrophe that happens in Tom’s initial time, but has repercussions up and down history.

Time travel stories are always a balance in the strength of the ability to move and interact with the time traveler’s surroundings. Waver takes the stance that very little can actually change, that time mostly follows the strong timeline. He blends a time travel adventure with some politics (as one might imagine from Tom’s initial visit to the Constitutional Convention) and his future society where the enemy society is called the “Feds.” Waver’s politics probably fall close to Libertarian, but he doesn’t use them to preach so much as they just drive some of the world view and world building he does in Timepieces. Overall, Timepieces is a good debut novel that has a broad appeal to more than just science fiction readers, but also those interested in early American history and political theory.