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- [00:02]
Andrew
This is a headgum podcast.
- [00:06]
Craig
While Andrew and Craig believe the joy of discovery is crucial to enjoying any well told tale, they will not shy.
- [00:13]
Andrew
Away from spoiling specific story beats when necessary. Plus, these are books you should have read by now.
- [00:41]
Craig
Hey everybody. Welcome to Overdue. It's a podcast about the books you've been meaning to read. My name is Craig.
- [00:47]
Andrew
My name is Andrew and I'm here.
- [00:50]
Craig
From the future to tell you that our episode 700 livestream was great. You, you should have been there. You should have gone to bit ly/ overdue 700 and you will you regret.
- [01:06]
Andrew
It forever now that you haven't that you didn't go.
- [01:09]
Craig
I'm here from the past.
- [01:10]
Andrew
Feel really bad to tell you that.
- [01:12]
Craig
It'S going to be so great and you should be there. You should go there to that URL. I said bit that ly over to 700 on Friday, April 25th at 8:30pm Eastern Time. That's when we do the streams. You gotta be there then. And I'm here from the future again to tell I'm time traveling.
- [01:30]
Andrew
There's two of you. It's really disorienting.
- [01:32]
Craig
There's three of me. Cause there's the present me also who's very confused.
- [01:36]
Andrew
Well, so what's interesting, and I was just thinking about this, is that the people at home have never, ever, ever, ever heard us. Unless they've come to literally a live show, which we haven't done in many years. Yeah, they have never heard us. Not in the past.
- [01:50]
Craig
Whoa.
- [01:51]
Andrew
Even. Even when we are live streaming, Craig, there's like a five second delay. They're always encountering the past versions of us. They've never met us in the present or. Yeah.
- [02:01]
Craig
So see how good your Internet is and join us on April 25, 8:30pm Eastern, episode 700. We're gonna be discussing the gender swapped Twilight book Life and Death by Stephanie Bob.
- [02:15]
Andrew
Reimagined. I can't wait to see all the reimagined. I've already encountered some of the reimaginings and I can't wait to encounter more of them while I keep reading.
- [02:24]
Craig
Not this week's show. Goodbye. That's in the future, Craig. Goodbye, future Craig. See you later. Goodbye. Goodbye. We're here to talk about like we always are, a book that one of us hasn't read before that we're sharing with the show with you and Andrew. What book did you read for us this week?
- [02:41]
Andrew
I read the Ministry of Time by Callie Ann Bradley.
- [02:45]
Craig
Oh, the Ministry of Time.
- [02:47]
Andrew
The Ministry of Time not to be.
- [02:49]
Craig
Confused with the Spanish television show El Ministerio de Tiempo, I believe.
- [02:56]
Andrew
Del Tiempo. Yeah. No, it's not. It's not the same as that.
- [03:00]
Craig
Which is a real show that ran from 2015 and 2019. And when this book was optioned immediately upon its publication, they promptly started yelling at the BBC about it. And Bradley is like, sorry is a good name. The idea that a government agency would be involved in time travel is not yours alone. Sorry.
- [03:23]
Andrew
Like, it's a good name. So it's okay that I took it.
- [03:25]
Craig
She.
- [03:26]
Andrew
Well, just her argument.
- [03:27]
Craig
No, her argument. They are saying that she ripped off more than the name, and she is saying, no, it's just a good idea. And I apologize. You know, I'm so sorry that I guess legal didn't clear this, but they also apparently sued a CBS show over, you know, being a show about time travel.
- [03:45]
Andrew
To El Ministerio del Tiempo.
- [03:47]
Craig
Yes.
- [03:48]
Andrew
Okay.
- [03:49]
Craig
So, you know.
- [03:50]
Andrew
Okay, okay. El Ministerio del Tiempo.
- [03:52]
Craig
If you Google this, like, incorrectly, you could wind up reading pages about that show, which apparently is pretty good, litigious behavior notwithstanding. Anyway, I had not heard about this book before you brought it to the show, but then when I was reading about it, it seemed pretty buzzy.
- [04:10]
Andrew
They made a lot of, like, 2024 novelists, including on Goodreads and in some other outlets. So, yeah, it's. It's been. It's been listed around a lot. That's how I ran into it. I was like, a timey wimey thing.
- [04:24]
Craig
You love a timey wimey thing.
- [04:26]
Andrew
I love a timey.
- [04:26]
Craig
I said yesterday, and you thought I was ragging on you. And I don't mean that you love a timey wimey thing. I like a timey wimey.
- [04:34]
Andrew
I don't know. It's. It makes me. It makes. It makes my head. It makes my gears spin in, like, a good way and not in a frustrating way.
- [04:41]
Craig
Yes.
- [04:41]
Andrew
And maybe this is, you know, for somebody with a rich background in Star Trek, I was gonna say, and et cetera. Like, maybe that's why I have such a. Star Wars. Star wars don't really do time travel.
- [04:53]
Craig
No.
- [04:54]
Andrew
Except in the sense that they refuse to recast any roles and make everybody into, like, rubber face versions of 70s actors.
- [05:00]
Craig
Correct.
- [05:01]
Andrew
When they want to refer to an old character on their shows. But they, like. Time travel is not a plot device.
- [05:05]
Craig
Time travel's not a plot device. And also, like, they barely, if ever, ever in the films anyway, do anything remotely close to A flashback like it does occasionally happen but by and large just time marches. And then George Lucas tells you what time it is. Like that's. And then you know, Kathleen Kennedy tells you what time it is, like whatever.
- [05:28]
Andrew
Yeah, but she doesn't like but her watch is broken or something like I.
- [05:31]
Craig
Don'T know, it rings JJ too many times. That's what her watch does. But yes, no, Star Trek is way more interested in timey wimey stuff. More on that on our Patreon soon. Go check that out. Patreon Doctor who too.
- [05:43]
Andrew
But I don't including like where the phrase timey. Why me? I think, I think yes, but I don't watch that. I only have space for one like decade spanning sci fi drama. But you can read up and I've chosen my fighter.
- [05:56]
Craig
But you can read a book about it which we'll talk about. So Bradley, this is her debut novel. She was born in like late 80s, early 90s, born in East London, British father, Cambodian Khmer mother. And her British Cambodian ancestry plays a part in this book is my understanding.
- [06:22]
Andrew
Like a part in it. But mostly only insofar as like the book wants to talk about like who belongs in a society at a given time. How does my experience like mostly passing as white but not quite being white help me relate to these people who are here in a, in a England, in a Britain, in a London that's not of their time. Yes. And at one point she says like specifically if you bring, if you take anything about Cambodia away from this book with you, like that's on you. You did that. I'm not trying to educate you on that.
- [06:59]
Craig
That's funny. Her she had said this comes up in a lot of interviews about this book because she also before starting this novel, as I said it's her debut, she was working on what she called a serious novel about the Khmer Rouge and about British Cambodian refugees. She felt she had a duty to write about it because that was what she quote, unquote thought she had anything to write about, any right to talk about. But then she said no, good writing comes out of the sense of duty. And she said of her, you know, Cambodian background, it's a family relationship, a relationship with my mother and my mother's family. And I feel like there are multiple versions of Cambodia that I have relationships to. One of them is a past Cambodia that no longer exists. That's the Cambodia of my mother's stories. But the internalized sense of my ethnicity changes on a daily, hourly basis. I feel very strongly that I'm A British Cambodian writer at this time in my life, it's had a significant impact on the way I write. I find it interesting that even speaking about her Cambodian heritage, she starts to invoke, like, different timelines and things. Like, she's just somebody kind of prone to talking about things that way.
- [08:11]
Andrew
Yeah, and I think so. So the protagonist in this book is not named ever.
- [08:15]
Craig
The bridge.
- [08:17]
Andrew
Yes, the bridge is. She's never named, but you get a lot of, like, the author, she is, like, British Cambodian in origin. She also has a name that's, like, hard enough to pronounce that. When the romantic interest in this book does pronounce it correctly, she does make a note of it, even though she does not tell us what the name is.
