It’s time

Why is it so hard to discuss time? A good part of the difficulty arises from what contemporary philosopher Nathaniel Lawrence terms “the uniqueness of temporality,” which, while “[i]t submits to useful analogy, … is different, essentially different, from anything else” [because] “temporality permeates … [human] experience.” When we try and reduce this experience to a concept of time, we necessarily pick and chose certain aspects and ignore others. This becomes a “no win” game. Jorge Luis Borges cautioned against trying to “solve” this intractable problem. Instead he recommended attempting to describe and, where possible, to illuminate it through story, for “[o]ur existence in time … can only be comprehended through narrative.” Rather than attempting to define time or to theorize about it, It’s Time tries to report on what living in time is like not through abstractions but through imaginative literature with its special insights into our experience of time. Narrative remains the ideal medium for presenting the events upon which our real experience of time depends. It’s Time discusses a variety of works in many different genres in the hope not of being definitive but of creating a mosaic that will reflect what it is like to live in time.

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—W. A. Senior, author of Stephen R. Donaldson’s Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, past-president of the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts, former editor of Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts