Time Lottery by Nancy Moser
"**Time Lottery**" by Nancy Moser is a science fiction novel that explores the intersection of time travel, personal redemption, and faith. The story follows Alexander "Mac" MacMillan, who, grappling with the traumatic loss of his wife and the injury of his son in a violent home invasion, is drawn into a revolutionary initiative by the Time Travel Corporation (TTC). The TTC introduces a "Time Lottery" that allows participants to relive pivotal moments from their past, aiming for spiritual enlightenment and personal transformation.
Three winners, including a discontented housewife, a troubled surgeon, and an unassuming former preacher, each embark on their own journeys through memories that deeply shape their understanding of happiness, morality, and purpose. The narrative raises questions about the moral implications of manipulating time and whether such interventions align with divine will.
Throughout their experiences, the characters confront their past decisions, seek forgiveness, and strive for self-knowledge, revealing the novel's central themes of faith, redemption, and the quest for a meaningful existence. "Time Lottery" challenges readers to contemplate the nature of second chances and the power of reflection in shaping one’s future. The book, recognized with the Christy Award for Best Christian Fiction, intertwines elements of adventure, science fiction, and Christian themes, making it a thought-provoking read for those interested in the complexities of human experience and spiritual growth.
Time Lottery by Nancy Moser
First published: Uhrichsville, Ohio: Promise Press, 2002
Genre(s): Novel
Subgenre(s): Adventure; science fiction; time travel
Core issue(s): African Americans; awakening; contemplation; memory; psychology; self-knowledge; time; truth
Principal characters
Alexander “Mac” MacMillan , a marketing consultantPhoebe Winston Thurgood , a housewifeDr. Cheryl Nickolby , a surgeonRoosevelt Hazen , a preacherLeon Burke , a con artistColin Thurgood , Phoebe’s husbandJohn Wriggens , an executive with Time Travel Corporation
Overview
Marketing expert Alexander MacMillan, known as Mac, mourns his murdered wife, wishing he could have intervened to save her life and prevent his toddler son from being injured when an intruder attacked them nine months ago while Mac was away from home. Mac’s cousin, Bob Craven, urges him to consider working for Craven’s new employer, Time Travel Corporation (TTC). TTC executive John Wriggens entices Mac with the incentive that he will eventually be allowed to experience time travel. Mac realizes if he could travel to the day his family was assaulted, perhaps he can achieve spiritual peace. He agrees to publicize TTC’s debut “Time Lottery.”
Before announcing the three winners’ names, Mac explains how they will be medically supported while temporarily comatose for immersion into their memories. Scientists manipulate the brain loop, which stores and processes memories, with electricity to initiate dual consciousness, the phase during which time travelers are aware of both their past and their present and choose whether to stay unconscious and die or awaken to resume their lives. Mac stresses that the time travelers’ decisions made while experiencing what TTC refers to as Alternity will not affect their present situations but notes that their awareness of their time travel experience enables them to reevaluate and possibly alter their perceptions, which will shape their futures.
One winner, Phoebe Winston Thurgood, a San Francisco housewife in her fifties, is eager to return to memories of her early twenties in 1969, when she met affluent executive Colin Thurgood and was employed as his secretary. Although she enjoys a luxurious lifestyle, Phoebe wonders if she could have made better career and personal choices instead of settling for marriage with the emotionally cold, unethical Colin, who mistreats her and constantly denounces her as unworthy. Greedy Colin pressures Phoebe to give him her winning ticket, insisting that he deserves to time travel more than she does.
Another of the winners, Dr. Cheryl Nickolby, a forty-seven-year-old Colorado surgeon, is professionally successful but emotionally unfulfilled. Promiscuously indulging in brief flings with colleagues, she yearns for a long-term commitment. Nickolby hopes to develop a relationship with a former high school classmate, Jake Carlisle, whom she admired, by returning to Lincoln, Nebraska, where she lived as a teenager in 1973.
The third winner, Roosevelt Hazen, is a sixty-nine-year-old former African American preacher living in a Memphis, Tennessee, homeless shelter. He is unaware of the Time Lottery announcement declaring him a winner. In the shelter, another homeless African American man, sixty-four-year-old Leon Burke, who has survived by deceiving people (including Hazen, who does not remember him) and stealing their money, takes advantage of Hazen’s innocence, killing him and assuming his identity to claim the Time Lottery prize. Leon, dying of cancer, wants to return to 1962, the year he conned Hazen, in an attempt to reform his unlawful ways.
Cheryl begins her memories as a high school senior riding in a car with her closest friends, Pam and Julie. They stop to assist an injured African American man, coincidentally Leon, on the side of the road. Jake Carlisle and his friends stop to talk to the girls. Jake praises Cheryl’s skills in first aid and suggests she become a physician, but Cheryl says her mother—who has been married several times, moving Cheryl to a new town with every new husband—has discouraged her, considering that field too difficult for women. In her attempt to win Jake’s approval, Cheryl agrees to steal a history test so he can pass and remain on the school’s football team. Upset when Jake rapes her, Cheryl seeks healing through prayer. She accepts a cross necklace from pious Julie to reinforce her newfound faith.
