I read this as member of my book club at my local library. We each read a different book on a particular topic. For the most recent meeting we read historical fiction that takes place prior to the twentieth century. I kind of cheated with this one. It is short stories and only some of them go that far back in time. But it seemed to be a hit when I told them about it.
The editor was able to get stories from a lot of well know contemporary authors of science fiction. The theme of the anthology was time travel love stories. The book’s title as a call out to the 1980 move Somewhere in Time was totally on purpose. There were sixteen stories in the book. Here are my brief synopses and ratings.
- “Roadside Attraction” by Alix E. Harrow — After his girlfriend breaks up with him, a young man loses himself by going to the past over and over only to find his destiny in the present. (5/5)
- “The Past Life Reconstruction Service” by Zeb Cho — A movie director recently dumped by his boyfriend keeps seeing him as he explores his past lives. (5/5)
- “First Aid” by Seanan McGuire — In order to take care of her younger disabled sister, a woman prepares to go back permanently to Elizabethan England. (5/5)
- “I Remember Satellites” by Sarah Gailey — When a time traveler draws a short straw job that leaves her permanently in the past, she has to leave behind a girlfriend to become a divorcée who causes the future King England to abdicate. (5/5)
- “The Golden Hour” by Jeffrey Ford — A time traveler stuck in time reconnects with his time-traveling wife. (3/5)
- “The Lichens” by Nina Allan — A woman in northern Scotland during the time of Culloden encounters a scientist from the future looking for a buried spacecraft. (4/5)
- “Kronia” by Elizabeth Hand — Lovers who grew up a mile apart find each other through time. (2/5)
- “Bergamot and Vetiver” by Lavanya Lakshminarayan — A woman from the 2500s travels back to the Indus Valley Civilization where the future’s leaders use her to steal water the man she falls in love with. (4/5)
- “The Difference Between Love and Time” by Catherynne M. Valente — A woman tells the tale of her romance with the personification of the space/time continuum. (4/5)
- “Unbashed, or: Jackson, Whose Cowardice Tore a Hole in the Chronoverse” by Sam J. Miller — A young man regrets not walking his first love home, finding out the next morning that he has been murdered for who he loved. (4/5)
- “Romance: Historical” by Rowan Coleman — A young neurodivergent woman mysteriously connects with a man from 1914 in the bookshop where she works. (5/5)
- “The Place of All Souls” by Margo Lanagan — Two people who found each other connected in the space between times, find each other and struggle about what to do about it and how it will affect their families. (3/5)
- “Timed Obsolescence” by Sameem Siddiqui — A man pursues a fling during multiple visits to the past only to find that his behavior there has affected his present. (2/5)
- “A Letter to Merlin” by Theodora Goss — A woman from the future inhabiting the body of Guinevere in an attempt to keep the timeline on track writes a letter to Merlin who is also inhabited by someone from the future. (4/5)
- “Dead Poets” by Carrie Vaughn — A female academic drinks from an ancient cup dreaming of meeting Sappho but instead goes back to 1536 to visit Sir Thomas Wyatt in the Tower of London shortly after the execution of Anne Boleyn. (4/5)
- “Time Gypsy” by Ellen Klages — A woman goes back in time to meet her scientific hero only to fall in love with her and discover that her advisor in the future isn’t what he seems to be. (5/5)
The average of these ratings give the book as a whole a rating of 4/5.
