New!
Author resources • Lorehaven Guild
Podcast sponsors • Subscribe for free
Crew manifest Faith statement FAQs
All author resources Lorehaven Guild Subscribe for free

Into the Darkness
Reviews, Feb 3, 2023

The Chosen Succeeds Where ‘Woke’ Stories Fail
Jenneth Dyck in Articles, Feb 2, 2023

Rose Petals and Snowflakes
Book Quests, Feb 1, 2023

Library

Find fantastical Christian novels

fantasy · sci-fi · and beyond
middle grade · young adult · grown-ups
All novels Search Add a novel
Silver Bounty, Victoria McCombs
A Sword for the Immerland King, F. W. Faller
Calor, J. J. Fisher
Once Upon A Ren Faire, A. C. Castillo
Exile, Loren G. Warnemuende
Aberration, Cathy McCrumb
The Truth Beyond the Lies, Kathleen Bird
Frost, Winter's Lonely Guardian, E. E. Rawls
Dream of Kings, Sharon Hinck
The Change, Bradley Caffee
Quest of Fire: Desperation, Brett Armstrong
Wishtress, Nadine Brandes
Flight, Kristen Young
The Deliverer, Jason William Karpf
Podcast

Get the Fantastical Truth podcast

Podcast sponsors | Subscribe links
Archives Feedback

147. Why Can Christians Celebrate Stories about Merlin and King Arthur? | with Robert Treskillard
Fantastical Truth, Jan 31, 2023

146. How Did Animators Adapt The Wingfeather Saga For Streaming TV? | with Keith Lango
Fantastical Truth, Jan 24, 2023

145. How Did Edmund Spenser’s ‘The Faerie Queene’ Shape Christian Fantasy? | with Rebecca K. Reynolds
Fantastical Truth, Jan 17, 2023

144. Which Top Six Fantasy Franchises Gave Fans Grief in 2022?
Fantastical Truth, Jan 10, 2023

143. Which Top Ten Lorehaven Stories Proved Most Popular in 2022?
Fantastical Truth, Jan 6, 2023

142. What Christmas Gift ‘Tools, Not Toys’ Helped You Grow As a Person?
Fantastical Truth, Dec 20, 2022

Quests

Join our monthly digital book quests.

Lorehaven Guild Faith statement FAQs

Rose Petals and Snowflakes
Book Quests, February 2023

Prince Caspian
Book Quests, January 2023

Dream of Kings
Book Quests, December 2022

On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness
Book Quests, November 2022

Reviews

Find fantastical Christian reviews

All reviews Request review

Into the Darkness
“Charles Hack’s Into the Darkness summons a close-range science fiction story, focusing on the personal challenges of space warfare among alien cultures with a steady pace and serious tone.”
—Lorehaven on Feb 3, 2023

A Crown of Chains
“A Crown of Chains creatively retells a biblical tale to explore themes of providence, racism, faith, and fidelity.”
—Lorehaven on Jan 27, 2023

Lander’s Legacy
“Lander’s Legacy stacks modern thrills and complex characters on a foundation of biblical what-ifs.”
—Lorehaven on Jan 20, 2023

Prince Caspian
“Pacing starts slow but creature lore grows in C. S. Lewis’s sequel, introducing practical tyrants and talking-beast politics into a Narnian resistance.”
—Lorehaven on Jan 13, 2023

Gifts

Find new gifts for Christian fans

Archives

The original SpecFaith: est. 2006

Speculative Faith | archives

Lorehaven issues (2018–2020)

Order back issues online!
New
Library
Podcast
Quests
Reviews
Gifts
Archives
Lorehaven helps Christian fans explore fantastical stories for Christ’s glory: fantasy, science fiction, and beyond. Articles, the library, reviews, podcasts, gifts, and the Lorehaven Guild community help fans discern and enjoy the best Christian-made fantastical stories, applying their meanings to the real world Jesus Christ calls us to serve. Subscribe free to get any updates you choose and to access the Lorehaven Guild.
Subscribe free to Lorehaven
/ SpecFaith /

Messin’ With Time

Beyond all my complaints about the time change, I find time an interesting topic, a part of world building, actually, in speculative stories.
Rebecca LuElla Miller on Oct 28, 2019
2 comments

Here in the United States, most of us will be altering time this coming weekend (November 3, to be exact) because Daylight Savings Time will come to an end. Of course we haven’t actually saved any daylight, nor are we alerting time in any ultimate sense. Every day will still have twenty-four hours; every hour, sixty minutes; every minute, sixty seconds. But we will, of course, change time in the sense that we will change our clocks by “falling back” an hour. Five o’clock will become four, ten o’clock will become nine, and so forth.

In one sense, I’m glad for the change because I’m tired of waking up and getting up while it’s dark outside. For those people who have to start their day at some early morning hour when the rest of us are fast asleep, the change won’t affect them in the morning. I mean, it’s dark at four whether we are on Day Light Savings Time or not. But for me, where I live, I’m now eating breakfast just as the sun is starting to peek over the horizon. Which means I’ve been up, in the dark, for hours already.


Photo by Andrey Grushnikov from Pexels

In another sense, I hate this messing with time that we do. It throws my sleep pattern off. I get hungry at the wrong times, I’m eating just because the clock tells me it’s lunch, and so on. What’s worse, the whole thing changes back in five short months. And what’s worse still, from my perspective, is that the government decided to add this extra month to Day Light Savings Time because people are more inclined to shop when it is light. I guess they figure we’ll shop before Christmas no matter what, so it’s safe to change the time for a little while at least. But me? I don’t think shopping is a good reason to mess with time.

