John Varley's MILLENNIUM review by Kzanol

Review of Varley’s novel MILLENNIUM

In MILLENNIUM Varley demonstrates his mastery of the storyteller’s art. Using the well worn time-travel concepts of Science Fiction stories he manages to deliver a cautionary tale about our mismanagement of our planet and our warlike tendencies, in a refreshing and urgent style that keeps your adrenaline pumping, while somehow remaining lighthearted. He tips his hat to many of the Science Fiction stories that pioneered the mind expanding concepts that he builds his tale upon, by naming his chapter titles after them; although some titles are only used because of the cute way the titles fit with the action. (Example: “A Sound of Thunder” is the sound the two airliners make when they crash. “Compound Interest” referring to the mutual interest compounds the potential paradox problems.)

Three notable Science Fiction stories titles are not acknowledged. The concept of rescuing airplane crash victims probably comes from Jack Williamson’s LEGION OF TIME; although Williamson’s story has people being rescued immediately after death and then being revived by future technology. In Fritz Leiber’s THE BIG TIME, alterations in the past cause “Winds of change” that the characters can feel as the timestream is corrected. In Leiber’s novel the timestream is resilient to change and a war prevails by factions vying to make significant alterations that will prevail.

The transformation of Varley’s time travel story “Air Raid” into the novel MILLENNIUM, is curious. I am aware of five incarnations of this story (in presumed chronological order): The 1977 short story “Air Raid,” the novelization THE GATE, the movie treatment “The Gate,” the 1983 novel MILLENNIUM, and the 1989 movie Millennium. It is a rare treat to have so many versions of a single tale. The comparison of these versions may lead us into insights that we might not otherwise have attained. The short story “Air Raid” is presented exclusively from the point-of-view (POV) of the far future snatch team. THE GATE, an early draft of the later novel MILLENNIUM, first presents the events from Bill Smith’s POV, then revisits many of the same scenes from Louise Baltimore’s POV.

It is not until the full novel MILLENNIUM that Varley intersperses scenes from Bill Smith’s and Louise Baltimore’s POV effectively. Reading the Louise Baltimore sections from THE GATE, the reader senses delight at seeing a familiar scene in an entirely new light, but locating all the Louise Baltimore scenes together at the end of the narration, as does THE GATE, dilutes their impact. The interweaving, in MILLENNIUM, of the Louise Baltimore scenes in several points in the narration of earlier sections of the Bill Smith scenes, provides many more instances of “POV delight.” It seems that not until Varley had written the full set of Bill Smith and Louise Baltimore scenes, did he hit upon the most effective way to sequence them. It is the format of interspersing scenes from “The Testimony of Bill Smith” with those of Louise Baltimore that truly makes this an enjoyable pure time-travel tale; for let’s face it, what we love most about time-travel is the sense of disorientation and paradigm shifting that we are forced to undergo while reading the tortured verb tenses forced by time-travel, and the confusion of the various characters as they dart in and out of different moments in time. Varley’s novel provides this pleasurable time-travel disorientation aplenty.

One of John Varley’s most notable characteristics is the underlying sense of optimism in his stories, regardless of the hopelessness of the dilemma he has placed his protagonists. In “Air Raid” there is scant time to develop this optimistic feeling, and even THE GATE draft does not offer any hope to the main players. Perhaps this is one factor that continued to draw Varley back to the tale, he may have needed to inject this optimistic feeling. The limitless possibilities of the actual ending of MILLENIUM apparently did not occur to Varley until he had the complete time-travel crisis thoroughly worked out. The ending may have been unanticipated by Varley while her was writing the central sequence of the book; that of Louise trying to prevent a catastrophic twonky paradox by recovering the lost stunner. For this reason the end comes to the reader as a surprise, and to be honest, it has the feel that it doesn’t quite fit with the rest of the story. The struggles Louise Baltimore is put through to try to keep the fabric of her reality from unraveling were completely irrelevant in the light of the Deus ex Machina ending, of sending all the main player to a safe earth, that the BC (Big Computer, aka god) had in the works all along.

This happy ending does, however, advance the theme of predestination that weighs so heavily on Louise Baltimore’s mind throughout the novel. For this reason I have come to like the optimistic ending because it cancels the negative arguments many have about predestination when there is nothing to fear from even the most dismal outlook we may harbor of the future as long as God is working things out for out good.

As is necessary in any time-travel story, Varley appropriately deals with predestination and free-will. He has Louise acknowledge the possibilities of predestination that are inherent in the temporal censorship “windows” that indicate that her future trips are already pre-determined, and excludes trips to any other possible past times simply because those other times have no such windows. At the same time Varley writes Louise’s character to fiercely cling to her personal sense of free-will (112.-2). Into this mix Varley adds the BC and his blatant statement that “Free-will is his most troublesome invention,” requiring him to lie to his creatures. The BC has been lying to everyone for eons, masquerading as a servant of man when in fact he is the god of this world. It is suspect that this “god,” the BC, has only limited knowledge of the future, and limited power, knowing for instance the fates of Bill and Louise in the new world, but unsure if this, his third, attempt to start an earthly kingdom populated by man will succeed. His powers are clearly limited by whatever physical laws restrict time-travel, for he is not able to prevent the twonky paradox, but is able to destroy the Gate in a last ditch effort to save some of his creatures.

How do we categorize MILLENNIUM within the genre of time-travel. I favor the classification of Dr. Paul Nahin in his book TIME MACHINES. Those who have read this book know that Nahin finds events, past and future, to be fixed based on the laws of physics, and scientific time-travel does not leave any provision for the past to be changed. Time travelers can affect the past, that is can influence events that did happen, but cannot change the past, that is cause something that did not occur to happen. Under this system any story that allows for changing the past, or the future, must be classified as fantasy. So MILLENNIUM is a fantasy novel because past events, like people dying in airplane crashes, do not die, and future events, such as Bill Smith’s death by drowning, as seen in the time viewer, are altered. The airline passengers are saved to live in the future. Bill Smith ends up living on the new earth, not dying on the old earth.

Look for this book on my ranked list of SF novels for my OPTCS rating.