Crossed Novels in Time

When I first saw the TV ads for A Winters Tale, I thought it was a movie based on the great novel, Time and Again by Jack Finney.  I've you've never read and like this sort of story, it's wonderful and highly worth checking out.  Like A Winters Tale, it too deals with time traveling to turn-of-the-century New York.  But then the more I saw the TV ads, it started to seem like A Winter’s Tale was verging off from the science fiction aspect of time traveling into deep fantasy territory with angels and flying horses and miracles.  Time and Again is very different, attempting to mix time travel with realism, with an extremely scientific attempt to explain time travel, all the while being heavy on nostalgia and romance.  And very exciting.  Though the setting seems close to A Winters Tale, the story is closer in spirit to the film Somewhere in Time (based on Richard Matheson's novel, Bid Time Return.)

(The "illustrated novel" are period drawings that actually fit into the story, though it's a pure novel and can be read and enjoyed without them.)

It's not that Finney is unknown to Hollywood.  In fact, several of his novels have been made into films, most famously The Invasion of the Body Snatchers.  But also the lesser films Good Neighbor Sam that starred Jack Lemmon, and Maxie (with Glenn Close and Mandy Patinkin)

The question hindering Time and Again was always, “Gee, how in the world do you technically make that movie???”  But advances in movie technology have been answered long ago, and from what I can see from A Winters Tale confirms that.  But I keep waiting…