Time's Agent

Thank you to NetGalley and Tor for an ARC.

It is profoundly weird to go from the fluffiest of time travel stories (Ministry of Time) to this. Time’s Agent is a powerful book about grief, colonialism and capitalism, especially in how time has become a commodity. It is a Big Ideas science fiction book but is also remarkably readable.

In Time’s Agent, we’re introduced to pocket worlds, which are a sort of parallel dimension that can be small enough to hold in one’s hand. Time can also run differently.

I was particularly taken by the brilliant, dystopian applications of pocket dimensions including special pocket worlds for indigent workers to sleep in, their legs hanging out into plain view; others designed for the vain to put their hands in so they will age more slowly (causing nerve issues as the hands grow out of alignment with the rest of the body); and finally, “slow-triplets”, which refer to children put in near stasis while their parents work. (“You could tell when people used this method because their children would all seem to be the same age and never grow up and the parents would be ancient compared to their toddlers, because when were they not working?”)

Highly recommended.

I'm rarely an enjoyer of time travel in fiction as I often find it too complex and paradoxical, but this is what I will call an exceptional exception.

The "travel" part of the phrase is utilized in an interesting and thoughtful way. The Pocket worlds are not just temporal anomallies but spacial. This novella gives a realistic look at how the world would handle the fusion of time and space as a commodity. The PWs are definitely one of my new favorite takes on time travel in fiction.

Their use in the novel's themes of human overconsumption, capitalization, and greed is well done. I've never read a take on time as a commodity quite like this one. Time is no longer quite an unwanted thief but rather one we welcome in on occasion.

Time's Agent speaks to the destructive image humanity has of time but asks the question if humanity is truly the worse thief.
Is it truly time that takes or is it the overconsumption of humanity that does the work for time? Peynado does a masterful job examining the query.

I cannot reccomend this one enough, and with a length as compact as the Pocket Worlds it features, it is accessible and a quick read.

This was such a fascinating read! This book follows a researcher in the future working for an institution that investigates “pocket worlds”, aka parallel worlds that are connected to the present world. This story plays with theories of time and universes, while still uncovering human relationships, dealing with grief, and capitalistic societies. As a scientist myself, it was so interesting to put myself in the shoes of a researcher in the future navigating these discoveries and situations. I really enjoyed this quick read! Great representation of a wlw relationship without tokenizing the characters, & I appreciated the inclusion of an older main character. Very thought-provoking story. Well done.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and the publisher for the eARC!