- [08:41]
Craig
Okay.
- [08:42]
Andrew
Which, given that her name is Callie Anne and that I think we wanted, my impulse was to pronounce it Kaylee Ann. That sounds lightly familiar.
- [08:49]
Craig
Yep, sure.
- [08:49]
Andrew
And also, the main character has a sister in the book. Now, I believe that Callie Anne Bradley has multiple siblings, so it's not like a clean mapping, but the main character has a sister who works as a copy editor and also occasionally writes articles about growing up with a Cambodian mother and a white father in the society. And I almost like hearing you say that. I'm like, are we looking at two slightly different versions of Callie Ann Bradley? And the one who the main character seems to have a little bit of disdain for, who she fights with a lot, is the one who seems like she feels like she needs to. To write about the serious stuff about, you know, about. About race in British society. I don't know. I'm just. I'm just spitballing. I don't know if she's ever talked about that, but it was a thing that.
- [09:35]
Craig
Yeah, so I do have that brought.
- [09:37]
Andrew
To mind for me.
- [09:38]
Craig
I'll talk a little bit about where the book came from in just a second, but to not jump off this train real quick. She gave an interview with fantasy-hive.co.uk I want. I always want to get the websites right. You know, where she talked about where the bridge came from. That really, when she first started the book, this was just kind of a cipher character with really no information about them. And then started thinking about the theme of expats and migrants. And she says, I originally considered making her a white passing British Indian or British Burmese character. Someone whose family had been colonized British subjects. But it seemed disingenuous when I had a specific set of experiences as a British Cambodian person to draw on. To tell you the truth, I actually lifted her from another novel I was writing about the years of the Khmer Rouge. In that book, she was a cynical and ambitious doctoral candidate at a seaside university. I barely had to make any changes to her opinions to make her fit the role of the bridge. So she, you know, filling in a character with her lived experience, but then also taking that character from a book. She really is. Is adamant that it wasn't working and putting it into a book that was more fun to write for her. She studied at the University College London. She spent some time working at Granta Literary magazine. Was a theater and dance critic. Wasn't. Is an editor at Penguin Press or has been an editor at Penguin Press. Excuse me. She won some short story prizes in 2022 and that seems to be what she parlayed into the deal with Scepter Books and other publishers for the Ministry of Time, which must have been very good at pitching. Probably had some good agent support because like, all right away. Translation in a dozen languages optioned by A24 and the BBC like that. I was struggling to find out if the show had happened yet because the BBC also ran a like BBC Radio abridged version where someone was reading excerpts from the book. Like the whole book. It was just like right away people wanted this thing. She says she was inspired during COVID lockdown watching AMC's the Terror. I love what I was watch. I was watching a show on amc. She said, it's just a relatable experience. It is a show about. It is a supernatural riff on the lost John Franklin Arctic expedition in the mid-1800s. It starred Jared Harris, Tobias Menzies and Kieran Hines. And I made a note that maybe this is the thing I need to watch. I'm not sure. Those are a lot of people who I think are good. And it is this, like, hey, we're going into the north. We're going to try to find the Northwest Passage. And then these boats don't come back and 129 people die. Disappear. She found herself obsessed with this explorer named Graham Gore, of whom there was like literally a single daguerreotype in. In existence.
- [12:46]
Andrew
I mean, he's a handsome looking fella.
- [12:48]
Craig
She does have a portrait of him in her house. And she's what? In one interview, I think with Elle.com she said, I just look at Elle magazine. I just look at him and I think did this for you, baby. Like, she has a really interesting relationship with this man.
- [13:04]
Andrew
Sorry, I was just. You were. You were talking about. You're talking about how the Book was translated into different languages. And that did send me to Amazon to find. To see if I could find what this was released in Spanish as. Because it is not. Oh really? Ministerio del tiempo. It is un puente sobre el tiempo, which I believe is just like a bridge over time or something.
- [13:30]
Craig
Oh, interesting.
- [13:32]
Andrew
Yeah. So at least they didn't release it in Spanish. That's the infringing name. That's like somebody in legal caught that one, I guess.
- [13:42]
Craig
So she got really interested in this guy, Graham Gore. She said to in an interview with Book Web. This man sounds so competent. Or this is what the American Bookseller Association. Excuse me. This man sounds so competent and chill and nice. She was starting a new job under lockdown and she was finding herself frustrated with the vpn. And she said, quote, I bet Gore could get the VPN to work. I bet he wouldn't cry. He'd just handle this lockdown. She's really investing a lot in this man from past.
- [14:11]
Andrew
That. That also is funny because she does have a point where the bridge is reading through a time traveling person's notebook. And one of the questions that, like, they write questions to ask about the present day so they can get answers from their bridge. And one of the questions is, what is a vpn? So like everything, everything has found its way into this book.
- [14:29]
Craig
And so she's finding herself on Wikipedia pages reading about this expedition, which as I said, was from 1845 and then all the ships were abandoned by 1848. It was a. There were people in the 1850s already writing plays. Like Charles Dickens was in a play about it and Jules Verne and Mark Twain were writing about it. The Dan Simmons novel the terror was in 2007, which got turned into the AMC show. And I think we found the boats finally in 2014 and 2016.
- [15:05]
Andrew
Yeah, relatively since we started the show.
- [15:07]
Craig
Yeah, it's kind of wild.
- [15:08]
Andrew
Which is why, like our show has become wide enough to span multiple like historical efforts at this point.
- [15:15]
Craig
But if you go to the Wikipedia entry for Franklin's lost expedition in the links to like other interesting articles, the two are list of incidents of cannibalism and list of people who disappeared mysteriously at sea. Two high quality wiki lists and probably.
- [15:33]
Andrew
Not lists that you yourself would want.
- [15:34]
Craig
To end up I don't want to.
- [15:35]
Andrew
Be there, don't want to be on.
- [15:37]
Craig
She finds herself on some like polar expedition historical fanatic forums and is starts churning out like chapters of what if Graham Gore time traveled like stories.
- [15:50]
Andrew
Yeah, because she writes in the. In an author's note at the end of this, like, he is. You know, we've got that one picture of him. We have got some letters that he wrote. We've got some descriptions of him from, like, other officers. So it's not as though he is completely unknowable, but he is mostly a cipher. And so she. You know, she takes the qualities that we do know about them, and she kind of extrapolates into multiple different character notes. But, yeah, like, part of what is interesting about how he's worked into this book is that, you know, there are two notes from this, like, failed expedition that. That survive. One that was signed by Gore, that was written, you know, after their boats had been trapped in ice but before things had gotten really, really dire that says everything's going great. And then another one from, like, 11 months later that's like, we're abandoning the ships to try and walk to civilization. Everything sucks. People are dying.
- [16:47]
Craig
Yep.
- [16:48]
Andrew
Sorry.
- [16:48]
Craig
Whoops.
- [16:49]
Andrew
And Gore is not there anymore, and he's like. He vanishes from the historical record in this. In that gap.
- [16:57]
Craig
Yeah.
- [16:57]
Andrew
And this book supposes, you know, what. What if that was because an agency that was scanning history to find, like, individuals who, like, existed, who they could, like, target and track down with specificity, but who were thought to have died, and so taking them out of the past wouldn't change the present too much. What if we were doing that?
- [17:20]
Craig
I did see that note. It's. That's kind of cool. I think that's cool. So she was writing these, was not liking the serious novel she was working on, decides to turn them into a book, sends it out. There's a bidding war, and here we are reading it. It was long listed for the Women's Prize for Fiction, shortlisted for debut with the British Book Awards. They're working on that TV show if the Spanish don't come for them first. And here we are talking about the novel. I have. I have one other note about, like, kind of naming in the book, but I feel like we should probably talk about that after the break.
- [17:56]
Andrew
Maybe just when you're doing a TV show, you just call it Un Ministerio del Tienza. So it's just. It's just one day.
- [18:03]
Craig
There's probably more than one.
- [18:05]
Andrew
Yeah, probably of time. There's room for many more of them.
