As the title hints, Wesley Chu's 2015 novel, Time Salvager, is very a much science fiction novel about time travel. And though it certainly qualifies beyond any doubt as a science fiction novel, it is also something of a political thriller. One might well describe it as a science fiction political thriller and that would cover the plot securely, but not comprehensively. The political aspect of the science fiction plot is really, to a degree, a cover story perhaps intended to distract certain ideologically inclined readers from realizing that the plot is really the engine driving a socio-economic analysis of Big Government versus Big Business as the means of making life better for the inhabitants of planet earth.
The entire conceit of the plot is based on the fact that the past was a better place for those inhabitants than the future. The future of time travel is, predictably enough, merely another means for profit-driven corporate interests to exploit and use up all available resources. What sticks in the craw of the future is that few resources are still available in the present and so criminals are sent back in time to steal what is necessary to keep the species going.
It should not take very long for any astute reader to pick up on the message the book is sending. The story is set in the future, but it is not aliens who are the enemy presenting danger to humans. Traveling through time does not bring back a villain from the past into the future to wreak havoc across the continuum. In fact, the past of this story which still remains our own near future was a pretty great time to live on earth. These salad days for humanity were in spite of—not because of—the private sector. It was the government which brought about this high point in civilization: “So far in the future, everything was much worse. There were very few places this bad in the late twenty-first century. The world governments had banded together a generation earlier to stamp out poverty and hunger and were mostly successful in achieving their goals. Money and resources were poured into research for disease cures, new food resources, and reusable energy…Somehow, civilization had taken a wrong turn, and now whatever gains had been made during her time were lost again.”
The character making this observation has been pulled from that idyllic past into the dystopian future in which the novel is set. The dystopian nature of the future is the result of the private sector taking over the role of caretaker of the planet occupied by public sector in the past. That wrong turn taken by civilization is the result of not distrusting the corrupt potential of the profit motive enough. As a different character used to living in this future observes about the corporations now in complete charge of the planet: “All they care about is profit and control. Those shortsighted bastards don’t care about the future.”
Lying not all that deeply below the surface entertainment of time traveling and all the tropes associated with political thrillers is a book that is really a consideration of the controlling question guiding the history of the 20th century: Which is more suited to the task of improving the lives of the majority of citizens, the private sector or the public sector.
