The Future of Another Timeline

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book was a work of collective action, and thanks are due to the many people who talked to me about it, read early drafts, and generally listened to me stressing out about it for two years.

First, thanks to the many scientists, researchers, and friends who gave me ideas. Physicist Adam Becker talked to me about the impossibility of time travel, and cosmologist Sean Carroll agreed that time travel was impossible, but kindly suggested I think about wormholes and a “narrative force” that creates a timeline. Geology researcher Josh Zimmt speculated about what people could eat during the Ordovician and what it would smell like. Ethnomusicologist K. Goldschmitt told me about the nineteenth-century music industry and appropriation. Archaeologist Sarah Wenner talked to me about the Nabataean Kingdom in the first century C.E. Historian Karen Ordahl Kupperman let me interrogate her about social change over centuries, and pop history chronicler Lynn Peril gave me tons of sources about rational clothing and New Women. Adrienne Crew, creator of the incredible Louche Angeles Instagram, told me about being a Black girl in the L.A. punk scene during the 1980s. Science history aficionado Esther Inglis-Arkell suggested that the villain of this novel should be Anthony Comstock. Author Jess Zimmerman talked to me about witchcraft. Critic Lynn Rapoport and filmmaker Fivestar spent many late nights talking to me about indie music, indie porn, and all the good things in between. L. A. Kauffman inspired me with her writing and political actions more times than I can count.

I also got tons of feedback from extremely kind, patient early readers. A zillion thanks to Tempest Bradford and Jaymee Goh for sensitivity reads, and to Claire Light, Charlie Jane Anders, Meg Elison, Chris Palmer, Maggie Tokuda-Hall, and Katya Lopez for feedback during revision.

I owe pretty much everything to my amazing editor, Lindsey Hall, who read three separate drafts and improved the book immeasurably. Also thanks to Liz Gorinsky for first believing in the book, and to Devi Pillai for making it happen. And of course, thank you to my astounding agent provocateur, Laurie Fox.

A very special thank-you to Mike Burns for Flin Flon advice, and to Peter Burns for his stories about getting there (and beyond) by boat.

For helping me to survive my teens and twenties, thank you to Kathleen Hanna and Bikini Kill (and Le Tigre and Julie Ruin), Pauline Black and The Selecter, Alice Bag and The Bags, L7, Poly Styrene, Queen Latifah, and every other woman who yelled so loudly in my young ears that she drowned out my fear.

As always, I couldn’t have written this without the timeless love and support of Jesse Burns, Chris Palmer, and Charlie Jane Anders.