Bid Time Return
First edition cover
|
|
| Author | Richard Matheson |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Science fiction |
| Publisher | Viking Press |
|
Publication date
|
February 24, 1975 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback) |
| Pages | 278 pp |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 33446645 |
Bid Time Return is a 1975 science fiction novel by Richard Matheson. It concerns a man from the 1970s who travels back in time to court a 19th-century stage actress whose photograph has captivated him. In 1980, it was made into the cult classic film Somewhere in Time, the title of which was used for subsequent editions of the book.
Matheson has stated, "Somewhere in Time is the story of a love which transcends time, What Dreams May Come is the story of a love which transcends death.... I feel that they represent the best writing I have done in the novel form."
While traveling with his family, Matheson was entranced by the portrait of American actress Maude Adams in Piper's Opera House in Nevada. "It was such a great photograph," Matheson reports, "that creatively I fell in love with her. What if some guy did the same thing and could go back in time?" Then Matheson researched her life and was struck by her reclusiveness. To create the novel, he resided for many weeks at the Hotel del Coronado (where the novel takes place) and dictated his impressions into a tape recorder while experiencing himself in the role of Richard Collier. Matheson based much of the biographical information about the character of Elise McKenna directly on Adams. The book's original title comes from a line in Shakespeare's Richard II (Act III, Scene 2): "O call back yesterday, bid time return."
Richard Collier is a 36-year-old screenwriter who has been diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor and has decided, after a coin flip, to spend his last days hanging around the Hotel del Coronado. Most of the novel represents a private journal he is continually updating throughout the story.
He becomes obsessed with the photograph of a famous stage actress, Elise McKenna, who performed at the hotel in the 1890s. Through research, he learns that she had an overprotective manager named William Fawcett Robinson, that she never married and that she seemed to have had a brief affair with a mysterious man while staying at this hotel in 1896. The more Richard learns, the more he becomes convinced that it is his destiny to travel back in time and become that mysterious man.
...
Wikipedia