★★★★☆ | Science Fiction | Digital | Own | StoryGraph | Goodreads
I enjoyed the writing of this story more than I expected to. I guess I have a weakness for time travel and Universe as Simulation books.
A key theme of the book was the powerful but morally corrupt Time Institute — a secret government agency that developed and used time travel technology to preserve itself without regard for the moral good it could do. The main protagonist joins the agency and uses time travel to safe a life which gets him in huge trouble.
Another theme — life is precious and it’s important how we treat each other even if the universe is random or a simulation.
Highlights
I think, as a species, we have a desire to believe that we’re living at the climax of the story. It’s a kind of narcissism. We want to believe that we’re uniquely important, that we’re living at the end of history, that now, after all these millennia of false alarms, now is finally the worst that it’s ever been, that finally we have reached the end of the world.
A life lived in a simulation is still a life.
If there’s pleasure in action, there’s peace in stillness.