Time Travel

Starred review from July 4, 2016
In a dazzling voyage through the concept of time, science chronicler Gleick (The Information) explains that, “like all words, time has boundaries, by which I don’t mean hard and impenetrable shells but porous edges,” challenging readers to consider the porousness of reality as depicted in philosophy, science, and literature. Beginning with an homage to H.G. Wells, whose 1895 novel The Time Machine influenced both writers and physicists, the book careens back and forth, “free to leap about in time.” The popularity of Wells’s story paved the way for a willingness to accept the paradoxes in the science of Einstein, Eddington, and Feynman, among others. Gleick explores the wealth of speculation that was set in motion when time became considered fluid. Can one go back in time and prevent one’s own birth? Does time travel create “forks” in the universe with alternate events? What does it mean to be outside of time? Gleick quotes from scientists and writers who have wrestled with these questions, and he explores the way novels, short stories, films, and television programs have handled eddies in time (his suggested reading list is priceless). Deeply philosophical and full of quirky humor—“The universe is like a river. It flows. (Or it doesn’t, if you’re Plato.)”—Gleick’s journey through the fourth dimension is a marvelous mind bender. Illus.

April 1, 2016

A National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize finalist multiple times over, Gleick returns with something that will appeal to lovers of sf as well. Starting with H.G. Wells's The Time Machine, written when the telegraph, the railroad, and the excavation of ancient cultures were rapidly changing our sense of the world's steady tick-tocking, he moves from Marcel Proust to Doctor Who as he tracks time travel as a relatively new and ever-evolving concept in human culture. With a 100,000-copy first printing and an eight-city tour.

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 5, 2016
Voice actor Shapiro chooses a conversational style of delivery for the audio edition of Gleick’s mind-bending book on the cultural history of the concept of time and that concept’s evolution in literature and science. Shapiro does an excellent job of relaying this in-depth look at the impossible. Given the complexity of the author’s research, a narrator could easily fall into professorial lecturing or an exhaustive, ear-numbing exposition of complex concepts, but Shapiro, while keeping his pacing steady, uses cadence to help convey Gleick’s complex ideas and manages to make his delivery upbeat and engaging. He mines the material for its humor and gives what he finds just the right smile-inducing spin. His smooth, confident narration makes the audiobook both entertaining and informative. A Pantheon hardcover.

August 1, 2016

What is time? Philosophers, physicists, poets, and pulp writers have all struggled with that question, writes Gleick (The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood), but it remains unsettled. Our fascination with time travel can be sourced to H.G. Wells's 1895 novel The Time Machine, whose machine age sensibility and futuristic vision spawned a robust genre of sf (initially called "scientifiction") and sparked metaphysical debates that continue today. A cheeky yet erudite critic, Gleick gathers and comments on a litany of cultural considerations of time and time travel, from the stories of Jules Verne and Jorge Luis Borges to the TV program Doctor Who, the "reverse archaeology" of time capsules, and the enduring appeal of historical what-ifs, such as Philip K. Dick's World War II counterfactual The Man in the High Castle. Though literature gets most of Gleick's attention, the book, like Wells's time-traveling machine, is a fascinating conglomeration of science and the arts, spanning centuries of thought on a sometimes scattered but nevertheless enlightening journey. VERDICT Accessible to the casually curious yet rich enough for bookworms craving conundrums to contemplate, this title is worth the trip.--Chad Comello, Morton Grove P.L., IL

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.