The Psychology of Time Travel is a 2018 Science Fiction and time-travel novel. It is the debut novel of British author Kate Mascarenhas.
In 1967, four female pioneers—Margaret Norton, Barbara "Bee" Hereford, Grace Taylor, and Lucille Waters—invent time travel in their lab in England's Lake District. Their initial trips are successful, but their success is undercut when Barbara suffers a mental breakdown on live television. The breakdown is attributed to time travel, and Bee is sent away amid a media flurry. After she recovers, she finds she has been ostracized by her former friends and research partners. The remaining three pioneers go on to found the Conclave, an institution which regulates time travel and is led by Margaret. Other notable Conclave members include Angharad Mills and Siobhan Joyce, Fay Hayes, and Elspeth Niven.
In 2017, Bee is finally contacted by one of her old partners after fifty years of silence. Grace has left her a notice for a future inquest into the violent death of an unknown woman. Bee and her granddaughter Ruby, who found the notice, are left reeling. Bee is encouraged by the contact and throws herself into new research in order to regain her old friends and a possibility of time travelling again. Ruby is more concerned with finding Grace and discovering whether the body is Bee's. On top of all that, she's sleeping with Ginger, a brain trauma nurse who is almost certainly married.
In 2018, a British-Seychelloise student named Odette Sophola finds the body of an elderly woman in the locked boiler room of a toy museum. The incident traumatizes her, but also sparks an obsession with solving the murder. Odette knows she cannot move on until she knows who the dead woman is, who killed her, and why. Her investigation will lead her to the heart of the Conclave.
This book provides examples of:
- Ambition Is Evil: The most clear example is Margaret, but other characters sacrifice their integrity for power. For example, Angharad advocates brutal hazing regimes to secure her dream job at the Conclave.
- Asshole Victim: Margaret is arrogant, extremely controlling, and dismissive towards her employees and so-called friends. It's hard to feel bad for her when Ruby orchestrates her demise.
- Because Destiny Says So: This line of thinking is what drove a crowd of time travellers to enter time machines that they knew were about to explode.
- Broken Bird: Fay starts off as an idealistic young time traveller who want nothing more than to reunite with her deceased father, but becomes emotionally numb thanks to the Conclave's conditioning.
- Casual Time Travel: Time travel is an elite career, but once someone makes it into the Conclave, they can use time travel for frivolous means. They travel for work, yes, but can also use time travel to carry out affairs, practice a dance routine, or buy their favorite 22nd-century snack. The Conclave also manufactured a novelty toy called the Conjurer's Candybox, basically a tiny time machine for sending small objects into the future.
- Chekhov's Gun: The Conjuror's Candybox is introduced as a toy which Bee uses to facilitate her experiments. It turns out the same technology is used to kill Bee and Margaret. On a lighter note, that ring that was put in Bee's Candybox? It later becomes Ruby and Grace's engagement ring.
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: Margaret could use Barbara's new fuel-recycling technology to save Atroposium, but there's a lot of powerful people who benefit from the Conclave's role in the Atroposium market.
- Dainty Little Ballet Dancers: Angharad is a ballet dancer turned psychologist.
- Deliberate Values Dissonance: Conclave law is based on the legal system of 23rd-century Britain, which has no problem with blood tithes and trial by ordeal.
- Eccentric Artist: Grace is a conceptual artist with and expresses herself through unusual fashion choices and quirky art installations. Her behavior often defies expectation as well. She leaves cryptic messages folded in origami rabbits, shoplifts from her own art exhibition, and arranges to meet Ruby in another city only to collapse in a terminal coma before she can say a word.
- Heritage Disconnect: Odette was born in Seychelles but has spent most of her life living in England. She has forgotten most of her Creole words, but is encouraged to relearn them at the end of the book.
- Incompatible Orientation: Ginger is married to a man, but realizes too late that she is actually a lesbian.
- Initiation Ceremony: New time travellers must undergo a series of "games" to desensitize them to death. One such game is the Angel of Death, in which the initiate must inform a person, normally a child, of a loved one's imminent demise.
- The Intern: Though she is technically not an intern, Odette is acutely aware of her junior position as a newcomer in the Conclave. She has not been conditioned to Conclave life and is upset by things (like the Angel of Death game) that more senior time travellers take in stride. They tease her about her sensitivity. Despite this, she proves to be clever and resourceful.
- Mistaken for Foreigner: Odette, who has lived in the UK since she was a small child, is sick and tired of people asking her where she's from. They're never talking about England.
- Motherly Scientist: Bee is very attached to Patrick, a lab rabbit who becomes the first living time traveller. She convinces the other scientists to keep him as a mascot, rather than dissect him.
