It's part love story, part self-discovery and has one of the best endings ever, particularly if you need something to pick you up and reaffirm your belief that your heart keeps loving that same someone no matter how much Time (or as in Silverberg's story: someone else abusing time) may try to erase your memory.
I like "Needle In A Haystack" for its time travel aspects:
Only fourteen years back, and yet the world looked prehistoric to him, the clothing and the haircuts and the cars all wrong, the buildings heavy and clumsy, the advertisements floating overhead offering archaic and absurd products in blaring gaudy colors. Odd that the world of 2012 had not looked so crude to him the first time he had lived through it; but then the present never looks crude, he thought, except through the eyes of the future.
but also for the parts that remind me good science fiction is still telling a story about humans and what they believe or think they believe. At this point our main character has forgotten he once had a wife he loved deeply and is living what he thinks is a contented life:
...he was the only singleton left in the whole crowd. That was a little awkward. But he hadn’t ever met anyone he genuinely wanted to spend the rest of his life with, or even as much as a year with.
His other incarnations leave him notes to remind him of Janine, his wife, but the messages always fade as soon as merges into a new timeline. By the time he meets her again, yet really for the first time, he doesn't know who she is. Still, both he and Janine (whose timelines have also been messed with by another man who wants to be with Janine at any cost) experience something special:
She stared up at him. “This sounds absurd,” she said, “but don’t I know you from somewhere?” Mikkelsen felt a warm flood of mysterious energy surging through him as their eyes met.
I am an absolute sucker for a good love story, especially when both people knowingly (or unknowingly) face impossible odds in finally getting together. I hope the rest of the stories in Time Traveler's Almanac continue to be as fascinating and quirky as they have so far...
So...the stories continue to be outstanding. Here's one you can read for yourself!: http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/hwangs-billion-brilliant-daughters/
"When we’re talking about whether or not a story’s 'time travel logic' makes sense, it is important to remember that every story builds its own framework for its own logic."--from the intro to The Time Traveler's Almanac
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