- [18:12]
Craig
All right, let's take a quick break, Andrew, and then you can tell me about the. The Ministry of Time, not El Ministerio de Tempo.
- [18:19]
Andrew
Okay. Hey, Craig.
- [18:28]
Craig
Hey, Andrew.
- [18:29]
Andrew
I've got a podcast to tell you about Craig, you want to hear more?
- [18:32]
Craig
I would love to.
- [18:32]
Andrew
If you like this podcast stuff, we're excited to introduce you to a podcast we think you're going to love. Open Book with Jenna from the Today Show's Jenna Bush. Ha.
- [18:41]
Craig
Jenna is an open book known for her authenticity and sharing all of who she is. In the second season of her podcast, Open Book with Jenna, she'll sit down with celebrities, experts, friends and authors for intimate, inspiring and entertaining conversations. Each week, guests share candid stories about their life, dive into current projects, and reveal how a favorite read or a first book may have influenced their path. Like a good book, you'll leave each episode feeling inspired and entertained.
- [19:13]
Andrew
New episodes of Open Book with Jenna are released every Thursday. Listen now.
- [19:21]
Craig
Andrew. This week's show is also brought to us by one of our Patreon supporters, ck. Thank you, ck. Did you know that there are a ton of unicorn books, Andrew?
- [19:31]
Andrew
I had not done specific research about it, but I guess I had assumed that there would be a few.
- [19:37]
Craig
But there is only one by CK's mom. So to find it you can search Amazon for Moon Rabbit Arts Unicorn Coloring Book or go to moonrabbitarts.com this unicorn coloring book will make a great gift for Easter. Or really anytime. So long as you like unicorns. 100% of the images are hand drawn. There is no clip art. Clippy's not here. There's no AI filter going on. These unicorns are bespoke.
- [20:06]
Andrew
Okay, he did not help with clip art. That misinformation. Yeah.
- [20:10]
Craig
Oh, it wasn't named after him.
- [20:12]
Andrew
Clip, clip art. No, no.
- [20:14]
Craig
Interesting. Either way, it's not here. Clippy's not here. Clipart's not here. AI is not here. It's just these hand drawn books.
- [20:22]
Andrew
My name is Clippy and here's my art. Partake of my art.
- [20:26]
Craig
55 pages of coloring and activities. There are mazes, word searches. You can even find your unicorn name. William Shakespeare has a good one. He would be Twinkles the Valiant. It's pretty good. Next week's author, Ted Chang is Clover Blossom the Majestic. I, Andrew, am Starshine the Pure Hearted.
- [20:47]
Andrew
Okay, okay.
- [20:49]
Craig
Deal with it. There is also a jumbo Christmas book for all the super organized types who want to get ahead of their holiday shopping. It is extra long at 168 pages. That's so much Christmas coloring. You need to get it again. Search Amazon for Moon Rabbit Arts Unicorn Coloring Book or just go to moonrabbitarts.com does the book start in the past, Andrew? Does it start in the Future, where are we? Why are we? When are we?
- [21:27]
Andrew
It's split into 10 chapters, and it does start in the past, insofar as each chapter begins with a very, very short section from the perspective of Graham Gore.
- [21:39]
Craig
A real person.
- [21:41]
Andrew
A real person, but not in this book. A fictionalized version, of course, of him. But, yeah, we get a bunch of small snippets of things that happen to him while he. While the. These ships are packed in ice and everybody's just kind of waiting to see if the ice will melt or if they will all die.
- [22:00]
Craig
Great.
- [22:01]
Andrew
He's really cold and nobody's happy.
- [22:05]
Craig
Okay.
- [22:08]
Andrew
But, yeah, you know, but after you get past those. It's coming exclusively from the. Like, the quote present from the perspective of this bridge, this person who works at the Ministry of Time, a British government agency that is experimenting with bringing people into basically past refugees, is kind of how it frames it, like I mentioned before the break, like, people who. The Ministry does not think, like the timeline will miss them. And so it's trying to both save them and also ostensibly to run experiments to see what the effect of time travel is on people from the past.
- [22:47]
Craig
But it is relocating them, like, against their will and knowledge or without their will and knowledge, I suppose. Not necessarily against.
- [22:54]
Andrew
Yeah, it's just like, grabbing them.
- [22:55]
Craig
Okay. Weird. Okay.
- [22:59]
Andrew
The. The first bit of the book with the bridge is, you know, her being interviewed for this position in the Ministry of Time, and someone and her talking briefly about, like, her experience as a Cambodian and being, like, interviewed for jobs. And occasionally people will bring it up. You don't look Cambodian, one early clown had said to me, then glowed like a pilot light because the interview is being recorded for staff monitoring and training purposes. But the right after that, you get the first bit of, like, hey, it's a time travel book. Here we go. Anyone who has ever watched a film with time travel or read a book with time travel or dissociated on a delayed public transport vehicle by considering the concept of time travel will know that the moment you start to think about the physics of it, you're in a crock of something. I can't say on our clean podcast. How does it work? How can it work? I exist at the beginning and end of this account simultaneously, which is a kind of time travel. And I'm here to tell you, don't worry about it. All you need to know is that in your near future, the British government developed the means to travel through time, but had not yet experimented with doing it. Okay, so that is our framing is that someone has invented time travel. And to study the effects of time travel on people. We are going to go back in time and we're going to, quote, save some people from the past so we can see how they respond to being in the future. And it's both a, you know, how do we update them, how do we like, socialize them for this new era. But also like, the most interesting thing I think the book is doing is with respect to its time travel mechanics, is how do you physiologically respond to time? Oh, interesting. And it's not just, oh, here's a common cold that's had three centuries to mutate since your immune system ran into anything remotely like it. It's also like some people make it to the present and they just kind of die for no apparent reason. Some people are alive, but they stop like showing up in like CAT scan machines and to like CCTV cameras.
- [25:00]
Craig
Oh, wow.
- [25:01]
Andrew
They're just like out of sync with time in some way that makes them like, incompatible with modern technology.
- [25:08]
Craig
I love that. Okay.
- [25:09]
Andrew
Yeah, it's kind of, it's kind of neat. There, there are some reasons, like, the book gets a little bit more specific about where the time travel came from and some of how the rules of it work, like toward the end. But by then we're firmly embroiled in this other, like, dramatic stuff that the book is doing that we can talk about.
- [25:25]
Craig
But it's my understanding that there is a point at which the book moves into. Something is going on here. And that may or may not be everyone's cup of tea, but lots of folks like the beginning of this book where it's kind of exploring the premise a lot.
- [25:41]
Andrew
Yeah. And I think that the premise of it, and not to say I did enjoy this a lot. I enjoy most Timey Wimey things. I've read other Timey Wimey books for the show that I've liked more just because I, I think that the, like, the story was more interesting like a time travel story. I think the setup has to be. Has to draw you in and then once you are set up, other stuff has to happen to like, keep you invested. And I, I didn't, I didn't mind the things that happened in this book, but it does turn mostly to like, romance and intrigue that don't. All that didn't always feel like as satisfying to me as does that I.
- [26:16]
Craig
Wanted them to for your enjoyment. Is that stuff happening kind of next to the time travel conceit rather than because of it? Is that maybe part of the Issue?
- [26:28]
Andrew
No, it's that. No, it's happening because of it. I just don't. Part of it. A little bit of it is the. Is the protagonist who I feel like is. Is, like, passive to, like, to a. To a degree that I find a little bit distracting. Like. Like, once she starts to get signals that, like, something is up, it doesn't become a book about, like, her trying to track down what is up. It's just like, frequently she will shrug her shoulders and be like, well, that's strange. I guess I'm just gonna kind of ignore this and keep my head down and keep doing my job.
- [27:00]
Craig
Okay, sure, sure.
- [27:01]
Andrew
So, you know. Yeah, I think it would have been a little more interested if she'd been, like, a little more active. And then also, she does, you know, she's serving. Okay. People from the past come to the present through this time machine. They are assigned an agent from the Ministry of Time. This agent is called a bridge because they are bridging the gap between the original person's time and the present.
