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[starreview]
Classification: Historical Characters
When visiting a museum in Paris, physicist Jasper Hudnut is astounded to discover a time machine just lying in the corner (strangely reminiscent of H.G. Wells’ famous contraption). Jasper immediately knows it is a time machine because he’s already seen it before (you’ll have to read the novel to discover how).
After realizing he is too old to go on temporal adventures, Jasper offers the machine to Gabriel Prince, an author of travel guides. There are, however, strings attached to this offer: Gabriel is to go back in time and find a way – any way he could think of – to prevent Ronald Reagan from becoming president of the United States. After this is accomplished, Gabriel is free to do with the machine as he pleases.
Gabriel, obviously the protagonist in this story, decides to accept this proposition, and travels to 1938. Managing to assimilate almost perfectly into the society of the time, Gabriel befriends Ronald Reagen and tries to steer him in a way that will accomplish his mission. But things are not as easy as he expected.
Preferring not to use violence, at first Gabriel attempts to enhance Reagan’s movie career, in the hope that this success will prevent him from ever entering politics. But this backfires, and he accidentally causes Reagan to drown while swimming. Refusing to accept this, Gabriel travels through time once again and attempts a different course of action. But trouble seems to follow him, thus, Gabriel finds himself making multiple additional trips in time. All just to prevent Ronald Reagan from ever becoming president.
Clearly this book had a very unusual premise, which is why I was very eager to read it when I had first heard of it. The author has done a good job of researching Reagan’s life, and this greatly increases the realism of the plot. Not to mention the fact it makes it a fascinating read. On the other hand, I’m not sure how realistic Reagan’s portrayal is. In the novel he’s being presented as generally a very nice guy, but quite an idiot – or at the very least, a very simple-minded person.
I also greatly enjoyed the portrayal of 1938 Hollywood and the various historical characters that appeared in the novel. Although Joshua Dann attempts to do something similar in his Timeshare novels, Time On My Hands is vastly superior (not to mention far more interesting).
As for the time travel aspects, these were excellent. The protagonist repeatedly attempted to achieve different ends using time travel. Often his attempts backfired, resulting in some unusual twists; this is exactly the kind of stuff that makes time travel novels so great. Even merely witnessing an 1980s alternate reality, one without Ronald Reagan as president, was a memorable depiction worthy of reading the book.
All in all, I thought this is an excellent, highly original, novel. Creative, superbly written, realistic characters. Time on My Hands is definitely one of the best ‘Historical Time Travel’ books I’ve ever read.
Link to the book’s details on Amazon.com
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