- My Future Self and Me: The first human time travel let all four pioneers meet and even embrace their older selves, and meeting your other selves has been an essential part of time travel ever since. A special mention goes to Angharad, who performs a dance routine with 54 alternate selves!
- My God, What Have I Done?: Angharad was the first to suggest hazing new recruits. She only realizes the consequences when her own daughter is hospitalized by a hazing "game". Ruby also has this reaction after causing Margaret's death to avenge Bee.
- Named After Somebody Famous: InUniverse. The first living time traveller is a rabbit named Patrick Troughton, after the actor who played the second and, at the time, current Doctor.
- Neologism: The Conclave has its own jargon which, because of the intermingling of travellers from different time periods, is uniquely stable. Examples include "green/silver self" (a person's earlier and later selves), "Emu" (a non-time traveller), and "zeitigzorn" (anger directed at someone for something they have yet to do).
- No Equal-Opportunity Time Travel: Invoked by Lucille, a Black woman, when discussing time travel into the past. Grace has similar concerns about homophobia in different centuries.
- Opt Out: Odette is offered a chance to start new time travel stations and shape them to have healthier and kinder work cultures than the Conclave. She flat-out refuses to have anything to do with time travel ever again.
- Other Me Annoys Me: Young Grace is taken aback by how brash and flippant about death her future selves are. One of the side effects of time travel is that the time traveller becomes more themselves, flaws and all. Can verge into Future Me Scares Me.
- Past Experience Nightmare: Odette has nightmares and flashbacks to the woman in the boiler room.
- Profiling: When the police interview Odette about discovering the body, she feels uncomfortable because she knows they see her, as a Black Seychelloise, as "out of place" and therefore suspicious.
- Rags to Riches: Grace was born into a poor mining family in the Midlands. She ends up a very wealthy and famous scientist-adventurer.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Ruby delivers one to Margaret before firing the bullets that would eventually kill her. Margaret also delivers a brutal outburst against Julie when she learns about Julie's mental illness.
- Screw Yourself: Time travellers have several words relating to intercourse with one's green/silver self. Ruby muses that their sexual proclivities must tend towards the auto-erotic.
- Seeker Archetype: Odette loves solving puzzles and mysteries. Her deep desire for things to make sense is part of why she becomes obsessed with solving the mystery around the woman in the boiler room.
- Self-Harm: Bee sees dolls of the other pioneers with impressed designs around their busts. She tries to recreate the designs on herself, so that she can be one of them again.
- Julie denies herself food outside of one specific place and time, resulting in severe malnourishment.
- The Shrink: Unsurprising, given the title. Ruby, Siobhan, and Angharad are all psychologists. Ginger works in a brain injury unit.
- Slave to PR: Margaret will do anything to preserve her reputation and legacy. She excludes Bee from anything related to time travel because her mental breakdown made the pioneers and their work look bad. She also installs psychologists in the Conclave, not to treat time travellers who become mentally ill as a result of time travel, but to weed them out before they can create another Barbara incident. The Conclave will hush up potential scandals by sending reporters death threats and subjecting employees who leak information to trial by ordeal.
- The Social Darwinist: Margaret is one of the Weakness Punisher and Struggler types. She has no tolerance for mental "weakness" and either fires or conditions the employees who don't meet her standards. Her attitude spreads through the entire Conclave, creating an environment of people with reduced empathy and intense competitiveness.
- The Sociopath: Margaret will bully and charm others as needed to further her own goals and what glimpses we get of her internal monologue tend to be condescending towards others. Her traits worsen as she gets older.
- The Spymaster: Lucille is the head of information at the Conclave.
- Stable Time Loop: The Consistency Principle requires that the timeline will not change, regardless of the time travellers' actions.
- Sympathetic Murderer: Ruby kills Margaret after Margaret fatally infects Bee with Macrimonus. The guilt is so intense that she tries to turn herself in to the police. It doesn't work.
- Time Travel for Fun and Profit: The reporter Zach Callaghan previously published an exposé about time travellers using their unique situation to minimize their income tax.
- Time-Travel Romance: Grace was a young woman in 1967. Ruby is about the same age in 2017. Thanks to time travel, they can have a romance.
- Trauma Button: Odette's PTSD is triggered by the sound of a boiler.
- Unusual Euphemism: "Quantum tunneling" and "Tippler cylinder" are both sexual in nature.
- Visionary Villain: Margaret has grand plans for the Conclave, and retires from time travel to better manage her position. Under her supervision, the Conclave becomes a lucrative and politically powerful organization, and Margaret is queen of it all.
- You Already Changed the Past: Odette's recruitment test challenges the prospective hires to prevent a crime, but because of a Stable Time Loop, their actions just help set the scene.