Beyond all my complaints about the time change, I find time an interesting topic, a part of world building, actually, in speculative stories.

I just finished a fantasy in which several individuals passed through a tunnel into another land. Yes, this was a portal fantasy. As it turns out, the individual who went through the tunnel some time later (weeks, maybe months) arrived in the alternate world before the person who went through the tunnel first.

Narnia famously gave readers this “time is different” element of fantasy when Lucy Pevensie famously spent hours and hours in Narnia, only to return to this world moments after she left. That’s been a fairly common element in these types of fantasies, though I don’t recall one in which time was so altered as it was in the book I just read.

Other types of fantasies, such as Lord of the Rings, must develop their own time system, usually only pertinent when recounting the past. I haven’t read The Silmarillion by J. R. R. Tolkien, edited and published posthumously by his son, Christopher (and unlikely to become a movie, which suits some just fine), but I understand that the book delves into the history of Middle-earth, dealing with, among other things, the First Age, the Second Age, and the Third Age. These ages, of course, are the author’s fanciful dealing with the past. In fact, all of Middle-earth is supposedly about a time before our time, in some ways “explaining” why we do not have elves and dwarfs and wizards in our world today.


Photo by Giallo from Pexels

Then there are time travel stories, which are a type of speculative fiction we don’t see too much in contemporary literature, at least not since Back To The Future.

The most notable series I read was Stephen Lawhead’s Bright Empires. He used an interesting device called ley lines. When the characters passed from one reality to another, they were actually going into another world, like ours in every respect, with a history like ours. But they not only traveled to other places in the other world, they also traveled to other times in the other world. Confused yet? It actually made a lot of sense and was an interesting twist on the time travel novel.

Even science fiction must deal with time. At least stories that are set in space or that involve space travel, must, if only by developing warp engines or dilithima crystals or some other innovation that allows spaceships to reach a destination within the characters’ lifetimes, speeding through light years as if they are but hours. Some stories also must deal with longer days on some planets, or telling time on spaceships that aren’t in sync with one planet or the other.

All in all, time is a serious function of speculative literature. It helps build the world and make it into a believable other place. Consequently, in novels, messin’ with time is not only forgivable, it may be desirable.

What speculative stories have you read (or have you written) in which time must be altered in some way? How well did the author handle the time elements? Any of those books you’d like to recommend?

Featured Photo by Eugene Shelestov from Pexels

Rebecca LuElla Miller
Best known for her aspirations as an epic fantasy author, Becky is the sole remaining founding member of Speculative Faith. Besides contributing weekly articles here, she blogs Monday through Friday at A Christian Worldview of Fiction. She works as a freelance writer and editor and posts writing tips as well as information about her editing services at Rewrite, Reword, Rework.
Website ·
  1. Autumn Grayson says:
    October 28, 2019 at 3:02 pm

    I don’t really mind Daylight Savings Time except for the slight worry that I’ll forget about the time change and thus end up being too late or early for something.

    Further down the road, there’s a story I’ll write that involves time travel. And it will get very long and elaborate and deal heavily with psychology and the toll every event takes on the characters. With my other stories…dealing with all the technicalities of time zones and such can be a pain, so I don’t usually put the chars in a position where they need to worry about it. A lot of the cultures I write about are more ancient or at least low tech, so that helps. Usually, it’s enough to say ‘the hunt lasted the entire day’. Even in scifi, the author doesn’t always have to say how long a day on that planet lasts. And in ancient cultures, it’s usually enough to say ‘be there at dawn’ instead of ‘be there at 6 am’.

    My fave time travel story is probably Steins Gate. It’s got a very interesting take on time travel, and although it almost starts out in a slice of life manner, they’re edging closer and closer to certain discoveries the whole time…which suddenly explodes into very high stakes part way through the story.

    One of the best things about time travel stories is that they’re a great way to explore why every event can matter, raise questions about whether or not we should want to change our pasts, and in some ways provide an opportunity to fantasize about second chances.

    Reply
  2. E. Clayton Rowe says:
    October 28, 2019 at 11:33 pm

    For my “day job” I work from mid-afternoon to late evening and my days off are Tuesday and Wednesday. I’ve also worked the graveyard shift.

    Nothing skews your perception of time quite like this. You don’t hear as much about circadian rhythm these days, but the cycle of day and night predates the formation of the sun and moon in the biblical account and is by no means arbitrary.

    I play with this in my Drift series; it’s a generation ship where the lights are always on, and religious communities maintain independent clocks and calendars.

    Reply

What do you think? Cancel reply

  • When Christians Vacate An IndustryWhen Christians Vacate An Industry
  • Thinking About TimeThinking About Time
  • ‘The Hobbit’ Story Group 3: A Short Rest‘The Hobbit’ Story Group 3: A Short Rest
  • C. S. Lewis and Sub-creationC. S. Lewis and Sub-creation
Lorehaven magazine, spring 2020

Wear the wonder:
Get exclusive shirts and beyond

Listen to Lorehaven’s podcast

Authors and publishers:
Reach new fans with Lorehaven

Lorehaven helps Christian fans explore fantastical stories for Christ’s glory: fantasy, science fiction, and beyond. Articles, the library, reviews, podcasts, gifts, and the Lorehaven Guild community help fans discern and enjoy the best Christian-made fantastical stories, applying their meanings to the real world Jesus Christ calls us to serve. Subscribe free to get any updates you choose and to access the Lorehaven Guild.
Website · Facebook · Instagram · Twitter