Temporal Agonistics and Uchronia as Method in Annalee Newitz and Alastair Reynolds

This article examines the use of time travel tropes in two speculative works – Annalee Newitz’s The Future of Another Timeline and Alastair Reynolds’ Permafrost – in relation to the concepts of uchronia and alternate histories, and demonstrates the significance of using uchronian ideas to query presumably fixed histories. This is significant because the fixity of history is often used to justify or assert a given status quo; sometimes this is for very good reason, but it can also be used to justify pre-existing inequalities. Importantly, both texts explore the ways in which the future can re-write the past, inverting causality, whilst speaking to contemporary concerns about technology and politics, and using ‘temporal agonistics’ to debate historical contingency. In so doing, both test how uchronia can be understood not as a description of a given genre of texts, or concept, but as a method for challenging prevailing ideas.