Interesting take on time travel

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	• The Accidental Time Machine Joe Haldeman Ace Hardcover, 2007 - 288 pages average customer review:based on 52 reviews view larger image
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Interesting take on time travel

Haldeman drew upon his own experiences at MIT to establish a setting for much of the story which did a great deal to assist the reader in becoming immersed. I enjoyed the book and especially liked the ending with how loose ends are tied.

The Accidental Time Machine

The book is at best "OK"; beginning was rather exciting, but it looked to me that the author was not sure what to do with the idea and how to bring a conclusion to the story. From my perspective, the last two thirds of the book were just so-so.

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a "quick read" is the problem!

A previous rater called this a quick read and, unfortunately, the rater is correct. It's a quick read because it's a great read! The style, the pace, the flow is like a big winter-time comfortable slipper. I enjoyed this book immensely. However, one big question if I may--who sprang for Matt's bail if Matt (spoiler alert) finally ended up in 1898?

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Rather lightweight but fun

This is kind of a departure for Haldeman, but I can't blame him; time travel stories are such fun to write, no matter which direction you're traveling. As a semi-trained scientist, though, and a present adjunct professor (of writing) at MIT, Haldeman hews to the more scientifically defensible position (at the moment) of not allowing travel back through time. All those paradoxes, you know. We're all traveling forward in time already -- at the rate of one second per second -- so that's what he deals with (although I have my own problems with the notion of a predestined future). It's 2053 and Matthew Fuller is a graduate assistant at MIT, working at not working on his Ph.D. in physics, when a chronon-measuring instrument he built himself goes wrong in a particularly unsettling way. Pressing the "Reset" button makes it jump forward in time a couple of seconds, and laterally a milimeter or two. The next time he presses the button, it jumps forward about twelve times as long (and sideways twelve times as far), and further button-presses proceed exponentially. Naturally, Matt recognizes that this is going to pile up time and distance pretty quickly, but since he's just lost his girl and his job on the same day, what the hell. Besides, he has visions of a Nobel Prize. Of course, things don't go at all smoothly, with both near and far future societies having developed in unexpected (and often unpleasant) ways. The appearance of Jesus doesn't help, either. Will Matt ever find a way to return to his own world from the far future? And what about Martha, his own theosophical graduate assistant? This is a fast read and a lot of fun, and the speculative physics is so well explained, you won't even have to bleep over it.

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fascinating tale; so-so ending

Haldeman's ingenuity delivers cutting-edge technological speculation and irresistibly compelling reading. You can't wait to find out what happens next. Each world the protagonist reaches is different than what comes before and you wonder if the future holds little in store for mankind; as Haldeman is quite pessimistic. The ending could have been a book in itself but wasn't. It was appropriate, if not suspense-laden.

reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, page 8, 9, 10, 11

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