Sea of Tranquility

“Could he learn to draw? He has time and money. It’s as good an idea as any.”

Edwin, a man of leisure due to his remittance, decides to take up drawing in Canada. This is part of the motif of the arts, connecting him to the violinist (Alan/Gaspery), the writer (Olive), and the videographer (Vincent). While Edwin does not draw the anomaly, he writes about it in a letter, using cursive, which is an art that Gaspery does not initially recognize.

“How could she have fallen out of love with Louisa so suddenly, so cleanly? How could the man in the tunnel in Ohio have surfaced all these years later in New York? How could Vincent be dead?”

Here, Mirella contemplates losing her passion for her girlfriend, which is connected to learning a woman she was attracted to years ago (Vincent) is dead. Her changing emotions are also due to the unsettling experience of encountering a time traveler at two different times in two different locations. Mirella knows Gaspery’s future because it is part of her past, but she never learns that he is a time traveler and thus doubts her childhood memories.

“She lived all her life in the hundred and fifty square kilometers of the second moon colony, the imaginatively named Colony Two. She found it beautiful—Colony Two was a city of white stone, spired towers, tree-lined streets and small parks, alternating neighborhoods of tall buildings and little houses with miniature lawns, a river running under pedestrian archways.”

Olive grew up in this moon colony 200 years before the time traveler Gaspery. The colony simulates the experience of living on Earth, including transplanting (or genetically creating) trees and other flora. This passage hints at how one can enjoy living in a simulated world.

“Illness frightens us because it’s chaotic. There’s an awful randomness about it.”

On her book tour, Olive lectures about pandemics. This passage foreshadows how she will die in the pandemic of 2203 without Gaspery’s intervention. It also can be read as Mandel reflecting on her experience of the COVID-19 pandemic (during which she wrote this novel)

“(She was distracted for days afterward by the thought of a shadow Olive moving over the landscape, on a kind of parallel tour, writing uncharacteristic messages in Olive’s books.)”

A person requesting Olive’s autograph asks if the handwriting in a used copy of Marienbad is hers. It is not, and Olive considers the possibility that she has a doppelganger. This foreshadows how the Time Institute investigates doppelgangers, which leads to Gaspery changing his identity. His disguise fools the Time Institute, which sends Gaspery to interview himself, triggering the anomaly.

“It was a description of votive candles with little poems on the candleholders [...] one of the candle descriptions was swimming stars with goldflitter. The beauty of those phrases, I don’t know, it just stopped me cold.”

Here, Olive responds to a question about the title of her previous book. She worked in AI training, correcting translator bots’ output. Appreciating the beauty of computer-generated language develops the idea of enjoying living in a simulation.

“The violinist was an old man who played with his eyes closed, coins accumulating in a hat by his feet. He played an ancient-looking violin—it looked like it was made of real wood.”

This passage is an example of intertextuality—it is a passage of Olive’s novel, Marienbad, contained within Sea of Tranquility. Zoey shows it to her brother, Gaspery, who is named after a character in Marienbad, and it is part of the reason why he decides to become a time traveler. The violinist’s closed eyes foreshadow how Gaspery will surgically change his eye color to take on the disguise of Alan the violinist after breaking the Time Institute’s rules and becoming a fugitive.

“Do you remember that weird Zephyr bug a couple years ago, this only lasted a day or two, but sometimes you’d open a text file on your device and you’d hear whatever music you’d been listening to last?”

This is Zoey’s description of file corruption, which she believes is the anomaly. If reality contains overlapping moments—or moments that can bleed into one another like the text file and the music—it points to reality being a simulation. This connects The Nature of Reality and Time with the motif of music.

“Most staffers didn’t wear dark glasses, but as a light-sensitive native of the Night City who couldn’t tolerate the diffuse glare of the dome, I had special dispensation from HR.”

This passage develops the themes of Memory and Perspective and The Nature of Home and Exile. Before Gaspery becomes a time traveler, he works security in a hotel in Colony One, which has functional dome lighting. Coming from Colony Two (Night City), Gaspery has a different perspective than the natives of Colony One. The use of sunglasses also foreshadows how his eyes change in the novel.

“The course of history should be irrevocably altered every single time we travel back in the time line, but, well, it isn’t. Sometimes events seemingly change to accommodate the time traveler’s interference, so that a generation later it’s as if the travel were never there.”

When Gaspery is interviewed by Ephrem for a job at the Time Institute to investigate the anomaly, Ephrem explains why he supports the simulation hypothesis. This develops The Nature of Reality and Time, suggesting that reality is orchestrated, which points to someone controlling it, as if it were a simulation.