- [27:22]
Craig
Sure.
- [27:23]
Andrew
And a lot of what they are doing is, like, teaching people terminology, telling them about, like, how not to be, like, sexist and racist all the time. Sure things. Because times have changed. Literally, times have changed. Making sure that they're up to date on new technology and then eventually making sure that they can pass in public as, like, people from an Interesting.
- [27:48]
Craig
Okay.
- [27:48]
Andrew
And then, like, for most of the book, you are. You are sort of led to believe that aside from studying the, like, physiog. Physiological effects, it is trying to put together some kind of system for, you know, resettling temporal refugees and making sure that they can pass as members of modern society.
- [28:10]
Craig
That's interesting.
- [28:11]
Andrew
Yeah, it is interesting. And so somewhere, like, halfway through the book where you see that the bridges reports that she's painstakingly writing every week are like being thrown in a trash can unopened, as are all the other reports from all the other Bridges. You would think that that would, like, set off some kind of chain of events that would then result in other stuff. And instead she's just like, I guess I'll just keep doing what I'm doing and not think about this too much.
- [28:34]
Craig
Okay. Yeah.
- [28:35]
Andrew
And to my mind, you never really get a satisfying explanation for why she is just, like, sort of a little.
- [28:42]
Craig
More blase about it.
- [28:43]
Andrew
Observing that I could, you know, even if you had her trying to, like, go up against the bureaucracy and getting, like, bounced back a bunch of times by it, I think that would. I would buy it a little bit More than just like, all right, well, I guess I'm going to go back to my flat that I share with this, this sailor from the 19th century. And I really am into him kind of. And I wonder if anything will come of that. Oh, I guess I'll just go about my business and keep doing my reports and my dumb little time travel email job that I have.
- [29:18]
Craig
Weird.
- [29:19]
Andrew
Yeah, it's a little strange.
- [29:21]
Craig
I do like, just. I just want to shout out. I like this bridge concept and the like, how do you help someone pass as a present day person? I.
- [29:31]
Andrew
The conceit is really, really strong. Absolutely. If. If the whole setup were not revealed later to be kind of a facade, I would absolutely read kind of an anthology series about different bridges resettling. Different. Because a lot of the characters who we meet from the past, especially the ones who are finding different ways to integrate, are really interesting and are the strongest part of the book.
- [29:53]
Craig
Yep.
- [29:54]
Andrew
And I think when you bring in characters from the past, it gives you kind of a perspective on what has happened since then. And you can use that as an author to tell different stories and to emphasize different things about modern society and maybe to make some points about what has changed and what hasn't. Like, I just think it's a really strong storytelling.
- [30:13]
Craig
The. One of the things that's like, I'm thinking of, I'm thinking of that of the Wonder Woman film from probably like 10 years ago now. I guess I'm not vouching for the politics of anybody involved in that film. Chris Pine is very good in that movie. But there is the like, oh, okay, this woman is from another universe. How do we quickly get her up to speed in our universe? There's lots of comedy there, but also she has like a more not simple, but a more straightforward moral code that now we have to like, square with modern society. And like, that usually leads to interesting scenes and interactions.
- [30:54]
Andrew
And like, yeah, there's a lot of comedy drawn from. I don't think that Bradley uses it sparingly because I think there's a way to get lazy with this kind of humor. But you do occasionally have Gorr coming in from being out and about in society and being like, hey, what's a dilf? Why do these people in the park call me a dilf?
- [31:16]
Craig
Well, that sounds like Bradley is being very transparent about how she feels about this daguerreotype that she's writing about.
- [31:25]
Andrew
And then there's also. There are two of the other characters who you get to know. Like the two you get to know best is Arth, who I think is also from the 19th century. Or no, I think he's a. He's a World War I vet. But anyway, he is bisexual or homosexual and is sort of. He is fitting in well because it feels like the times are more in sync with like who he is.
- [31:57]
Craig
Okay.
- [31:59]
Andrew
And then the other person is named Margaret, I think, and she is from the 17th century.
- [32:05]
Craig
Yep.
- [32:06]
Andrew
And she is also gay and kind of like a, like a magic pixie dream girl, except she talks in a dialect that hasn't existed for like 200 years.
- [32:15]
Craig
Okay.
- [32:16]
Andrew
And she's just like very like, she's very hot and likes to get on the apps. But she also, she also talks like an old timey person.
- [32:25]
Craig
Sure.
- [32:26]
Andrew
But she's, she's a lot of fun, those two. Both of those two characters a lot are a lot of fun. There were multiple kind of similar things with them. It's like not just like how who. These people are more in sync in some ways with our time than with their time.
- [32:40]
Craig
That's kind of neat. I love that.
- [32:41]
Andrew
But also, how does your approach to the time affect how well you're doing in this era?
- [32:50]
Craig
No, no, it's fun stuff. She mentions Margaret and Arthur or Maggie and Arthur in a number of interviews because she was like thinking about periods where, like British periods of time, like what are like interesting places to pull people from and of course, like when could you pull someone from where they maybe wouldn't be missed? That sort of thing. But yeah, just when you think about this as a, like refugee story or a migrant story, like, where do you fit in? And do you fit in with the new place more than where you came from? Is just an interesting. Like, that is a version of a time travel story I have not quite heard of or at least encountered regularly.
- [33:37]
Andrew
Like that feels French, which is. That's what I think is the most fun about the book. And not to imply that the book is bad or that I didn't have a good time, because I did. But like that stuff, I thought that's.
- [33:48]
Craig
What will stick with you.
- [33:49]
Andrew
And I had a lot more. I enjoyed it a lot more. And then that stuff kind of naturally gets back burnered at the very end of the story as it is, as it is bringing all the intrigue and stuff to a close.
- [34:02]
Craig
Do you want to tell me a bit about the intrigue about what is happening?
- [34:08]
Andrew
I did want to read another passage about Margaret and the time travelers and all.
- [34:15]
Craig
Yeah, sure. No, please.
- [34:18]
Andrew
Let's see. We all had access to the expats Internet Expats are what the time travelers are called. As a group we all had access to the expats Internet search histories. Arthur googled so much Parentheses Macarena, Brew dog clubbing, ballroom Vogue, Vogue dance, Madonna poppers rimming that Somalia had the Somalia is Arthur's bridge had been referred to the Home Office deputation for their guidance on adapting to life in the uk. Margaret looked up naked women almost as much as Cardingham. That's another man expat as much as Cardingham did. But she also looked at a lot of clothed women. She had a two week stint as a swifty but ran out of energy for the speed at which the discourse mutated and her bas basic disinterest in the music. Much to Ralph's relief, she'd found out about film torrenting with alarming rapidity. So like here, here's a person from the 1700s who like encounters Internet discourse and is like, man, this moves fast. And it's not about something that is interesting enough to merit all the.
- [35:20]
Craig
That's very funny.
- [35:22]
Andrew
I thought that was funny.
- [35:23]
Craig
That's very clever.
- [35:25]
Andrew
What was your question?
- [35:26]
Craig
My question is like, what is the plot though also. Yes, sure, it is telling, I think a little bit that, like you're eager to talk about character and to talk about kind of premise and flavor right before you're like. And this book was a barn burner.
- [35:45]
Andrew
Yeah, right, Okay. I mean, listen, it's a lot of. It's a lot of fun to read. I'm not going to say that it isn't like. And I think it deserves to make a bunch of quick lists and be short and long listed for things because I. Yeah, like I said, the premise is really strong. A lot of the characters are really strong. I, yeah, the story doesn't hold up as well, but also it's, you know, it's allowed to be a little secondary to the other.
- [36:08]
Craig
It still got you the stuff that was the most interesting.
- [36:12]
Andrew
So the plot is the bridge. The main character and Gore, Graham Gore have been, you know, have been paired up. They're living in this flat. She is walking him through modern society. A lot of, A lot of what is happening is sort of controlling how he is exposed to information. Like, you don't want to drop everything on him all at once. You do introduce him to modern technology. The thing he doesn't care for, like TV or movies or a lot of modern literature, though he does find some things that he likes. His big discovery that is life changing to him is like, oh, you can pull up Any music that has ever existed on this little device and play it at any time. That was not a thing that was possible in, like, the 1840s, when I was last on the earth that would blow somebody's mind.
