In 2003, Audrey Niffenegger shot to fame with the publication of . Astonishingly assured and hugely complex for a debut novel, it told the story of the love affair between Clare and Henry, an involuntary time traveller because of his chrono-displacement disorder. The book was a bestseller, rapidly joining the canon of great time-travel writers (think H. G. Wells, Octavia Butler, Stephen King鈥�).
Twenty-three years later, Niffenegger picks up the story in , telling the story of Alba, their daughter, who also has chrono-displacement disorder. But this time, we move some decades into the future: the backdrop is artificial intelligence, climate change and more, where what it means to live a pre-determined life is made ever more intense by the terrible, inevitable future that looms. At least there is still art and love鈥�
Alison Flood: Why did you go back to this world?
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Audrey Niffenegger: I started it in November 2012, because we were putting out the ebook for The Time Traveler鈥檚 Wife, and my agent asked if I had any outtakes or anything people hadn鈥檛 seen to include as extras. I didn鈥檛. And I said, 鈥淚t鈥檚 OK. I鈥檒l write you something.鈥� So I wrote the chapter called 鈥淭he Yellow House鈥�, where 5-year-old Alba and Clare go to the Yellow House for the first time.
Then I got kind of interested, and I was like: 鈥淢aybe I could do a little more.鈥� Eventually, I decided to go ahead and write a sequel. But it was never the plan. I had no intention when I wrote the first book of ever continuing.
This book is far more complex than its predecessor. Was it always going to be that way?
At the beginning, I really had no clue. I didn鈥檛 feel competent to make up the future accurately. The first book follows the real world in such a way that real life events do occasionally come into it, like 9/11 and things like that. So I was feeling a bit worried at the beginning, because I thought 鈥淲ell, I鈥檒l never be able to figure out how to write about Alba as an adult, not knowing what the world鈥檚 going to be like in her lifetime.鈥�
The time travel is a genetic defect, and so the time travellers are losing their grip on the present
But I thought I could bet on climate change, so at the beginning I thought, 鈥淎lright. I鈥檒l just assume that climate change really got bad because we, as a group of humans, just never were able to agree on how to not have it happen.鈥� And that鈥檚 turning out to be a safe bet.
I start off the book with a 鈥減arty鈥� 鈥� in quotes because Alba and her friends are trying to catch some neo-Nazis. I was writing this in 2013, so neo-Nazis at the time were not featuring in the news much. I just thought, 鈥淲ell, this is kind of weird and far-fetched, but that鈥檚 what they鈥檙e doing. They鈥檙e fighting fascism.鈥�
The longer I worked on this thing, the more fascism got to be a real problem. And then President Trump got elected. So, there was a lot of stuff that I just never saw coming. But the book started to really kind of align with things happening in the real world.
That must have felt strange.
Yeah, I didn鈥檛 like it.
In this book, you鈥檝e got two time travellers, Alba, and Oliver, one of her two lovers. How hard was it to keep track of it all?
When I wrote The Time Traveler鈥檚 Wife, I was keeping track of everything in a Word document. This time, someone introduced me to Eon, software which is like a timeline. It鈥檚 lovely because you can plug in a character and an event, and it will tell you how old the character is at this juncture, which for me is super helpful.
What is going on when someone travels through time in your world?
In my world, the time travel is a genetic defect, and so what they [time travellers] are doing is losing their grip on the present. The thing in us that biologically intersects with time is awry in them, and so their sense of time, of the present, is messed up. What it feels like to them is kind of like an electrical storm in the brain, they experience auras, they get headaches. They feel physically ill. It鈥檚 not glamorous. They鈥檙e always naked wherever they go because, biologically, clothes are not attached to you.
Henry always tended to travel to the past and generally within his own lifetime, Oliver and Alba both have a bit more range than that, and are a little bit more likely to go to the future. In Alba鈥檚 case, one of the reasons she鈥檚 able to go to the future is that she鈥檚 got such a strong predilection to go to the Yellow House that it almost doesn鈥檛 matter whether she鈥檚 going forward or backward, because the house is the house 鈥� and it鈥檚 very easy for her to think of it, and so going forward is not that big of a stretch.
Did you explore any physics about time travel?
I did read up on it. Obviously, I鈥檓 not a scientist, but the concept of a block universe has been really helpful. The idea is that everything exists simultaneously, and that what time travellers are doing is moving between adjacent and even non-adjacent time. If you imagine the universe and time as a big house, a normal person would only be able to explore the house in a certain order because it is structured in a certain way, and you have to move through it room by room, hallway by hallway. But somebody who can time travel is capable of making their own doorways and putting together things that are entirely separate. That鈥檚 how I think of it.
Why did you decide to make causal loops part of your story 鈥� the thought of them is awful!
There鈥檚 two ways of doing time travel, right? There鈥檚 the kind where you can change things and the kind when you can鈥檛. Generally speaking, in literature and film, if you can change things, the time-travel story tends to be a comedy. Like Back to the Future. We must go back and fix it, then they do, and order is restored, yay!
If you can鈥檛 change it, it鈥檚 a tragedy, and part of the tragedy is knowing what鈥檚 going to happen and being forced to live with that.
I thought that was much more interesting from the point of view of my characters 鈥� to have to know, but to keep secrets, would be so painful. So, the characters kind of agree that the way to be free of this deterministic slog is to be in the present and not know as much as possible, so that you can have choices. Because if you know what鈥檚 already happened, all you can do is going to fall in with that.
In the moment we鈥檙e living in, the time for people saying, 鈥極h, I鈥檓 not political鈥�, is kind of over
Did you want to write something to help wake people up to the reality of where we are, or do you not feel that鈥檚 the point of a novel?
In the moment we鈥檙e living in, the time for people saying, 鈥淥h, I鈥檓 not political鈥�, is kind of over. My previous work is not particularly political, but I feel like everybody should be doing everything and anything that they can.
I鈥檓 sure I will get blowback from people saying, 鈥淥h, this is a romance. What are you doing being all political?鈥� But I have never thought of Time Traveler鈥檚 Wife as being limited to the romance genre. It鈥檚 certainly a love story, but I鈥檝e never felt bound by that genre. I don鈥檛 feel compelled to stay in a place where I鈥檓 easy to label, and I don鈥檛 feel like I should shut up about something that I think is going to strongly influence the future when I鈥檓 writing about the future. So, that鈥檚 why it got so political .
Music is a refuge for the characters here. Are you arguing that it is important the arts are still there no matter how dystopian the future?
Think about what gets saved 鈥� what persists across time 鈥� of all these lost cultures. We go in there and we start digging, and what do we find? We find sculpture. We find beautiful painting. Every now and then, somebody鈥檚 able to read an old mathematical text or something like that.
But it鈥檚 culture that鈥檚 allowing us to reach back and understand people from the past. And to me, it seems natural that if you鈥檙e going to preserve something for the future, that is a very large part of what you would want to put in your time capsule.
Would you time travel if you could? I鈥檓 sure everyone鈥檚 asked you that, but I definitely wouldn鈥檛鈥�
No. In terms of the way I鈥檝e laid it out, I would not want to. If I was going to, I think I would use it to visit people. I don鈥檛 have any interest in witnessing historical events. I would just go back and do what Alba is doing where she鈥檚 in touch with her father. My dad died in 2016 while I was working on this book, and I would definitely enjoy having an afternoon just to sit and talk to him for a while.
Is this it? Are you done with time travelling for now?
This is well and truly it. It took 13 years to write this, and I have a backlog of other projects that I would love to work on.
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