The mermaids singing

Posted by Athena Scalzi

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2026/06/18/the-big-idea-joseph-eckert/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=61190

Many of us dream of time travel, but what if that travel was thrust upon you randomly and unwillingly? Author Joseph Eckert brings us a fresh take on time travel in his new novel, The Traveler. Venture on through his Big Idea to see when and where this unique travel idea originated.

JOSEPH ECKERT:

The core of The Traveler is family. More specifically, the core is the relationship between an average Midwestern father and his extraordinary son. Simultaneously, it’s also a vast science fiction story about a man tumbling helplessly forward through time, the length of time he travels doubling every twenty four hours.

Bear with me, if you will, as I look back three decades (oof—that hurts to write) to two key events in my life that would lay the groundwork for the Big Idea behind The Traveler.

The first event involves me, precocious youth, coming home from what I remember was fifth grade, having just learned about exponents. I found my mother and convinced her to change my allowance. Instead of a dollar a week (or whatever it was), I asked for just a penny a day. Just one cent! Except she’d double the amount the next day, and each day thereafter. So: two pennies on day two, four pennies on day three, eight on day four, and so on. My mother agreed. My plan was in flight. Soon, I knew, she’d be forced to pay me thousands, then millions of dollars! Cue maniacal fifth-grade laughter.

We didn’t even make it to day ten before she called it off.

Despite my dream of phenomenal and unlikely wealth coming to an abrupt and inglorious ending, I retained my interest in exponential increases. We see such increases in life and the sciences, from viral propagation to the now mostly defunct Moore’s Law in computing, to amusing dinner table discussions of vampires overrunning the planet (and subsequently starving because everyone’s a vampire and no one’s left to be a living blood bag—this is common dinner table discussion, right?).

The exponential penny scheme was event one. Event two took place when I was around the same age, at a book store in Northern Wisconsin called Book World.

My parents didn’t often take me to the local library, for whatever reason, but they did take me to Book World, sometimes leaving me there for hours. Rather remarkably for a small town bookstore not far from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, Book World had a solid sci fi and fantasy section, including books by authors living outside the United States. It was through Book World that I was introduced to the works of Tad Williams, Joe Haldeman, Clive Barker, and, most importantly for this Big Idea, Peter F Hamilton and Iain M Banks.

I remember walking into Book World. Pushing through the glass door, stepping into the narrow entryway with its gentle upward slope, angling around the crowded newspaper stacks. Entering the store proper, I recall the smell of books baked into the very walls; the soft creak of the floorboards under my sneakers in the perpetually hushed space; the winding path I’d take from the front door, always walking by the magazines first (craning my neck to try to see around the plastic covers blocking the Playboys and Penthouses… I was an adolescent boy). Down the aisle, glancing at the comic books for anything new and eye-catching, then a fast one-eighty around the end cap, into the fiction and then the fantasy and science fiction section. What new wonders would await?

I have a clear memory of seeing the covers for Consider Phlebas and The Reality Dysfunction for the first time. What amazing futures must those books contain to have such glorious art on the outside? I convinced my parents to buy them (or I used my allowance… perhaps contributing the meager amount I received from my exponential penny scheme) and began to read.

Magically, powerfully, the wonders inside the pages exceeded the promises made by the covers.

And as I read, I began to wonder. What if? Could I write something like this, in this tradition? Something this big, this grand, with this amazing scope?

Hard cut to many years later.

As I was pulling together the idea that was The Traveler, I knew I wanted the protagonist to be a relatable Everyman, one whose life was not extraordinary until a defining moment when it all changed. I wanted a father-son relationship to be at the core, reflecting a bit of my life experience with my own father. And I wanted to write something in the vein of Peter F Hamilton and Iain M Banks, asking big sci fi questions and (hopefully) bringing the reader on the kind of imaginative ride I remembered from those science fiction classics of my youth.

But how to get our modern-day relatable Everyman into a grand sci fi future? What could get him there but not instantly… instead, by steadily increasing degrees…?

Ah hah!

The exponential penny scheme returns and finally bears fruit.

Thus was born the central conceit of The Traveler. Scott Treder, a Madison area database admin, is driving to work one day when his car disappears around him. Scott, still going twenty five miles per hour, falls out of the sky and tumbles down the sidewalk. As he sits, battered and bruised and confused, on the side of the road, his phone reconnects to the network. He has dozens of texts and voicemails waiting for him.

It’s twenty four hours in the future.

The next day, at exactly the same time, he travels two days forward. Then four, then eight, then sixteen… and this time, there’s no mother, eyebrow arched, to cotton onto the scheme and put a stop to things before day ten.

As Scott jumps forward through time, his brilliant son, Lyle, grows obsessed with figuring out what’s happening—and with saving his father.

The Traveler is out now in the US and UK. I hope you enjoy reading it, and I hope it carries you on a journey the same way those brilliant works by Peter F Hamilton and Iain M Banks did for me in my youth.

The Traveler: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Bookshop|Books-A-Million|Powell’s

Author socials: Website

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2026/06/18/the-big-idea-joseph-eckert/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=61190