Christopher Booker is a scholar who wrote that every story falls into one of seven basic plot structures: Overcoming the Monster, Rags to Riches, the Quest, Voyage and Return, Comedy, Tragedy, and Rebirth. Shmoop explores which of these structures fits this story like Cinderella’s slipper.
Plot Type : Rebirth
Falling Stage
A young hero or heroine falls under the shadow of the dark power.
To understand how Timescape falls within Booker's rebirth plot, we're going to have to perform some remodeling on how we traditionally view some literary terms. The heroes of this novel are our scientists: Renfrew, Gordon, and Markham. They are heroes not because they kick butt, but because they are questing—through science—to discover the truth.
The dark power, in this case, would be the ignorance of people, represented by shortsighted politics and the creation of ecologically devastating herbicides. For better or worse, this novel is absent a Sauron-type evil character.
In the first step of the plot, Renfrew and Markham fall under the shadow of both dark powers. Ecological disasters have cropped up in South America and Africa, and politics are threatening to pull the funding from potential solutions to the problem.
Meanwhile, in 1962, Gordon has fallen under a similar dark power. Although he has found an unknown resonance in his experiment, he cannot proceed to discover its true meaning due to political pressure from Professor Lakin, who hopes to rush the discovery into a scientific journal to strengthen a grant proposal.
In other words, mo' politicians, mo' problems.
Recession Stage
For a while, all may seem to go reasonably well. The threat may even seem to have receded.
True to this plot structure, things do start to go well. Renfrew gets funding for his experiment, and Ian Peterson receives a message from the past, proving Renfrew's methods work. In the 1960s, Gordon begins to further his understanding of the messages, and he receives help deciphering pieces of the puzzle from Professor Ramsey and Saul Shriffer.
Saul takes things too far by going to the news and putting forth his own ideas: that the messages came from a distant civilization. Still, crazy theories aside, there remains the hope that Gordon's data will reach a wider audience that might help solve the mystery and save the day.
Imprisonment Stage
But eventually it approaches again in full force until the hero or heroine is seen imprisoned in the state of living death.
In 1998, things take a turn for the weak when Markham dies and Peterson develops food poisoning from a restaurant. Markham's death means the theoretical implications of Renfrew's experiment will likely remain a mystery. The cause of his death—both pilots of his airplane dying from diatom bloom poisoning—shows just how far the ecological disasters are spreading. Peterson's illness also shows how the ecological problems have begun to spread across the world.
In the 1960s, Gordon is considered a laughingstock in the academic community. No one will take his data seriously and his relationships begin to fall apart under the stress of his work.
Nightmare Stage
This continues for a long time. When it seems that the dark power has completely triumphed…
In the future, Peterson secretly escapes from his job and begins his plan to go into hiding. Meanwhile, Renfrew continues to send messages back to the past, not knowing if he is making a difference as the world falls apart around him.
Gordon continues to be ostracized by the scientific community, and he spends more and more time in the laboratory. Small pieces begin to come together for him, such as Ramsey figuring out the importance of part of the message and Claudia Zinnes agreeing to set up her own experiment to look for the unusual resonance affect. But every victory comes with its own setbacks as well. Ramsey wants to distance his results from Gordon's because of the potential blowback, and Claudia Zinnes doesn't find the message in her experiments. At least, she doesn't at first….
Rebirth Stage
But finally comes the miraculous redemption: either, where the imprisoned figure is a heroine; or, where it is the hero, by a Young Woman or a Child.
Rebirth comes to both timelines, even if not in the way you might initially expect.
Gordon finally discovers the source of the unusual message and has the data to prove it. He publishes his results to wide scientific acclaim. Through a crazy series of events, Gordon's published data even prevents the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Combined with Ramsey's results, this significantly alters the timeline, leading to a world that will not undergo the same ecological disasters as Renfrew's time. The world has been reborn as a new, yet separate, universe.
With that said, 1998's rebirth is a little less fortuitous. Since Gordon's timeline split from this one, creating a separate universe, the changes are not reflected in this future. Peterson goes to the country to live his life in a farmhouse he's basically turned into a fortress for the apocalypse, while Renfrew leaves his lab after the power is entirely lost, not knowing that to some degree he has succeeded, and goes to live with his wife.
The world has indeed been reborn, but the rebirth is retrograde. It seems as if this 1998 will soon be entering a new type of terrible epoch instead of the new and improved era Renfrew helped create in Gordon's era.