Millenium by John Varley

You may know or remember Millennium as a movie starring Kris Kristofferson and Cheryl Ladd. Me too. But its actually a short story by John Varley, Air Raid, which he expanded into a full length novel, Millenium.

I've watched the movie a few years ago, I don't remember much of how it goes. Obviously, it will follow the happenings on the novel, but I am not sure on where it deviated. If you are interested, you can check out its wikipedia entry (Millennium (film) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia).

Now, for the novel, it is one of the reasons why it has taken me this long to finish The Charm School, hehehe. I was able to buy a copy of the book on BookSale, found it interesting, started reading it and before I knew it, I was already at the end of the book.

Millennium tackles one of the most complex items in science fiction (or are there actual research being done to determine if its feasible?): Time Travel. From my readings and the movies that I have watched, (I particularly like The Simpsons episode where Homer traveled back in time), dealing with time travel is very tedious as you will have to tie up a lot of loose ends. When traveling in time, the slightest action can, and usually does, gravely affect the future in ways previously thought impossible.

One of the no-no's when you time travel is leaving behind something that came from the future, to the past (or present). A stunner left behind by one of Louise Baltimore's (the time traveler protagonist) soldier was creating a paradox that would ultimately destroy the future. Louise volunteered to retrieve the stunner to prevent the future from being destroyed. And that is where the story will revolve.

Louise will come back to the past 4 times to try to fix the future, and to tell you the truth, I am unable to follow the story from that point. I know I will need to re read the book to have a better understand of what has happened when, but for now, I really don't why it is important for her to prioritize in going back to Window C rather than Window A.

But as I have said, its a very entertaining book, and I will do my best to find the time to read it again.