Between two times

At the end of 1970, a 30-year-old artist, Simon (Say) Morley, was approached by a government agency spokesperson with a proposal to participate in a top-secret project led by Professor Danzinger. After Sai successfully passes psychological tests and is recognized as fit for participation in the project, they begin to introduce him into the course of affairs. In the office of the agency, he sees several people undergoing instruction on how to behave in a certain historical era: each of these people wears authentic clothing of a given time, is in the respective interiors and is fully accustomed to the image of a person of another time. Finally, Sayu is informed that the goal of the project is to show the possibility of time travel. For this, mentally accustomed to a certain era, a person immerses himself in hypnosis and, with the successful development of events, should be in a different time. Sayu is offered to choose the time at which he wants to go, and he chooses January 1882 in New York: this is due to the fact that his girlfriend Kate has long wanted to unravel the family secret of her adoptive parents: her adoptive father's father, Andrew Carmody, presidential adviser Cleveland committed suicide, and with him was an envelope received by him in January 1882 at the main post office in New York. Since, according to the note left, Carmody committed suicide because of the events associated with this letter, Kate asked Sai to find out who sent him and what led to it.

After preparation, Sai makes an attempt to move into the past with the help of self-hypnosis. Before that, he, dressed in clothes of the 1880s, settles in the apartment of the Dakota house, where he spends several days. Immersed in hypnosis, he finds himself in 1882 and briefly goes out into Central Park , seeing a completely different New York than the one he is used to. During the next attempt, Sayu wants to observe the sending of the letter to Carmody, while Kate joins him secretly from the project managers. The two of them reach the post office and see a man with a mustache and beard, who sent an envelope and made an appointment with Carmody in the park. Sai and Kate are returning. After the second, as well as after the first, Sai’s travels are checked to see if his knowledge of the modern world coincides with what he really looks like, that is, whether his journey led to an irreversible change in the present due to interference with the past. However, no change is occurring. Meanwhile, in a parallel project of the agency, it turned out that a person’s journey into another era disrupted the course of events (he disappeared, that is, he was not born, a person unrelated to the project). Professor Danzinger is opposed to continuing the experiment and leaves the project, which is now led by Colonel Estergazi.

Next, Sai takes a third, longer trip: he again goes to January 1882 and settles in a guesthouse in Gramersi , where the person who sent the letter to Carmody lives. The man, as Sai recognizes, is called Jake Pickering, and Sai quietly eavesdrops on his conversation with Carmody. Pickering blackmails Karmody, demanding a ransom of a million dollars and threatening to otherwise disclose to the public the financial fraud of Karmody and his friends. Meanwhile, in the guesthouse, Sai meets a young girl, Julia, the niece of the owner of the guesthouse, and feels sympathy for her. He also learns that Julia is Jake's bride, although he hardly loves him. Sai returns in 1970 and talks about the journey, but then goes back: this time he wants to intervene in the events more actively, because he understands that he cannot let Julia marry Jake. He tells Julia that Jake is a blackmailer, and talks about Jake’s upcoming meeting with Carmody, where the latter will bring a ransom. Julia also wants to be present at the meeting. Shortly before this meeting, Sai and Julia sneak into Jack’s office in a large building where the editorial board of the Whole World newspaper is located, and hide behind the partition that separates the room from the future elevator shaft. Carmody hits Jake on the head and ties him to a chair, and he begins to search for documents in numerous office drawers. After a few hours, realizing that there were too many documents and it would take several days to find them, Carmody set fire to the papers and untied Jake so that he could get out of the fire. Sai and Julia miraculously escape from the burning building, and Jake begins to fight with Carmody. Sai and Julia later find out that Carmody survived. At the same time, the severely burnt and bandaged Carmody accuses Say and Julia of killing Pickering, setting the corrupt chief of police Burns on them. Realizing that they are unlikely to be able to hide from the police, Sai is transported with Julia in 1970, showing her the modern world.

Remembering what happened again, Sai and Julia understand that it was not Carmody who escaped from the fire, but Jake, who pretended to be Carmody, having agreed with the latter's wife. It was the recognition of his guilt in everything that happened that led Jake (under the name Carmody) to suicide after many years. Despite the fact that they both confess their love to each other, Julia prefers to return to her world, and Sai goes with a report to the agency. There he says that he completed his task and would like to quit the project. However, Colonel Esterhazy, on the contrary, offers him a new task, this time directly related to the change in the course of history: since as an adviser to the president, Jake Carmody discouraged Cleveland from “buying” Cuba from Spain, which led to the Spanish-American war , I suggest I return to Say past to expose Jake. Then he will not become an adviser to the president and Cuba will become part of the United States , there will be no war, as well as the Caribbean crisis afterwards. Sai tries to resist such a decision, but then agrees. However, having fallen into the past, he acts differently: knowing that in February 1882 the parents of Danziger, the founder of the travel project past, met at the theater, Sai does not allow this meeting to take place so that the agency itself does not arise in the future. After that, he remains in 1882, hoping to continue relations with Julia.

The plot of the novel is considered in detail in an article by E. Yu. Kozmina, as well as, along with other works, in her dissertation ^[2] and monograph ^[3] . She notes, in particular, that “the plot as a whole represents one general situation of testing the hero for identity as a person and splits into a series of private trials”, while “the main thing here is the test of the philosophical (moral) idea of ​​interference in history”, “not just a physical opportunity, and moral right to decide the fate of mankind in the past, present and future ” ^[4] .

Roman Arbitman in the chapter “Subjective Dictionary of Fiction”, dedicated to the novel “The Time Traveler ’s Wife ”, notes the simplicity of the reception that Finney uses to send the hero at another time ^[5] :

In 1970, Jack Finney wrote the novel “Between Two Times”, where he gave advice to those wishing to move into the past. You just need to really want, concentrate, surround yourself with things from the time you want to get to, and the music of that time, and then exert yourself strongly, close your eyes and wait, wait, wait.

The novel was not filmed, although negotiations on its adaptation were conducted. In the 1990s, Robert Redford thought about such a project. Later, the idea of ​​filming a novel in the form of a television mini-series was hatched by Tom Thayer. In 2012, it was reported that film rights were purchased by Lionsgate , and Doug Lyman ^{[6] [7] was} appointed director. Nevertheless, so far none of the projects has been developed.

• Between Two Times on Fantlab