The Map of Time by Félix J. Palma

PLOT SUMMARY: Privileged Andrew Harrington is a despondent young man who plans on killing himself. Eight years earlier, he had found the love of his life. It didn’t matter that their lives were vastly different — he born to a rich and entrepreneurial family and she a woman struggling to survive as a prostitute in London’s seedy Whitechapel section. He’s determined to declare his love for her and live happily ever after, even if it means leaving his privileged life behind. Everything changes however, when his beloved Marie Kelly becomes the last victim of the villainous Jack the Ripper.

That’s where H.G. Wells comes in. The publication of his novel, The Time Machine, has set off a furor of interest and curiosity about the possibility of time travel. There is even a company called Murray’s Time Travel that offers trips through time to witness a battle between ... Read More

The Map of Time by Felix J. Palma

Felix J. Palma’s The Map of Time is meta-fiction. It’s about how we think about stories. Specifically, it’s about how we think about time-travel stories. H.G. Wells, who wrote The Time Machine, is the book’s hero, acting as an agent of time through three linked stories, all set in or starting in 1888 London.

Each section opens with an address to the reader, promising excitement and wonder. The first introduction ends with the words, “Your emotion and astonishment are guaranteed.” The tone is that of a high-class carnival barker. This book, the author is telling us, is an Entertainment. It is a book, and it wants you to remember that.

The first two stories deal with love as the impetus for the exploration of time. In the first section, Andrew Harrington, son of wealthy businessman, plans to kill himself... Read More

The Map of Time by Felix J. Palma

I really wanted to like Felix J. Palma’s The Map of Time. It has so many elements that usually appeal to me: nested narratives, multiple plot strands, authors as characters, parallel or alternate histories, internal resonances of image and theme and character, metafictional aspects, a mystery or two. And there were certainly parts of the novel I responded to, but overall, it left me feeling underwhelmed and unengaged.

Most simply and most concretely, it just felt way too long. My version comes in at just about 600 pages and I could have easily been happy had it been missing 200 of them. Because the dragging sense of reading a book that is longer than it needs to be colors the entire reading experience past a certain point, and tends to be cumulative, it’s hard to say just how much more I would have enjoyed the book with that one basic change. I’m gu... Read More

The Map of the Sky by Felix J. Palma

The Map of the Sky is the follow-up to Felix J. Palma’s The Map of Time, a book that had much to recommend it but that I couldn’t in the end quite get behind. The Map of the Sky shares some of the same flaws as its predecessor, leaving me with a mixed reaction, but on the whole, I found it to be an improvement over the first book and more consistently enjoyable.

The Map of Time introduced H.G. Wells as a main character and centered its plot around his The Time Machine. Wells returns in The Map of the Sky, but this time the story uses The War of the World as its core, though Palma also brings in a slew of other literary/cinematic touchstones including John W. Campbell’s famous short story “W... Read More