by Tina Haapala

Created on: June 02, 2009   Last Updated: June 04, 2009

Just when Si Morely thinks his advertising executive job is boring, he gets offered other employment, with the U.S. Government. But this wouldn't be your standard paper pushing job. For quite a while, Si doesn't even know exactly what the secret project entails. As with any classified operation, Si has to obtain clearance.

When Si is found to be a qualified candidate, he learns the government is secretly funding time travel. Or, at least they are hoping to have some operatives make the trips. Si agrees to travel back to the city he's familiar with, since he already lives there: New York City. He convinces the project managers to change their plans to accommodate his own curiosity. As long as he's going, why not go back to a date in 1882? He wants an answer to a mystery that's intrigued him since he became close to his girlfriend, Kate.

This beautifully crafted novel is rich with the sights and sounds of New York in two different centuries. Finney's descriptions of the streets and buildings are so vivid, you can almost feel the culture shock as Si and others travel through time. The familiar becomes strange and new. Si's comparisons between the two time periods can leave the reader nostalgic for a past they've never known.

Certainly, what we've gained and lost as time and technology has moved forward is put into the spotlight. Si attempts to explain an uneasiness he feels in his own modern time upon returning from 1882: "Today's faces are different; they are much more alike and much less alive...there was also an excitement in the streets of New York...that is gone." (author emphasis).

Si's affinity for 1882 and the mystery are just some of the elements that keep him involved in the project, even when he's not sure it's ethical to continue. Common time travel themes arise: How much can be done in the past before it affects the future? Can a time traveler be strictly an observer? Should he be? What are the acceptable risks, and who decides?

Si struggles with these questions as he gets deeper into the project, and more entwined with the subjects of his research. Although this is a science fiction novel, the mystery he feels obligated to get to the bottom of keeps the pages turning well into the night. Just how the characters play out their discoveries has wider implications for Si, and for history itself.

Time and Again is Jack Finney's best known work. It certainly seems to be a classic. This time travel tale translates easily into the 21st century, even though it was released in 1970. Si wrestles with how his government will use its newfound power, like a son who realizes his father is fallible:"...(S)ome of the most important decisions of all time can be made by men knowing really no more than, and who are no more intelligent than, most of the rest of us". Like Si Morely, people in every time need to realize how the history of their present will be written if the decision makers are left unchecked.

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