Time and Again

Time and Again (1970) is an illustrated science fiction novel by American author Jack Finney. It follows illustrator Simon “Si” Morley as he is recruited to a secret time travel project and travels to 1882. There, he tries to unravel a conspiracy, falls in love, and faces difficult choices between love and obligation. Time and Again is the first of two novels, and the sequel From Time to Time (1995) was published the year Jack Finney died. Finney left the ending open for a third novel that was never written. Time and Again is widely regarded as his masterpiece.

In the introduction to the 50th anniversary edition, science fiction author Blake Crouch credits the novel with starting him on the path to becoming a best-selling science fiction writer. Stephen King, in the Afterword to his novel 11/22/63, claims it is “in this writer’s humble opinion, the great time-travel story” (King, Stephen. 11/22/63. Scribner, 2011, p. 849). This study guide references the 50th anniversary edition of Time and Again published by Atria Paperback in 2020.

Content Warning: This source material features discussion of suicide. Though the event is not depicted, characters discuss it several times throughout the novel.

Plot Summary

Simon “Si” Morley works as an illustrator for an advertising agency in 1970s New York City. He is dissatisfied with his life, is bored at work, and has no family and a few lackluster relationships following a divorce. One day, he receives a visitor at work, an Army Major named “Rube” Prien who has come to recruit Si to a top-secret government project.

Though Si does not understand why he would be a good fit for the project, he agrees to join, too curious to resist the excitement and mystery. He goes to a warehouse in New York where he meets Dr. Rossoff and Dr. Danziger, the head of the project. They put him through a series of tests before showing him an enormous structure that looks like a series of historical movie sets filled with actors.

Danziger explains that he has devised a method of time travel: By tricking the brain into believing one is in a physical location in the past, one can become detached from their time and travel back in time. This is what the actors on the various sets are trying to accomplish.

Si is skeptical at first. However, Danziger tells him they are preparing a location at the Dakota apartment building in the 1880s. This captures his attention because of a mystery that has long haunted him: His girlfriend, Kate, owns a letter mailed to her adoptive grandfather, Andrew Carmody, in January 1882, which hints at a fire that may destroy the world and seems connected to Carmody’s suicide years later.

He tells Danziger that he will go through with the experiment only if he can go back to 1882 and watch the mailing of that letter to learn what it means. The project council agrees. Si learns about the culture of the 1880s, and when he is ready, he goes back in time.

The first time is a short visit to see if the method works. When it succeeds, he goes again, this time bringing Kate with him so they can both see the mysterious letter being sent. The sender is a man named Jake Pickering. The third time he visits, he learns that Pickering is blackmailing Carmody. He also meets Julia, the woman Pickering is in love with. Throughout his visits, Si develops feelings for Julia and uses his mission as an excuse to see her.

Each time Si returns to the present, he is questioned about his actions and his memories of the present. It is important that he not do anything to interfere with the past and thus alter history. The questions are meant to test if anything has changed as a result of his visits. Though Si has been careful, he learns that another experimenter on a different assignment made a mistake. He altered something that caused a man to never be born.

Danziger demands they stop the experiments before more changes occur, possibly causing catastrophic results. However, the project council overrules him, and he resigns in protest. Though Si agrees with Danziger’s concerns, he continues with the experiment and goes back again.

On his next visit, he sees the blackmail exchange between Pickering and Carmody. In a fit of rage, Carmody starts a fire to burn the evidence against him, which causes the burning of the entire New York World Building. This finally explains the reference to fire in the mysterious letter.

Si and Julia escape the building, but Carmody blames them for the fire and the supposed murder of Pickering. While running from the police, Si tells Julia the truth about who he is and takes her into the present. He shows her what life is like in the 1970s, but they agree that she needs to return to her own time.

Julia realizes that they have been tricked: Carmody died in the fire, not Pickering, and Pickering is now trying to impersonate him. Knowing this, she can return home and sort everything out so the police will leave her alone. Meanwhile, Si stays in the present to deal with his affairs.

When he tries to resign from the project, the council tells him instead to go back one last time and alter the past, preventing the rise of Fidel Castro and the Cuban Missile Crisis. However, Si knows this could have unknowable consequences. He and Danziger agree that the project must be stopped.

Si goes back to 1882, to a place where Danziger once told him that his parents met for the first time. He manipulates events so that Danziger’s parents never meet, which means that Danziger is never born and the time travel project never happens. His mission now complete, Si walks away, headed off to find Julia.