In the midst of World War II, Enigma codebreaker Alan Turing has created a machine named Nautilus that can send a message back into the recent past. After Turing uses it to help the Allied forces succeed on D-Day, he sees the power (and potential danger) of what he has created. He knows he can only entrust it to one Joan, the mother of his secret child.
Over the next seventy years, the Nautilus is passed down through the Turing family, who all must decide for themselves when to use this powerful invention. Will it save the world - or destroy it?
The Turing Protocol, Nick Croydon
Alan Turing develops a machine he calls Nautilus that can send messages back in time. He uses it to fix a disastrous D-Day that threatens to lengthen the war and see Hitler triumph. Seeing the power and potential, he decides that it can only be entrusted to family. For Alan this means his friend and one time fiancee, Joan Clarke and their son from a fling on VE day.
There is a lot of potential in the idea, sadly unrealised in the text, instead opting for a superficial treatment that is, at least, entertaining if you ignore the obvious flaws.
The unrealistic dialogue also hinders the development, as does the “ministerial briefing” format of the segues between catastrophes. But for me the central point was the complete avoidance of the obvious paradoxes being created. Worse, Nick even mentions that the limits on the machine (cannot send back further than 8 weeks and cannot be used more than once in 6 months) are to avoid paradoxes. Yet changing history by sending messages in the past, after living through that history, doesn’t raise an eyebrow or even a mention of what happens to those in the original timeline.
There are other obvious clangers. For example, when the son is given the secret he upgrades security on the device, and even updates its output from telegram to SMS, yet doesn’t change the input from a morse code key, telling his daughter when it is her time to learn the secret that she must learn morse code. So he is able to create a DNA lock but not add a keyboard?
Just a few pages in the dire dialogue almost stopped me from reading on, however the central idea of the novel was compelling enough for me to continue. Unfortunately by the end I was reading more to find out when, or, as it turned out, if, the paradoxes were ever addressed. Coming from a Science Fiction background and having an interest in quantum physics, this left me completely unsatisfied. Perhaps those expecting a thriller and uninterested in the fascinating possibilities around investigating the time travel paradox would have found it more enjoyable.