How to Stop Time by Matt Haig

First published in Great Britain in 2017; published by Viking on February 6, 2018

How to Stop Time is a sneaky novel. It delivers an important message, but wraps it in such an engaging story that the message seems secondary until it begins to drive the story. The novel asks the reader to imagine living a very long life, and to think about whether the price required to stay safe is too great for the longevity it buys.

If you only age one year for every fifteen calendar years, maybe the secret is not to fall in love. Tom Hazard learned that the hard way. Tom was born in 1581. In his teens, having not visibly aged since the age of 13, his mother was accused of witchcraft. A few years later, he fell in love with a woman named Rose, but had to leave her (and their daughter) so that Rose would not be condemned for living with a boy who doesn’t look old enough to shave, but who never seems to age. Tom hasn’t been happy since.

Today Tom is a history teacher in London. He returned to London to search for his daughter Marian, who inherited the condition that slows aging. A fellow named Hendrich protects people with Tom’s condition by working to assure that their existence remains a secret. New people with the condition are discovered every year, just as people who might reveal their existence are killed every year. The killing is largely orchestrated by Hendrich, who values the lives of people with extended lifespans like his own over the ordinary people who might expose their existence.

Much of the story is set in 1599. Shakespeare enlivens the plot and adds the sort of wisdom about life that one expects from the Bard. During one of the 1599 chapters, a performing bear appears. Only the bear is not performing; it’s fighting to stay alive, despite being held in chains and tormented for the crowd’s amusement. In a book about longevity and its price, the bear becomes something of a metaphor for “the pointless will to survive,” no matter what cruelty and pain life has thrown in the bear’s direction. One of the serious questions raised by How to Stop Time is whether the quest for a longer life merely creates more opportunities for suffering and loss, whether the instinct for survival necessarily serves us well. Is life really so precious when suffering is the price for living?

One of Tom’s assignments for Hendrich leads to the novel’s tipping point, when Tom must decide whether longevity is more important than integrity and love and all the other things that make life worthwhile for people who live a normal lifespan, or less. The lessons that How to Stop Time teaches (primarily the importance of living in the moment, not in an unknowable future) are worthy if sometimes a bit obvious, and the story is entertaining despite its predictable resolution. Matt Haig’s fluid prose, solid characters, and convincing descriptions of historical settings all contribute to one of the better sf novels exploring the theme of longevity

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The Humans by Matt Haig

First published in Great Britain in 2013; published by Simon & Schuster on July 2, 2013

An alien (specifically, a Vonnadorian) comes to Earth to destroy evidence of a breakthrough made by Andrew Martin, a Cambridge professor of mathematics who proved the Reimann Hypothesis. To accomplish his mission, the alien must assume the unfortunate professor's identity and eliminate the unfortunate people who might know of Martin's discovery, including his wife and son. The alien Martin is equipped with the usual array of alien powers, including the ability to induce heart attacks and to heal blind dogs.

The alien's mission gives him a chance to study the odd species with midrange intelligence called humans. The Humans is the alien's account of his experiences on Earth. Like most anthropological examinations of humans through alien eyes, this one is quite funny. Martin ponders the meaning of human life (pursuing "the enlightenment of orgasm" seem to be "the central tenet") and draws pointed conclusions about the meaninglessness of most human activities: consumerism, war, sexual embarrassment, bad poetry, the endless need to state the obvious. Oh, and social networking, which "generally involved sitting down at a nonsentient computer and typing words about needing a coffee and reading about other people needing a coffee, while forgetting to actually make a coffee." Human concepts are bewildering, particularly delusions like love and free will. "Given the absence of mind-reading technology, humans believe monogamy is possible." The alien finds it difficult to distinguish between madness and sanity and is amazed at the human capacity for hypocrisy. The many uses humans find for cows, on the other hand, fascinate him.

To some extent, The Humans is a throwback novel, echoing the feel-good message that was common in science fiction of an earlier generation: humans are special, humans are unique, human traits (curiosity, tenacity, empathy, hope) will always assure their survival. The message is slightly tempered by the modern tendency toward realism (or cynicism) but the novel's weakness is the alien's all too quick and all too predictable realization that humans are not primitive beasts but lovable beings standing on the threshold of greatness. At times, the novel is embarrassingly gushy in its praise of humankind ("a miraculous achievement"). It's also crammed with enough simplistic platitudes to rival a self-help book.

A funny story about an alien who reviles humans but is forced to become one is bound to follow a predictable path. The notion of an alien embracing human emotions and beliefs after taking human form isn't new, and the reader suspects that the alien will eventually be a better human than was Martin because that's how these stories work. The human characters also tend to be predictable, including the son who suffers because he can't live up to the standard set by his brilliant father. I appreciated, however, Matt Haig's willingness to make the alien Martin true to himself, and to avoid a contrived ending to the story.

I don't entirely buy the notion that by taking human form, an alien who views humans as repulsive would so quickly decide that one of them is lovely, much less embrace human conventions of romance (without, at least initially, having much of a clue about sexual desire). Would an alien raised in an environment of peace, beauty, and immortality really reject the "dullness" of that life in favor of the pain and loss that characterizes human existence? That notion is the foundation of the plot but Haig didn't convince me to buy into it. The story's predictability and doubtful credibility make The Humans an unsuccessful drama, but the novel works well as a comedy.

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