Stuff I've Read: The Tourist by Robert Dickinson

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When a tourism group from the 24th century loses a client in the 21st, it touches off a series of events that may be responsible for humanity’s near-extinction: an event that ends civilization as we know it. Robert Dickinson’s imaginative plot drives The Tourist, a time-traveling mystery novel that warps the mind as much as it folds time and space.

The Tourist by Robert Dickinson

The Tourist follows a dual narrative; one story follows Karia Stadt, a prisoner in the 24th century tasked with a short-on-details mission in the 24th century; her success buys her freedom back home. The other narrative follows Spens, a tour guide for a third-rate temporal vacation agency that promises its clients a slice-of-life experience in the 21st century (although they are repeatedly warned not to eat the food). Karia and Spens are linked by a mutual acquaintance named Riemann Aldis, a soldier trying to prevent the near-extinction event. When a client disappears from Spens’s tour bus, a massive effort is spearheaded to find her, and that kickstarts this entire series of events.

First the good: Dickinson’s take on time travel is unique and still makes perfect sense. Who wouldn’t go back 300 years to see how people lived? It’s the adventure of a lifetime. Commercial time travel seems to be an unexplored use of the device, and I applaud the creativity of the author in setting it up. His concept of how life is lived—not in a straight chronological line, but in a twisty fashion that can have a close friend interact with several different versions of you at multiple ages in your life, while not aging a day in theirs. His main characters, especially Spens and his fellow travel agents are engaging and give a spot-on critique of 21st-century life from a more evolved perspective. Socially, these future people view us the way we view our direct ancestors from decades past—with awe that they could survive with all the pollution and war and lack of internet.

Where The Tourist fails for me is in the finer details of the plot. It’s framed as a mystery, and while it accomplishes all the basic beats of one, it seems to do it in an unnecessarily convoluted manner. The dual narrative left me scratching my head. It wasn’t badly written on its own but wasn’t strong enough to escape the time-travel gimmick. That fell flat for me because not only was it hard to keep track of who was doing what and when, but the two main POV characters were not created equal. Spens is interesting; he has a network of friends, a life, and a story worth telling as he tries to track down his missing client. Conversely, Karia lacks background information. The details of just who she is are sparse and makes reading her parts of the book arduous. The most compelling thing about her is the stuff that happens to her, and her sections of the book are plot-driven as a result. Also, the book takes far too long to indicate the link between our two main voices.

For what it’s worth, I’m writing this after I was told that The Tourist is better on a second readthrough like The Usual Suspects is better after subsequent viewings. Unfortunately, I’ll never know. I didn’t find it nearly compelling enough to warrant a second go-round; it took me three tries to get through it the first time.

Pros: Unique take on time travel, great social observation, and commentary.

Cons: The plot is confusing, some characters are flat.

Rating: 2 out of 5 stars.