The Psychology of Time Travel

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The Psychology of Time Travel
The Psychology of Time Travel.jpg
First edition
One of the time travellers in the story modifies an embroidery sampler to include both her birth, and death dates. [1]
Author Kate Mascarenhas
Cover artistHelen Crawford-White
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish
Publisher Head of Zeus (UK)
Crooked Lane (US)
Publication date
2018 (UK)
2019 (US)
Media typePrint

The Psychology of Time Travel is the debut novel published by British author Kate Mascarenhas in 2018.

Contents

In the Los Angeles Times the author said that "I thought, well this could actually be a really interesting route into a story, to think about how if we’d invented time travel rather than space travel, what involvement would psychologists have had? What stressors would they identify in time travel? And who would they be trying to recruit?" [2]

Plot introduction

In 1967 four women scientists invent a time travel machine in their laboratory in the Lake District:

At first a rabbit makes the journey to the future and back, then with increased funding, the women journeyed to the future to meet themselves. On their first television interview Barbara had manic-depressive breakdown in front of the cameras, and returned to Cornwall, and the three women continued without her to form an organization called the Conclave to control the technology in which people meet themselves, even their own deaths. [3]

In 2017 Barbara's grand-daughter Ruby received a message from Grace warning about an elderly woman's future violent death. In 2018 a Seychellois museum volunteer Odette finds the body in a bolted room from the inside and is determined, with Ruby having a romance with Grace, to find the truth tied up with time-travel...

Reception

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