This Time Tomorrow

In the final chapters of This Time Tomorrow, Straub emphasizes her message that you can never truly know if the life you have is the life you would choose. Alice has endless opportunities to see different versions of her life, but she can’t decide which version is the best. She comes to understand that this is because life is not meant to be chosen with an omniscient understanding of the self. Instead, a good and fulfilling life is shaped by its unpredictability, unknowability, and series of ripple effects. There is a sort of magic in time travel, but Straub delineates the line between science fiction and magic. Magic is choosing a perfect life, but science fiction challenges liminality to reveal the multiple ways in which life is imperfect and therefore interesting.

This differentiation is important because of Leonard’s fascination with sci-fi. He doesn’t like neat endings or the use of science fiction as a moral fairy tale. For Leonard, as both a reader and an author, science fiction is about the unknown and the ways in which the human mind’s imagination can project its desires metaphorically into that unknown. This differentiation again evokes the work of Peter Straub, whose supernatural stories are about human nature, not about magical illusions. Magic in storytelling implies that there is the possibility of tidy endings, but in this novel, as in what Leonard terms good science fiction, the ending is a celebration of how inconclusive life ought to be.

Straub reveals that Leonard’s long-term illness is a result of all his time traveling. The warps between past and future have somehow muddled his body, placing him in a stasis of ill health. The tragic irony of this is that Alice thought that time travel would enable her to find a cure for her father, a way of avoiding his death. Instead, traveling through time only made him worse. This emphasizes Straub’s message that even if it were possible to choose your life, it’s not a natural way of living.

Alice decides she must stick with her 40-year-old self and confront her father’s death. Only by letting him go can she ease his pain. Comprehending that there is no cure frees her from regret. After all, though time traveling ultimately kills him, Leonard spent many joyous days reliving Alice’s birth, while Alice spent her time travel learning The Importance of Moving Forward and accepting her life.

Straub’s lasting message to her reader is the importance of looking forward to life, not backward for answers. By living in the moment and allowing her future to unfurl as it will, Alice can become fulfilled, if not entirely satisfied. The book’s final line—”Forward, that was the idea. Until the future, whatever it was going to be” (307)—is an anti-ending, emphasizing that life is ultimately not about a perfect ending but about looking forward to the mystery of the future. Alice decides not to return to time traveling, even giving up her inheritance rights to Pomander Walk. Because her childhood home is a symbol of her relationship with her father, his death means that she doesn’t need to return. She is aware of the seduction of time travel, but she makes the decision to simply live within the bounds of the life she has. Straub foreshadows happiness in Alice’s future: Her time traveling did give her the promotion in her work, and Sam has set Alice up with a former high school peer. Alice has a lot to live for, even with the absence of her father’s companionship.

Even Leonard’s death demonstrates the message of moving forward. He is aware of his mortality and has lived a fulfilling life; he recognizes the importance of death as a natural part of the human experience. His death is his own way of moving forward. What’s more, one positive development in his life thanks to Alice’s time travel is the companionship of his second wife, Deborah. When Leonard dies, he dies surrounded by his loved ones. The peaceful nature of his death comes as a relief after his months spent in the hospital and in hospice care. He returns to Pomander Walk, his favorite setting and the site of great joy, to die. Leonard’s death is marked by sadness, but it is also a celebration of his life.