- [37:06]
Craig
From the 90s.
- [37:07]
Andrew
Yeah, 1990s. But I think in the 1990s you could be. Because we did live through this era, Craig, if you remember.
- [37:16]
Craig
We did.
- [37:17]
Andrew
And there were useful metaphors that you could use when you pull out an iPad from your pocket and be like, this has like a million CDs on it.
- [37:24]
Craig
I remember that's a thing.
- [37:25]
Andrew
That's the thing that you can get into. But if you don't even have like, the Victrola, you know, people are like, here, you can play any music that you've ever thought of.
- [37:32]
Craig
Yes.
- [37:33]
Andrew
That's mind blowing.
- [37:34]
Craig
Well, I was thinking about that too. Okay, I have two things to say. One, oh, boy.
- [37:39]
Andrew
I was thinking about Mr. Two Things over here. Some stuff to say.
- [37:43]
Craig
I was thinking about that when you're like, oh, he would be, like, really taken with the fact that, like, all music was accessible because he's probably not listened to a lot of recorded music ever.
- [37:54]
Andrew
Yeah.
- [37:55]
Craig
So, like, making that leap is fascinating because it's like, oh, I love this, you know, Haydn concerto. And you're like, well, there's never been a recording of it that you've listened to. Like, what is that about? That's. That's interesting. I have a very vivid memory of reading a High School Friend's LiveJournal where he talked about his ipod that had hundreds of CDs on it. And I don't. I didn't know what he meant. I was very confused by. What did he mean? There were hundreds of CDs on it. I knew a guy who had a mini disc player in his car that was weird. What was an ipod?
- [38:30]
Andrew
Do you ever have one of the little. Like my setup in my old car for a very long time until I got a CD player.
- [38:35]
Craig
Was the tape.
- [38:36]
Andrew
High school graduation was the tape. Yes. That you hook your Discman up to, huh?
- [38:40]
Craig
Yes.
- [38:41]
Andrew
And I could, you know, I could bring whatever music I wanted through the CD burner that machines computer had installed in it. But it was. Yeah. It was not as convenient as the iPad.
- [38:52]
Craig
And I had a friend who had a. Whose car could read burn CDs but, like, could actually, like, go through file trees.
- [38:59]
Andrew
Oh, okay. So you could. You could keep the, like, compressed music on it and fit more stuff on it. Having to burn it in actual cd.
- [39:07]
Craig
It was bizarre. It's not an efficient ui, I'll tell you.
- [39:11]
Andrew
No, but you can still fit lots more songs on a cd. It's very strange than you normally can.
- [39:17]
Craig
I had an MP3 player that could fit about two CDs on it. That was. And it was not easy to swap out the MP3s on.
- [39:24]
Andrew
Yeah, my first iPad, my. From my first ipod I got in college with a tax refund.
- [39:31]
Craig
Oh.
- [39:32]
Andrew
Because that was like exactly how much tax refund I got. Because that was about how much income I made was one first one. Pod Nanos work from the state.
- [39:41]
Craig
Here's your state issued ipod.
- [39:45]
Andrew
Yeah, it was a big deal.
- [39:46]
Craig
Yeah.
- [39:46]
Andrew
It was really, really changed what walking to class hungover felt like.
- [39:50]
Craig
Well, and you and I went to a college where at least our freshman year people yelled at me for having ear like stuff in my ears. It was like a thing.
- [39:59]
Andrew
Culturally, it's a different but. Yeah. And you know, every, every time you introduce new technology, you get a new chance to say something a little bit funny. Like talking about how when Graham Gore talks about classical music, he's talking about a specific type of music at a specific time in history where the bridge is thinking about any music with violins in it. His classical music.
- [40:27]
Craig
That's fun.
- [40:28]
Andrew
Yeah. So there's a lot of little bits and pieces like that. But so what you are, you're also trying to make sure that they don't find about large scale atrocities too fast. Like the Holocaust. 11. Because that scale of, of destruction.
- [40:45]
Craig
Yeah.
- [40:46]
Andrew
Not like fathomable to people in this, in this time frame. And then for Gore, he's, he's the one who you encounter with the most because he's the one who's like an established historical figure. I don't, I don't know if Arthur.
- [41:00]
Craig
Or Maggie, they're all made up except him is what I read.
- [41:04]
Andrew
But he also gets to, you know, he, he is told why it was him that was saved. And it's because he's kind of fallen through the cracks of history a little bit.
- [41:14]
Craig
Yeah.
- [41:15]
Andrew
And the only reason he's fallen through the cracks of history is because like the other like hundred and whatever guys who are with him on this voyage all died and never made it back to society to tell anybody about him, what had happened to him or what he had done. And so he is.
- [41:31]
Craig
This is just that montage of Austin Powers in Las Vegas pumping the shoe until it pops out at him and the sad music is playing and he feels like a man out of time. This is Graham Gore realizing that nobody knows who he is.
- [41:45]
Andrew
Yeah, it is. It's not Graham Gore realizing that nobody knows who he is. He doesn't necessarily care about that. It's like coming to terms with the implications of nobody knowing who he is, which is that, you know, when he left, it was. He. When he left, it was in between those two notes. I see your little smiling face because you got something else funny that you think you're gonna say. So just let me get through. But what he left between those two letters. And when he leaves, there are still like a hundred and something people alive on this boat. People who he served with for a long time, people who he considers friends, people who he looks up to. And he gets to come to the realization that like, none of them made it. And in fact, many of them may have resorted to like, cannibalism and other horrible things to stay alive during this, like, final march that they all did. And he says, you know, there's, there's no, like these, the guys, the people I knew could never have done that. And the bridge has to be like. Well, there are like reliable accounts from Inuit who encountered these people. And also we've seen like the markings on bones and things. And it's just like this, probably what happened. And Gram Gore has to like come to terms with that. And it's, it's rough. It's rough for him. What funny thing were you gonna say?
- [42:58]
Craig
I was just thinking about how Austin Powers married a lady who then turned out to be a fembot. In the second movie it's revealed that she was a robot the whole time. And it doesn't, it doesn't. Doesn't make any sense whatsoever.
- [43:12]
Andrew
I do not know that I have seen Austin Powers two from front to back.
- [43:16]
Craig
Excuse. Yeah, you've never met Mini Me.
- [43:20]
Andrew
I know me. I know about Mini Me. Wasn't he in the first one, though?
- [43:23]
Craig
No, you fat bastard.
- [43:26]
Andrew
Can we say that that's the name of the character? I know.
- [43:32]
Craig
I don't, I don't. I don't have to like it.
- [43:34]
Andrew
That's his. I know of him because I was in like middle school with my belly and so everybody liked to run around the hallways yelling, get in my belly.
- [43:44]
Craig
I think Austin Powers is an under examined time travel narrative from Mr. I like timey wimey stuff. I just feel like you need. Maybe you need to go back.
- [43:54]
Andrew
If we need to make this episode of our new overdue series on Patreon. Overdue special collections patreon.com overduepod if we need to go back to encounter the Austin Powers movies. I'm willing to do that. I see you typing. I hope that's in an ideas document.
- [44:12]
Craig
I'm just confirming what the second movie is called.
- [44:18]
Andrew
Most of my experience of Austin Powers 2 was watching Austin Powers Heineken ads during episodes of Mystery Science Theater.
- [44:26]
Craig
Sure. The second one is called the Spy who Shagged Me.
- [44:30]
Andrew
Yes.
- [44:31]
Craig
I did rewatch the first film after my very first Covid shot, when I was really reeling from the nanobot.
- [44:42]
Andrew
It would be.
- [44:44]
Craig
And it was a good watch. I don't. That's all I can say. Yeah, that's a surprise. I haven't brought that up. Up earlier is all I'm saying. Anyway, continue with Austin Powers for the time travel books. It's an interesting man out of time story and I don't care about. I don't care about the Marvel movies. I can't talk to you about Captain America. Like, I'm not interested in it.
