The yarn that got away

Back in 1982, or perhaps it was ’83, I was working on a short story; it was my first real attempt in my quest to ‘become a writer’. I wrote the story on my first computer (an Amstrad PCW), which is long since departed – and my draft story along with it. That taught me a valuable lesson that’s stuck with me ever since:

Always keep backups †

† plural – because backups can go walkies, too!

My story (I can’t remember if I gave it a title) involved a young man whose name was Kriston Masters (for some odd reason I recall that well). Kriston woke up one day and was surprised to find an odd box at the foot of his bed. The box was completely black; its surface was incredibly slippery, almost frictionless. Kriston tried to figure out what it was and where it had come from… he discovered some shallow indentations on its surface, stuck his fingers in some of them – and found himself transported in time. The story went on from there: eventually, he reverse-engineered the box and made a copy of it. The tale ended with Kriston using the duplicate box to take himself back in time and space to the bedroom where his earlier self gently snored. Quietly depositing the original box at the foot of the bed, he left the way he’d come.

(Just in case that’s too subtle: where did the original box come from?)

I had plans to expand upon this beginning, back then. It was to be a trilogy:

• Book One: as described above.
• Book Two: describes the utter mess of history that Kriston creates during his time travelling adventures.
• Book Three: how he finally manages to untangle it all and get everything back to normal.

I never made a start on books Two or Three; largely because I could never get my head around how they might pan out. Fortunately, unbeknown to me, the concept wasn’t mine alone; other, smarter, heads had come up with it too…

Here’s an odd coincidence: The wonderful movie Back to the Future was released in 1985, and its sequels in 1989 and 1990. Wikipedia says that it “was conceived of in 1980 by Gale and Zemeckis” (ie some months before I began creating my Kriston yarn). I’m certain I hadn’t heard anything about this work. I can’t even imagine how I might have; I was in the UK, Gale and Zemeckis were in the US. They would no doubt have kept the concept under wraps – and there was no Internet back then to leak rumours and snippets all over the place. I can’t now recall what it was that sparked off the idea for my own short story and its sequels. It might perhaps have been Robert Heinlein’s novella By His Bootstraps, or maybe one of my favourite novels, The Door into Summer…

… and here’s another odd coincidence: while searching for an appropriate page for that last link, I happened to notice that Takahiro Miki made that story into a movie that was released just last year.

The Door into Summer (2021) Japanese Movie Trailer English Subtitles
(夏への扉－キミのいる未来へ－　特報映像　英語字幕)

Excuse me, please, I have to go watch that (it’s on Netflix)…