“There was comfort in the sameness of the river sound; if I didn’t look up, if I didn’t pay attention to the strange grayish fake-cloudy-day light, I could pretend I was home.”

As Gaspery tells Talia he is leaving the hotel to work for the Time Institute, he notes how the rivers on both moon colonies sound the same. However, Colony Two is called Night City because it no longer has the lighting that simulates the atmosphere of Earth. These similarities and contrasts develop The Nature of Home and Exile.

“AS: That where your accent’s from?

GR: My accent?

AS: It just shifted. I have an ear for accents.”

This passage is from the transcript of the interview between Alan and Gaspery. The intertextual transcript format hides that this is actually Gaspery interviewing himself, which triggers the anomaly. Later in the novel, Gaspery notes that he gave himself a hard time about his accent because he knew it was a sensitive subject; he wanted to throw off his younger self from suspecting they were the same person.

“Turns out reality is more important than we thought.”

This is from a conversation between Olive and Dion while they are in lockdown due to the pandemic of 2203. They are discussing how only communicating virtually (in holospace) is tiring, describing meeting in person “reality.” This develops The Nature of Reality and Time, as their “reality” might be a simulation after all.

“Because we might reasonably think of the end of the world [...] as a continuous and never-ending process.” 

This is from Olive’s lecture, which she gives in holospace during lockdown. She argues that people are interested in post-apocalyptic literature because the world is always ending. This develops The Nature of Reality and Time—we are always in the end times, she argues.

“Gaspery was alone in the doorway, in the right city but the wrong time.”

Here, Gaspery is in Colony Two while Olive is in lockdown. He avoids the Time Institute after warning Olive about her future and ends up where he wants to be, but not in the right era. This develops The Nature of Home and Exile—home is both a place and a time.

“There was no pattern to the white noise of a forest, and the randomness put Gaspery on edge.”

When Gaspery goes back to Caiette to witness Vincent recording the anomaly, he must wait for her to arrive in the woods. Earth’s wilderness is unlike the carefully manufactured noises of nature on the moon colonies that Gaspery is used to. This randomness reflects the “randomness” (83) of illness that Olive discusses in her lecture.

“A message pulsed softly on the screen: Return. He had exhausted the limits of his itinerary. The only possible destination was home.”

After Gaspery warns both Olive and Edwin, breaking the Time Institute’s rules, he cannot travel anywhere else in time but back to Colony One in the 2400s. Home, at this point, is associated with facing the consequences of his actions.

“Last words on the moon.”

When Gaspery does return to the moon, he is asked for his last words before the Time Institute sends him to Earth and frames him for a murder in the past. The moon is synonymous with home for Gaspery. He asks Ephrem to take care of his cat, which previously belonged to another time traveler who broke the rules.

“I couldn’t see the moon from my bed, so there was nothing for it now but to close my eyes and play old movies.”

After Gaspery turns 60 in prison, his health begins to fail, and he ends up in the prison hospital. Without a view of the moon, Gaspery must rely on his mind, rather than his eyes, to conjure up images of his home. This develops The Nature of Home and Exile—Gaspery is fully exiled here.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t come sooner. I mean to an earlier point in time.”

Zoey cannot help Gaspery escape prison until he is in his sixties. As they are both time travelers, the nature of time is convoluted, muddying the concepts of “sooner” and “earlier.”

“My first case at the Institute involved a doppelganger.”

Gaspery recalls this quote by Ephrem, and it inspires him to undergo “laser facial resculpting and iris recoloring” (241). This is how Gaspery becomes the violet-eyed Alan. Furthermore, this quote is connected to Olive’s temporary obsession about her potential doppelganger, or “shadow Olive” (89).

“‘Hello,’ he said brightly, in a jarringly imperfect accent.”

This passage is at the beginning of the interview between Gaspery and Alan, or Gaspery and himself. However, it is from the perspective of Alan (the older version of Gaspery), and he knows what will get under the skin of his younger self—pointing out his flawed accent. He wants to throw off his younger self from suspecting they are the same person.

“Playing that game kids play, where you squint at the moon and half-convince yourself that you can see the brighter spots of the colonies on its surface.”

After Talia’s death, and before Gaspery begins playing violin in the airship terminal, he spends lonely days and nights on the farm. This moon-gazing game is one thing he does while mourning his wife, keeping the symbol of the moon present in the novel until the last page.