- [45:06]
Andrew
I don't know that Austin Powers, like, did he actually go through a time machine though, or is he just an outdated sort of man?
- [45:11]
Craig
He was frozen and then they thawed him.
- [45:14]
Andrew
Like the Minions during World War II sort of.
- [45:17]
Craig
He was frozen in like the 60s or 70s. And then they. They thought him because Dr. Evil came back.
- [45:24]
Andrew
Okay.
- [45:25]
Craig
And then, you know, there's. There's a whole. There's a whole part of the first movie where he's like. There's a lot of feeling weird about being a man out of time. He's got outdated sexual mores.
- [45:37]
Andrew
No, I remember all that stuff, like the Groovy Baby. Whatever. Most of what I remember about that first movie is like $1 million. Because that's funny.
- [45:45]
Craig
Well, because he hadn't updated his. His priorities for how much money was valued.
- [45:49]
Andrew
I know, I know. That's why it's funny. And you know what? Inflation made it funnier. That's one joke that gets a little bit funnier every year. Because $1 million is worth less and less money all the time. What is happening to the space? I don't know.
- [46:07]
Craig
Tell me more about the Ministry of Time. Tell me about. So, okay, here's. I can jump to maybe a listener comment or review that might be helpful.
- [46:19]
Andrew
Okay, listener. Listener comments would be great. And then because I don't like the. To talk about the end of the book is to get extremely spoily great. So I'm kind of resisting jumping all the way there at like the. The three quarters of the way through a podcast point. So, yeah, let's talk about what other people liked or did not like. And I can kind of bounce off of that. Because you like the stuff that I feel the strongest about. I've already talked about, like the character stuff. A lot of the writing is very funny and very good and like the conceit I find very strong. But then at the end is just kind of doesn't do it for me as much.
- [46:54]
Craig
Okay, so two professional reviews. I'll. I'll just name check one from the LA Times, one from Literary Review. The LA Times review is pretty positive. Talks about this like, need for secrecy with the time travel agency. So I want to learn more a little bit about that when we, when we wrap up the plot stuff. It also quote, while the book does assume some obvious postures of university level post colonial theory and language, it moves past these more cliched moments by focusing its attention on the characters. I think we've covered most of that. It's like it's. Maybe it's Bradley talking about what it is to be a refugee.
- [47:34]
Andrew
Yeah, a little bit of that. Like how in what ways are we the same stuff? And then a little bit of that is in the sort of the education of the Xbox.
- [47:44]
Craig
Oh, interesting. Okay, sure.
- [47:45]
Andrew
Yeah.
- [47:46]
Craig
Literary review. The reviewer called it a gleeful romp across genres. Historical fiction, time traveling, rom com, culture clash, comedy of manners, spy novel, sci fi, thriller. Finished with a twist of social commentary and our first discord. Patreon.com overdue Potter first Discord user Kael said. Felt like this book was trying to be too many things.
- [48:10]
Andrew
Yeah, so like one, one of the things about. So I talked about the main character kind of rubbing me the wrong way a couple of ways. The first way is the sort of passivity that I talked about. Bit of a second way. And I, and I think this is coming from how lazy and frustrating I find it when there's like specifically a female journalist character in a in fiction that instantly sleeps with his horse or something.
- [48:38]
Craig
You have remarked upon this trope that's.
- [48:41]
Andrew
A really damaging and lazy trope. And from so, so early on, this professional woman, the bridge, is so clearly angling to sleep with this handsome time traveling gentleman that even though I enjoyed the relationship, in the end, I kind of bought into it. I. I spent a good chunk of the first half of the book being like, ugh, do we have to do this part?
- [49:10]
Craig
Yeah, sure.
- [49:12]
Andrew
And I listen, I understand and appreciate and even applaud the fact that Callie Ann Bradley saw like a daguerreotype of this old sailor and was like, wow, what a dilf. Like, I want to honor that. But that the like female professional is inexorably drawn into a sexual relationship with somebody she's like in like in charge of and has some duty to like. I just, I found that a little bit frustrating to hit. Yep. That should just be me. I don't know. I'm trying to explain where it's coming from so that people can like yell at me for reasons.
- [49:51]
Craig
The word romance. The word romance is used a lot around this book. Rom com is used around this book. And it sounds.
- [49:56]
Andrew
There's a sex scene. Like it's very romance. It's very romance. Like in that they do sleep together. And it is described in like quite a bit of detail.
- [50:03]
Craig
I think at least some of our listeners liked how the intimacy was written. Like found it in general.
- [50:09]
Andrew
It's well done. Yeah.
- [50:12]
Craig
Megan said. Megan agreed with what Kael said that like it was trying to be too many things, but did learn some stuff about Cambodian history. Megan agreed, but also liked the quote, heavy blanket of climate dread. You haven't mentioned a blanket of climate dread.
- [50:29]
Andrew
Yeah, that gets into the stuff that happens at the end of the book.
- [50:32]
Craig
Okay.
- [50:32]
Andrew
Put a bookmark in the book in that.
- [50:35]
Craig
Nora said, I liked the book but felt like I should have loved it because of all the things it's trying to do that are extremely my thing.
- [50:41]
Andrew
Yeah, I felt that. I felt that very much.
- [50:44]
Craig
And Bri really liked, just really liked it, thought that the time travel via govern government agency was good enough. I think that is them saying, like I didn't need to know more about how time travel worked. Like time travel exists. The government would be involved. Ipso facto. Tell me the rest of the book. And liked that the, as you said, which was a good way to put it when you said that the folks who. The expats who were gay or who were discovering that they were queer were like maybe not meant for their time or were like maybe better suited to our time. It's an interesting way for you to put it. Thank you. And then Steffi Barr said that they were a sucker for things related to the historical event that he was a part of. So I guess if you really like, if you really like old expedition in particular, you'll probably dig this book.
- [51:38]
Andrew
I every like, I sympathize with Bradley talking about getting pulled into a Wikipedia hole about this expedition and the people on it because like, man, every time I'm reading about ghost ships, ghost towns, like anything that's been kind of abandoned by society, I just want to know, like, why, like what happened?
- [51:55]
Craig
Tell me more and it's also this interesting. Like they're doing the Northwest Passage. They're trying to find how do we get from the Atlantic to the Pacific through the, the Arctic. And a bunch of people have made successful journeys. I did find that apparently Franklin, the guy like the lead guy was like the fourth or fifth pick for the journey. Like a bunch of people didn't want to do it, which is kind of interesting. I do have some Goodreads reviews real quick that might lead us towards the the end of our discussion here. There's a number of stars. Yeah, I'm looking here. There's three of them.
- [52:35]
Andrew
Oh, three star, you mean three star Goodreads review.
- [52:41]
Craig
The first is Hadas or Hadass. Who says that? The. For the first quarter of the Ministry of Time, I thought it was the greatest book I'd read all year. Shouted out the writing, how funny it was, how interesting it was, but at a certain point felt like there was something they were supposed to be getting but they weren't. Which is an interesting like feeling to try and put your finger on. And Alwyn said, I thought Bradley's story was an inventive vehicle for tackling well worn topics, often managing to render them fresh and intriguing. I think we've talked about that. But this didn't fulfill its initial promise. It was bogged down in a morass of fast moving plot developments and awkward reveals. I love the sense of someone being like, there's too much happening, which is making reading the book feel slow. So can you tell me about some of the plot developments and reveals as things go on? This is spoiler territory, but is maybe how people come away feeling about the book.