Phoebe starts with memories of her first day working for Colin. Hoping to qualify for a better-paying internship, Phoebe works to pay for her grandmother’s nursing-home expenses. She tries to follow her grandmother’s advice: to refuse to cooperate with the world and avoid being used by others while sacrificing her interests and integrity. Living frugally, Phoebe, in reliving her memories, is not tempted by Colin’s patronizing romantic overtures. She refuses to fix his careless mistakes and lie for him, instead exposing his deceptive business practices. Phoebe’s honesty earns her supervisor’s approval and hope for advancement. She meets young Cheryl after her mother’s third wedding. As Phoebe maneuvers through her memories, she chooses to reject materialism and finds comfort in reading the Bible and regaining her faith.
Leon initiates his memories by feeling remorse for his crimes against Roosevelt and vowing to rectify his mistakes. He arrives in Hendersonville, Tennessee, initially intending to win Roosevelt’s confidence by making small repairs at Roosevelt’s Baptist church, where young Phoebe and her father visit one day. While working as a handyman, Leon damages the church roof so that it leaks. Roosevelt gives him his savings to purchase supplies to repair it. Leon’s plan to rob Roosevelt by leaving town permanently, pretending to drive to a Nashville hardware store, is disrupted when a boy asks to accompany him. Leon later rebukes the boy for stealing from the offering plate. When Leon sees a cross shine, he considers it a sign that God approves of Leon’s rejection of crime.
The three lottery winners consider their pasts and how their staying or returning might impact their families and friends. They reflect on how returning to the past deepened their faith and moral courage and how memories might change their futures. Two choose life; one stays.
Christian Themes
Winner of the Christy Award for Best Christian Fiction in the Futuristic category, Time Lottery was Nancy Moser’s first novel the the Time Lottery series. In the novel and the series as a whole, the relationship of religion and science concerns critics of Time Lottery, who believe that God’s plans for people should not be artificially manipulated. Mac acknowledges the validity of that argument, while he emphasizes that scientific achievements represent the power of God. Explaining that God has created everything, including time travel, Mac argues that God wants people to experience and benefit from science, stressing that God ultimately controls those processes. Mac suggests that God enables time travel to help people evaluate their purpose and secure redemption to grow and seek new opportunities. Each winner undergoes a personal genesis during the seven days of his or her memory experience, resulting in the creation of a spiritually new person.
Faith guides the lottery winners as they trust God to help them realize their destiny. Somewhat like an apostle, Mac serves as an adviser, offering words of comfort and support. He reminds people that although TTC has no Christian affiliations or spiritual motivations, he considers the selection to undergo such intense, focused self-examination a divine gift from God. Mac suggests that the lottery will reveal the role God intends for the winners and help them comprehend that discovery and their uniqueness. Such knowledge of their purpose offers salvation and forgiveness for past mistakes and hope and rebirth for the future.
Mac blesses each winner, while TTC medical staffers prepare them to lose consciousness and begin their adventure. Prayer gives characters strength as they overcome their despair and doubts confronting flaws in their lives. By seeking spiritual guidance, whether talking to God or reading the Bible, the characters contemplate their lives and replace fear with faith and hope as they achieve self-knowledge and accept themselves. They seek friendships that reinforce their newfound faith. Forgiving their immorality or their weaknesses, the characters permit themselves to choose more spiritual lives, whether awakening to the present or remaining in a changed past, which frees them.
Sources for Further Study
Kaplan, H. Roy. Lottery Winners: How They Won and How Winning Changed Their Lives. New York: Harper & Row, 1978. Sociological study of lotteries, including a chapter discussing religious aspects. Examines how lotteries change lives, choices confronting winners, and winners’ interactions with family and friends.
Moser, Nancy. http://www.nancymoser.com. Moser’s Web site lists her books and discusses her themes.
Moser, Nancy. Second Time Around. Uhrichsville, Ohio: Promise Press, 2004. Moser’s second novel in the Time Lottery series portrays the spiritual adventures of three more lottery winners.
Olson, Laura R., Karen V. Guth, and James L. Guth. “The Lotto and the Lord: Religious Influences on the Adoption of a Lottery in South Carolina.” Sociology of Religion 64, no. 1 (2003): 87-110. Although this study analyzes attitudes toward monetary lotteries, its findings regarding spiritual concerns can be applied to other games of chance, such as the Time Lottery.
Reading, Anthony. Hope and Despair: How Perceptions of the Future Shape Human Behavior. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004. A chapter explores the relationship of science, religion, and time. Examines how memory influences people’s expectations, emotional responses, and decisions.