n the timeline we inhabit, the famous anarchist philosopher Peter Kropotkin (born 1842) died in 1921. Only his compassionate and incendiary pamphlets and books live on. But what if he had received a deathbed visit from a mysterious time traveler named Anchee Mahur? Such is the opening premise of Dennis Danver's sixth novel.
Stopping the very flow of events outside a small bubble that encloses old man and chrononaut, Anchee makes a hard-to-refuse offer to the dying revolutionist. Anchee will rejuvenate Peter Kropotkin to the state of a healthy 30-year-old if Peter will agree to be transplanted to Richmond, Va., in the year 1999. Why? Anchee refuses to say, except to offer vague explanations about cultivating alternate timelines in a quasi-aesthetic way. The deal looks suspicious, but Peter has a strong will to live, and accepts.
The next thing the rejuvenated Peter knows, he's somehow on a plane in mid-flight, provided with just enough documents to get him into the USA, but no money or helpful contact information. Oh, one other thing: Peter finds himself in possession of a familiar antique watch, gimmicked by Anchee into something other than what it once was. Now begins Peter's odyssey in the modern world, on the verge of the 21st century. With a combination of charm, eccentricity and forthrightness, hewing to his lifelong principles in a world that surprisingly mirrors his hopes in some ways and shatters them in others, Peter will meet a motley collection of people, some of whom will become comrades, while others turn into the enemies who will eventually drag him down.
Rachel Pederson is primary among Peter's new friends. Meeting at a refugee center, they eventually become lovers, after a bristly courtship, and Rachel comes to accept Peter's incredible story. Falling in with a commune of slackers and oddballs, Peter seems to have found a stable home. But further visits from Anchee, during which the Machiavellian man from the far future reveals he is still orchestrating Peter's life, indicate that any stability is only surface-deep. Other temporally displaced persons show up in Peter's orbit—Earl, a Civil War soldier, and Jonah, an ex-slave from 1800—and events begin to snowball out of Peter's control. When the point is reached where only the miraculous abilities of the pocketwatch can save the day, Peter realizes that he will face a crucial ethical decision on which both his private future and that of the whole world will rest.
Politically engaged prose
The SF writer Rudy Rucker has coined a word we can apply usefully to Dennis Danvers' provocative and affecting new book. Rucker defined his neologism "twink" to mean the ability to run a mental simulation of another person in one's own head, thus viewing the world through a lens of a foreign personality. So, after immersing yourself in, say, the writings of Mark Twain, you find you can walk a modern street seeing things much as Twain might, making acerbic Twainish comments on events and objects Samuel Clemens could never have known.
Well, Danvers is twinking Peter Kropotkin in this book, and a fine job of it he does. By supplying copious quotes from Kropotkin's writings as chapter openers, Danvers allows us to compare the style and sensibility of his simulation to the real Kropotkin's manner and mind. The novel is unshakably narrated in the first person, and exhibits both a distinctive voice and an unfaltering consistency of self, seemingly identical to the original Russian ideologue. No matter what anomalous situation Kropotkin encounters, his reactions and judgments are rendered believably. In this aspect of his book alone, Danvers deserves much approbation.
But the pure story itself is not to be slighted. Danvers is aiming not for high melodrama or weird "By His Bootstraps" paradoxes here, although the climactic scenes, featuring an invasion of Richmond by a ragged host of time-travelers, offer their share of drama. Rather, in line with Kropotkin's focus on making big sociocultural changes through small grassroots improvements, Danvers chooses to focus on ordinary life, examining how we live minute to minute on any average day. Thus Kropotkin is initially content with a dishwashing job and visits to a library, a nightclub and other commonplace venues. Offering his wry and humbling Stranger-in-a-Strange-Land perceptions on all the rituals and accoutrements we take for granted, Kropotkin functions as a kind of Candide figure, making his new friends question the basis of their lives. Such a velvet revolution looks to be having an effect, and it's only when Kropotkin unwisely agrees to mount a larger public platform that things come dreadfully unstrung.
Anchee, meanwhile, functions as an evil counterweight, a kind of Malzbergian perverse alien figure, whose motives and means remain forever shrouded. An enigma right up to the end, the man from the future takes on an almost satanic role, tempting Kropotkin to betray all his principles for comfort and safety. But Kropotkin holds firm, even though his decision results in disaster for himself and others. This rather bleak ending is redeemed only by Kropotkin's final appeal to us, the readers, to carry forward his dreams.