- [53:43]
Andrew
Yeah, and I think some of what's being referenced there, I think is what I have. What's manifested in my recounting as like passivity from the protagonist until things just kind of happen to her and then once stuff is happening to her, it's like bam, bam, bam. Like the whole book where it's this like comfortable little relationship between these two people who are dealing with time travel. Like it just becomes a, like a futuristic climate crisis time travel thriller really quickly. And to the extent that it feels a little bit tacked on, I think at the end. So, so what. What ends up happening is that the bridges handler within the Ministry of Time is this sort of older, very like severe woman who. She finds herself kind of. Adela is her name. Finds herself kind of, I don't know, with a complicated. She has a complicated relationship with her because like she's very prickly but also the bridge wants to, like, for some reason, finds herself, like, drawn to, like, being approved of by this woman. The bridge tells a story from her childhood of being scared of spiders. And the thing that helps her get over it a little bit was her dad pointing to this one particularly big spider in the garden and being like, oh, Here's a. Here's Mrs. Leggs. I don't remember what exactly he called her, but, like, here's Mrs. Legs. She's like a cool old lady. She builds her house. She catches bugs and eats flies. Hello there, Mrs. Legs. How are you today? And the bridge tells, you know, tells that part of the story and then some more stuff happens and then tells the second part of the story where there's some, like, butterflies on the bush. And the bridge, like, grabs a butterfly and throws it into the web for Mrs. Legs to eat and talks about. Part of getting over that fear is basically deciding who the, you know, like, the strongest, scariest entity in a given situation was. And, like, learning how to, like, pitch in and be a team player in that context, which I think is meant to and partially does explain some of the. Some of the passivity. Some of the, like. I'm not going to ask too many questions about, like, what this powerful institution is doing.
- [56:04]
Craig
Yep.
- [56:05]
Andrew
It didn't, you know, it didn't totally bridge that gap for me, but I do, like, see what is. What is being done there.
- [56:10]
Craig
Okay. Okay.
- [56:12]
Andrew
But there is some kind of, like, a. She has another handler slash friend who kind of disappears and then reappears later and then is shot. And there are a couple of. There's like, a guy named the Brigadier and some other woman who he's traveling with. Who he is with the secretary. Yeah, yeah. Who are, like, working in the Ministry. But they seem kind of. There's something weird about them that she can't quite put her finger on. And then they show up and they try to, like, kill her with this, like, blue light gun thing. And it is. It's revealed that the time machine, like the time door that they're. They've used to bring people through to the. To the present one. There's, like, only so many people that it can bring through at once. Like, they don't put an exact number on it, but it is described as the reason why they brought, like, seven expats. And, like, two of them died and the other ones lived.
- [57:09]
Craig
Okay.
- [57:09]
Andrew
There's a limit because you can only the metaphor is, like, it's trying to, you know, give people oxygen from a tank that's like run out of air or something. Like, there's just not enough, like, time capacity for that many people to be in the present. Yeah, but they got the door in the first place because a door from the future opened up and stayed open. And somebody who, like, from the government who showed up to deal with what they thought were like, teens trashing an abandoned rec center, like, walked through this time door and grabbed the machine and walked back through with it. So it's not that somebody in Britain, like, invented time travel, it's that somebody time traveled to the past and got their stuff stolen.
- [57:50]
Craig
Oh, wow.
- [57:52]
Andrew
Yeah.
- [57:53]
Craig
Okay.
- [57:53]
Andrew
And this, this Brigadier and, and the, the person the Brigadier's traveling with, they are from the 2200s.
- [58:01]
Craig
Huh.
- [58:01]
Andrew
And they're. And they are stuck here trying to get that time machine back. And Adella is the bridge from, like, 20 years in the future where she has married Graham Gore and had a son with him, and they're working in the, the Ministry of Time, and they have to kind of like, stop the, the people from the future from taking their time machine back. And so, like, multiple people from the future have been sent back into the present to try and deal with this thing. And we find out that the people from the 2200s, like, the reason why things are so, the reason why they've come back is because they want to try and change things about the climate crisis, because things are really, really bad there. They have, they've got a mole within the Ministry of Time, a sommelia who is a black woman who has joined the cause of these people from the far future because, like, North Africa is just, like, decimated by this.
- [59:00]
Craig
Yeah, sure.
- [59:01]
Andrew
By all of these, like, wars and the scarcity that come with, like, the, the warming planet from 200 years from now. And like, Britain specifically, like, made a bunch of refugee boats turn around, would not take people in anymore. And so people either had either, like, died at sea or they went back to North Africa and died in wars and fighting because there weren't enough resources left for people anymore. So they're coming from this, like, climate ravaged future trying to, trying to change the past. And then Adela, who is the bridge from more, you know, a more immediate future, is trying to stop them from changing the past also. She's trying to keep the past the same.
- [59:44]
Craig
Yeah.
- [59:45]
Andrew
And the other people are trying to change.
- [59:47]
Craig
Okay.
- [59:48]
Andrew
But inadvertently, Adela finds out that the past has already kind of changed because they're talking about what the bridge has told Graham. And she, like, there's a minor, like, revelation in the in the book where she tells him about the Holocaust, and then he stays up all night, like, reading about the Holocaust on the Internet and looking at pictures and stuff. Stuff. And Adele, like, they're talking about it, and Adele is like, wait, you didn't tell him about 9 11? And it turns out that, you know, when. When she did this with Graham, you know, in her own timeline, it had been 911 that. That had caused this. And she. So she's like, okay, well, the timeline is already a little bit out of sync. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe what I. Maybe the goal I came here to accomplish can be fulfilled. But, like, you already are not like me from the past.
- [60:39]
Craig
Yeah, yeah.
- [60:40]
Andrew
Which is like, there's. There's a moment where, yeah, the people from the 2200s are like, well, you know, they meet Adele and they meet the Adela, and they meet the bridge and are like, well, I'll just shoot the. I'll shoot the younger one of you because it'll kill both of you. And Adele is like, well, psych. It's not gonna work because I think she's already. Not me.
- [60:58]
Craig
Oh.
- [60:59]
Andrew
Because the timeline has changed too much.
- [61:00]
Craig
Oh, gosh.
- [61:03]
Andrew
I'm probably making it sound, like, more dynamic and compelling than I found it on the page a little bit, but this is what's going on.
- [61:11]
Craig
You're making it sound like this is a lot of book happening after it's.
- [61:18]
Andrew
All crammed into the last two chapters.
- [61:21]
Craig
It sounds like this is happening after we've spent a lot of time with the mechanics of the premise and the interesting characters we pulled forward. And then is like, what I am, Like, I'm sympathetic towards, which is like, well, you're writing this time travel story that involves, like, people from the present or the near future, like, looking to the past for answers or wanting to change things. And, like, I would certainly be keen to mediate the climate crisis like, that. It is not hard for me to imagine that that is what you turn your brain towards. And yet it feels like a slightly different novel or at least a different part of a novel from the. Hey, I found a cool guy from the past that I think is cute, and I'm gonna spend some time with him, teaching him about YouTube and, like, all of the kind of more fun parts of the early part of the book.
- [62:22]
Andrew
Yeah. Like, it's all sort of grappling with this. Like, you know, what is the future? What is the past? How does each one get it set?
- [62:30]
Craig
Like, sure.
- [62:31]
Andrew
The. You know what? The ministry.
- [62:35]
Craig
An interesting question based on the characters you just described.
- [62:37]
Andrew
Well, in the Ministry, like, there's a line early on where it's like, well, we're not. We're not changing. We're not changing the future because we're taking people who history has already kind of forgotten. And another character points out, like, well, you're kind of changing the future because you're bringing these new people into the present.
- [62:52]
Craig
Yeah.
- [62:55]
Andrew
Yeah. I feel like the. But we almost kind of have to discard the concerns of the people who are mad about the refugee crisis and the climate crisis because we just. We're just like. That's. Those aren't the characters we're invested in. It almost feels like they're here from another book where Adela and the Bridge would be the bad guy.
- [63:18]
Craig
That's tough.
- [63:20]
Andrew
Yeah, it's. Yeah, it's rough. There is a falling out with the Bridge and Graham where he has had this, like. He and all the expats have had, like, these little microchips installed in them to keep track of their movements. And so even if they don't show up on, like, you know, CCTV or, like, a couple of them have trouble getting detected in, like, a tsa. It's not tsa, but in an airport scanner because of, you know, the thing where sometimes they won't show up to modern technology, but they still got a microchip in them so you can still find them. It's like the metaphor is like, it's the invisible man holding a beacon or something similar to that.
