On "Another Perfect Day"

I have only played with time travel. Once, in a story called The Fishhook. That one has never seen the light of day.

The other one is a story called Another Perfect Day. APD came out in August 2008 in F&SF. It's a light story which I will not spoil by discussing its internals. Go read it here.

I don't generally like time travel stories. In most science fiction stories, novels and films, once time travel is introduced things get silly. Once you have time travel, all other problems have to view the world in which time travel can happen. Blew the job today? Go back tomorrow and fix it. Fixed it too much? How much is too much? How much too little? The time travel comes to dominate the story.

Time travel is the second generation inbred cousin to the alternate world story-- which I tend to like, except where time travel is involved. But, like time travel, the alternate nature of the AW story tends to dominate the telling of an actual story: characters are sublimated to the alternate nature's greater good. The story ceases to be about anything interesting other than the AW plot.

So, I tried to contrive a story where these sorts of problems couldn't occur.

Oh, and I get to play with Sergei Prokofiev, who I really like.