jacey | Booklog 4/2026: John Scalzi: 3 Days, 9 Months, 27 Years (The Time Traveller’s Passport)

A short exploration of time travel in which you don’t have to worry that stepping on a butterfly will cause your grandfather to die in infancy. Yes time travel causes the future to change, but not OUR future. It causes the timeline to branch and a new future to be created. Thus we can time travel as much as we like and our world won’t be affected. And we never find out what happens on those branched worlds because we can never to back to take a peep. Fascinating stuff, all explained to the reader by the man who pushes the button to send tourists on their journey, and receives them back one second later. They have a choice of three return windows, either in 3 days, 9 months or 27 years. Thus they might return only 3 days older, or if they choose the final window, 27 years older. Or they can choose to stay and live their changed timeline. It’s all very fascinating, reading like a great setup, and then there’s a twist at the end. A short read but a fascinating one.