Not at all certain that I would go into April still willing to continue the quest, I looked at the books I wanted to read before I stopped reading time travel books all together. One such novel was Octavia Butler's Kindred . I had looked into the work and was looking forward to reading this one - I've also downloaded everything written by Butler, to be read in the not too distant future.
The novel incorporates time travel and what is known as Neo-slave narratives. It is a novel that should be read - although it certainly isn't comfortable reading.
The methods writers have used to transport people through time fall into two basic categories. One method involves some sort of machine or device which transports the protagonist either forward or backward (or both) in time. Examples of this are, of course The Time Machine by H.G.Wells, it's sequel The Time Ships by Stephen Baxter, and the "Oxford Time Travel series" by Connie Willis.
The second category involves "spontaneous" time travel by individuals without the use of machines. Examples of this type include Slaughterhouse-Five ,The Time Traveler's Wife and There Will Be Time . Kindred falls into this category. Like Henry DeTamble in The Time Traveler's Wife and Vonnegut's Billy Pilgrim, Kindred's Dana Franklin has no control over when she'll time travel. But resembling Jack Havig from There Will Be Time, Dana Franklin can bring objects and/or people along with her, as Franklin and her husband discover.
There are several complex themes in the Butler novel; a realistic depiction of slavery and slave communities and the "master-slave power dynamic", a critique of the official history of the United States, and the concept of "race".
As I stated earlier, Kindred is an uncomfortable read, but it deserves to be read.
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