He has worked as a journalist, writing on a wide range of topics from science to justice reform, and now serves as director of communications for a think tank in New York City. He has covered geek culture for sites such as Tor.com, The Mary Sue, and and used to cover the NHL for Fox Sports and other outlets.

Rob Wolf is the author of The Alternate Universe and The Escape. Mike Chen is the author of the award-nominated Here and Now and Then and was featured in From a Certain Point of View: The Empire Strikes Back. Being ripped from first one time and then another, leaves both Kin and those around him despairing-until he discovers that 120 years is no obstacle to the love of a father trying to do anything to save his child. Needless to say, it throws a monkey wrench in his plans when the Temporal Corruption Bureau arrives in 2014 and compels him to return to 2142, where an entirely different life-including a fiancé who thinks he’s been gone only a few weeks-awaits.įor Chen, time travel is a vehicle to explore topographies of loss and healing. To make the best of a dire situation, he ignores his employer’s prohibition on having relationships in the past: he falls in love, gets married, has a daughter, and settles into a quiet life in the suburbs. When his retrieval beacon breaks on assignment in the 1990s, he’s convinced he’ll be stranded forever. He’s an agent from the year 2142, employed by the Temporal Corruption Bureau to fix anomalies in the timeline. Those waits, however, are nothing compared to how long it takes him to re-connect with the daughter he is forced to abandon: more than 120 years.

Then, after being rescued, he needs many months to re-acclimate to his old life. The main character, Kin Stewart, waits 18 years for his employer to retrieve him from an assignment. Mike Chen’s debut novel Here and Now and Then (MIRA, 2019) is a portrait of patience.

Here and Now and Then by Mike Chen