The Gone World is a science fiction novel that involves time travel—but not your run-of-the-mill ordinary time travel. The prologue tells readers they are in for something different. In it, the main character, Shannon Moss, is frantically searching for safety in a winter landscape when she comes across a woman suspended in mid-air, naked, arms out like an upside-down crucifixion. The crucified woman looks like Moss.
The novel is set in 1997 on an alternative Earth. It is very much like our Earth of that time, but there are differences caused by alien contact. The aliens offered humans the plans to develop interstellar spaceships that could travel into the future.
Shannon is a detective who works for the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. She is assigned to solve the murder of a Navy Seal’s family, whose daughter is missing. She discovers the seal was an astronaut on the Libra, a timeship that went missing. This leads her to catch a ride on a timeship into the future to see if she can discover where the daughter is and uncover the truth of what happened.
The novel starts as a police procedural, then turns into a thriller with horror elements, and finally becomes full-on science fiction. The story has many twists, such as Shannon discovering she is connected to events surrounding the family’s murder.
The novel uses time travel elements previously used in other science fiction, but new complications are added. Each trip into the future creates a different timeline, as seen from the time traveller’s perspective. The various timelines develop from the moment the time traveller departs from their current time into the future. This new timeline can be very similar to the old one, with only subtle changes or, conversely, have major differences. The timeline differences mean Shannon can encounter alternate versions of people from her own timeline.
The huge difference in this parallel universe treatment of time travel is that as soon as the traveller leaves the new timeline it collapses and never existed. It is a complex novel in places as Moss runs into characters with different agendas who are limited in their actions by the nature of the timelines. In her trips to the future, Shannon also discovers that every timeline has the same threat heading towards Earth. A threat that will destroy it.
Shannon Moss is a tough, determined character who wants to get to the truth of crimes and ensure justice is done. She is one of the few main characters in science fiction with a disability. One of her legs was amputated after being badly damaged on a mission. The missing leg is augmented by technology, but it still causes her problems and disables her at times. She appreciates zero gravity and not having to use her prosthetic limb in space. The novel’s author, Tom Swerterlitsch, worked for 12 years at the Carnegie Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped. This could have inspired him to have a person with a disability as his main character.
The novel is a slow build peppered with horrific events. It becomes more engaging as the time travel elements become more integral to the plot. However, it became slightly disengaging when Moss decided she was not the original Moss but a duplicate. The reasons for Moss thinking this are unclear until an unnecessarily belated reveal. Nothing is gained in the narrative by the delay.
The novel concludes with a bit of a time travel cliché, but one which most readers should find satisfying.
Tom Sweterlitsch’s prose is somewhat dense at times. It contains many details about investigation procedures, indicating that the author probably did a great deal of research or is a fan of crime fiction. His world-building is excellent, creating a very creepy and alien feel at times. Sometimes, the location description is deliberately vague to challenge the reader’s perspective of where the characters actually are.
Overall, The Gone World is an enjoyable novel that will appeal to fans of hard science fiction. The book does not take a whimsical approach to time travel like Doctor Who; it is deadly serious, more like The Dark. It is one of the most serious time-travel science fiction novels I have read.