Preface

I've never written one before, but I've read plenty.

When I was a kid, I'd always skip over any kind of introduction to get straight to the meat of a book; but since I started taking my writing seriously, I've been reading whatever authors have to say. And I usually learn something about their process by doing so.

When I began the assembling process for Out of Time last week, I thought, "Wouldn't it be kind of cool to have one?" My first preface. So special.

Let me know what you think. I'm kind of new at this:

Time fascinates us. Even as we are bound by its forward momentum, we dream of breaking its shackles and turning back the clock to relive a glorious moment or correct a terrible mistake.

For decades, science fiction has asked us what would happen if we were to somehow travel into the past, even as hard science has told us that such a thing could never be. We are the products of fixed moments in time: glances meeting across a crowded room, a sperm cell uniting with an egg. We cannot undo what has already been done.

But what if we could? What choices would we make? What power would we wield?

Out of Time collects two previously published "un-timely" tales. In the first, "One More Tuesday," Josef finds himself trapped with only one way out—and a life or death decision once he discovers how to free himself. In "Leap Day," Joan experiences a time distortion in her own apartment, and she must weave her knowledge of the past and future in order to survive the present.

Scientifically speaking, both of these stories are quite impossible. But then again, isn't that why we started reading science fiction in the first place?

Thank you for reading, and I hope you'll take a moment to let me know what you think of these two very strange tales at some point in the near future.

Milo James Fowler

April 2012