Synopsis:
Meet an extraordinary father and son in this captivating, heart-wrenching speculative debut.
It’s a day like any other when Scott Treder first jumps forward through time. One moment, he’s on his way to work, fingers drumming the steering wheel. The next, he’s tumbling head-long down the road, his car gone, a dozen panicked voicemails from his wife waiting on his cell.
7:51am. Monday, April 13th.
A blink of an eye.
7:52am. Tuesday, April 14th.
An entire 24 hours, gone.
This one moment—this first spontaneous slip—marks a change in the course not only of Scott’s future, but that of the world. From this point on, at precisely 7:52am every morning, Scott inexplicably travels forward in time in ever-doubling intervals. First one day lost in a blink, then two, then four, until weeks, even years, are passing him by in an instant.
Meanwhile, his wife is left to pick up the pieces of the life they once shared together alone, and, before long, Lyle, Scott’s genius seven-year-old son, will surpass him in age.
Because while his dad is rocketing forward in time, Lyle is growing up – graduating early, studying at Berkeley, becoming the foremost scholar of quantum physics, all in an attempt to bring his father back.
The Traveler is the story of a reluctant time-traveler and his son, and the bond between them that even millennia cannot break. An adventure full of heartbreak, hope, and futures beyond imagination.
Review:
Early on as I was reading Joseph Eckert’s traditional debut, The Traveler, I was reminded of a few things, namely H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine (of course), the SciFi Channel movies and mini-series from the early 2000s, and (perhaps most of all), the classic Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode, The Visitor. There are significant influences on this time travel epic, but in the end, Eckert paints his own tale and vision of the future. In a way, just like Scott Treder’s journey plays with time, the narrative is tight and constrained when it needs to be, and more flimsy and flexible when it’s called for. For me, the father-son dynamic, showing their love and sacrifice until the end of time, pushed it over the edge, earning an early spot on my Best of 2026 list.
So, the time travel itself is fairly straight forward. As the book begins, Scott is yanked out of his car one day, and appears (sitting and still traveling 25 mph) without his car in the middle of the road 24 hours later. Then, a day later, he jumps 48 hours…then 96 hours…and so on. We see within just a few chapters that doubling time gets ridiculous pretty quick. Between jumps, Scott is able to live a day, but in the span that it takes him to live 7 days, his wife, son and the rest of the world lives over two-thirds of a year.
Due to the nature of Scott’s…predicament…the book’s format essentially becomes a series of interconnected vignettes. A story from one day after he first time travels…then two days…then four…and so on. Some of the stories, particularly early on, are fairly predictable in how Scott and his family react to his random disappearances and subsequent reappearances. The stress that it takes on Scott’s wife is both understandable and tragic.
But the magic of this book is what happens with Scott’s son, Lyle. Just seven-years-old when The Traveler begins, we see that he’s already advanced for his age and interested in sciences like quantum mechanics. As Scott’s disappearances start lasting multiple years, Scott becomes more and more desperate to spend as much time with family as possible, and Lyle becomes more and more desperate to use what he can learn to stop his father’s disappearances.
Just like Jake Sisko in DS9’s The Visitor, we see the love that a son has for his father in the brief moments they’re together. The willingness to devote your life to fixing the errors of the past becomes Lyle’s life’s work even as each day with his father ends in heartbreak.
And along the way — rocketing though hundreds, then thousands of years in a blink of an eye — Eckert imagines what happens to humanity, their creations, and the Earth. Scott bears witness to the best of our future — utopias, space travel, settlements on distant planets — as well as the worst of humanity — wars, technology run amok, and apocalyptic conditions.
I loved The Traveler, from the first page to the last. On a personal note — I lost my father about nine months ago. He was the one who introduced me to Asimov, Heinlein and Tolkien. We read books about the future and of other worlds, later seeing those things play out on the screen, whether it was Star Trek on TV or Star Wars at the theaters. Reading Scott and Lyle’s journey together brought a flood of memories back, making me wish I could go on just one more sci-fi adventure with him.
Now…I have to admit that some of my love for Eckert’s work may come in part to the choice of narrator for the audiobook — the one and only Ray Porter. After hearing Porter narrate Dennis E. Taylor’s Bobiverse books and then, most famously, Project Hail Mary from Andy Weir. Ray Porter has mastered the “male character who is suddenly thrown into an improbable and unexpected scientific situation,” as shown by the characters of Bob Johansson (and all the other Bobs), Ryland Grace, and now Scott Treder. Porter’s intonation and real emotions as he puts himself into the characters certainly adds to the quality of Joseph Eckert’s book.
I highly recommend Joseph Eckert’s The Traveler and personally recommend checking it out as an audiobook with Ray Porter narrating Scott and Lyle’s journey through time.
The Traveler will be released on June 9.
Thank you to Macmillan Audio for providing this audiobook for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.
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