- [63:57]
Craig
I can pull them up on my phone. It's fine.
- [64:02]
Andrew
But Graham discovered, like, while they're trying to run from the people who are attacking them.
- [64:09]
Craig
Oh, sure.
- [64:10]
Andrew
The Bridge reveals to Graham, hey, you gotta cut this microchip out. And Graham's like, how long did you know about this microchip? And the Bridge has to be like, well, kind of the whole time.
- [64:20]
Craig
That's an easy. That's a good breach of trust. I get it. Yep.
- [64:24]
Andrew
And so, you know, we see this future where Adella and Graham, like, getting married and having a son, like, is slipping away from the Bridge in the present day because things have already, like, changed. So it's. Yeah. And so the last bit of the book is, you know, the Bridge she gets. They're not killing her because they don't know how that would affect the timeline at this point. Like, it's too. Her relationship to the timeline is too uncertain for her to be killed.
- [64:49]
Craig
Okay.
- [64:50]
Andrew
She is fired.
- [64:51]
Craig
Oh, great.
- [64:52]
Andrew
She goes and she lives with her parents. And then at the end, she gets this sort of. This Cryptic photograph in, you know, inserted in a book that Graham really liked reading when he was living with her. And she is like, well, I've got, you know, I've got this very generous, like, severance payment from the Ministry of Time that I never did anything with because I was scared to touch it. Like, and Graham and Margaret are the two who get away, who are off, like, living on their own in this other area. And it's, you know, it's hinted to be somewhere around the Northwest Passage. Maybe they're in Alaska somewhere. Like, it is a place where, you know, Graham Gore would have, could have been near sort of historically cool. And she's like, well, maybe I need, you know, him sending me this photograph. Maybe it's an invitation to come find him.
- [65:43]
Craig
And maybe.
- [65:44]
Andrew
And that's kind of where the book ends.
- [65:46]
Craig
I like that. I was wondering how, like, what, what the character note would be. And a, like, not a happily ever after, but a maybe come find me is kind of a neat way to do it. Cool. I, I will.
- [66:00]
Andrew
That's the book. Like, I, I, I definitely enjoyed it. I had a good time. But like some of our listeners and some of those Goodreads reviews, I think that the, the first part of it is more interesting than the, than the second part.
- [66:13]
Craig
Yep.
- [66:13]
Andrew
And the sort of, some of the, some of the concepts that it's playing with are more interesting than what it ultimately does with those concepts.
- [66:20]
Craig
Okay.
- [66:20]
Andrew
Just kind of where I landed on it. Yeah.
- [66:22]
Craig
Because I mentioned it earlier, I will share this, this interview where she was talking about why that it was an unnamed protagonist, and she had this kind of, like, long answer to it that I thought was just interesting. And we're thinking about what went into the decision to have an unnamed protagonist. There was kind of a hierarchy of naming in the book. The bridge narrates most of the book. She doesn't need a name. She's the center of the universe. The next layer are the people she obsesses over. They have full names. These are the expats. The next circle are the people she can relate to, but she doesn't think about as whole characters. Familia, Adela, Quentin. And then there are people who she doesn't even think of as people, like the brigadier and the secretary. And I just thought it was an interesting, like, look into an author's process of how they think about how people think about the people around them, you know, their concentric circles of, like, connection and things like that. And there's not something, I would think an auth. Not something I would think in this book an author would have a system for necessarily. But it's clear that she'd given that a lot of thought and like, yeah, these, the people from the past are the people who's like in the job. The character has spent a lot of time reading their files. And then there are people who are like moving plot along and then there are people who are like mysteries to them. This is interesting. I don't know how much you cared that the narrator never had a name or anything other than the thing you mentioned earlier, but there are a couple.
- [67:54]
Andrew
Of moments like coming. Coming to make an hour of content about this.
- [67:59]
Craig
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [68:00]
Andrew
If you've heard me stumble over like the brigadier's name or whatever, it's because I'm like, did we not get a name? Like, I had to. Had to confirm via the Wikipedia page that there was not like one mention of this woman's name somewhere in the book that I just missed.
- [68:16]
Craig
Sure.
- [68:17]
Andrew
She is in fact unnamed the entire time.
- [68:20]
Craig
No. That can be a tough thing for the show to be like, what is this something the book was keeping for me or is this something that I missed? Is a feeling I have ever had.
- [68:30]
Andrew
Yeah.
- [68:31]
Craig
Well, thanks for telling me about this book, Andrew. I am interested to. If they ever make the show of it, if the Spanish don't stop them, I will be interested to watch it. I may go watch.
- [68:44]
Andrew
Of course, if Austin Powers Forever comes out, you'll also be interested to watch that. So lots of. Lots of time travel narratives that.
- [68:50]
Craig
Listen, they're making a new Shrek and Shrek did like a not quite time travel, but he did like it's kind.
- [68:56]
Andrew
Of an It's a Wonderful Life thing, which I think it's kind of a time travel divinely inspired time travel.
- [69:02]
Craig
Timely wimely.
- [69:04]
Andrew
Timely wimely. It's called Old Timey Wimey. There it is. When It's a Wonderful Life does it.
- [69:14]
Craig
So yeah, I'll be interested to learn more about this story. Maybe check out that AMC series at some point. Andrew, thanks for telling me about the book. If folks at home have thoughts on any Ministry of Time, whether it's this novel, whether it's the TV series, whether it's some other TV series that was sued by Spanish television. Send us an email overdue podmail.com hit us up on social media at Overdue Pod. Mostly Blue sky and Instagram these days. Thanks to Jeremy, Nicole, Riley, Liesl, Maddie, Flint, Finch not flinch. Finch maybe flinch. Who knows? Tom and more. Thanks for reaching out. Our theme song is composed by Nick Laurengis. Andrew. If folks want to know more about the show, where do they go?
- [70:01]
Andrew
Overduepodcast.com is our Internet website. Of course you can see the books that we have read and the ones that we are going to read, listen to older episodes, find a link to our Patreon page, all that stuff all on the website. That patreon project again patreon.com overdue podcast if you support us financially directly, you get our undying gratitude. Is the is one of the big rewards? We don't really list that on the page, but it is. It is part of it.
- [70:28]
Craig
Yeah.
- [70:29]
Andrew
But you also get access to our Discord server, our long read series about the Babysitters club Sit Me Baby One more time. The sort of the series that we've retro nimmed as overdue special collections where we A couple months ago we talked about sonic the hedgehog 3. Pretty soon, if not as you are listening to this, patrons have access to an episode we recorded about the two hour premiere episode of Star Trek Deep Space Nine.
- [70:57]
Craig
Yeah.
- [70:57]
Andrew
Which Craig had never watched before and I watched many times.
- [71:00]
Craig
We're just talking about stuff we want to talk about. Come on.
- [71:04]
Andrew
We had a good time with that and apparently I feel like Austin Powers is a strong contender.
- [71:07]
Craig
I think it's coming.
- [71:10]
Andrew
We're going to talk about that on the back end.
- [71:12]
Craig
Yep.
- [71:12]
Andrew
Maybe somebody, maybe one of us is going to travel from the future to tell us not to do it. And it'll be what finally like brings the podcast down as our podcast about Austin Powers. But we'll have to see patreon.com overdue pod Craig, what are we doing next week?
- [71:27]
Craig
Stories of your life and others by Ted Chang. It is a collection of short stories that I'm enjoying very much. One of them, the story of your life was the basis for the film Arrival starring Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner. Movie I like and is is similar but different from the story that it's based on. And already there's a whole bunch of other stories that I'm like, oh, we could just talk about this instead. Like that one was cool. But there are plenty of other stuff to talk about. So I'm excited for that episode next week.
- [71:59]
Andrew
All right everybody, thank you so much for listening. And until the US of the future talks to you from the past next week. Think about that for a second.
- [72:10]
Craig
Nailed it.
- [72:10]
Andrew
Please try to be happy. That was a headgum podcast.