Emit: A Modern Myth

In this uneven time traveling saga, a child grapples with the enormity of free will. Robbie Flynn is six years and one day old in July 1947 when he follows the sound of an explosion into the New Mexico desert and finds an alien spacecraft. After climbing inside, Robbie is transported six years into the future. His friends are preteens and his father has died, leaving him an orphan. The baffled time-traveling tot continues moving forward by six-year increments, pausing for one day in each era. After a second encounter with the UFO, his awareness leaps to 2013 and lands in the body of 72-year-old Robert Flynn, an extremely wealthy man approaching the end of his life. Young Robbie’s consciousness then begins traveling back to the past, following the same pattern of traversing six years and getting one day to explore. He learns about his choices and the nature of time and eventually makes a decision that rewrites his life, which has the unfortunate effect of rendering the entire story moot. Folktales told by Robbie’s Grandmom and metaphysical musings help pull the reader through, but purple prose (“The stringent smell of iodine sailing precipitously up into my nostrils draws me out of the void”) gets in the way, and Robbie acts nothing like a six-year-old. This muddled story lacks solid conceptual grounding and will hold little appeal for time travel aficionados. Agent: Randi Davis, Davis Literary. (June)