In James Gleick’s latest book, Time Travel: A History, he undertakes an ambitious task to map out, not just the history of Time Travel as a concept, but to put it in its cultural context as both an idea and plot device. As Gleick notes early on in the book when H.G. Wells was asked to recount how The Time Machine came together as an idea for him, it was near impossible to remember. It just always seemed to be there.
Gleick reaffirms this by pointing out: “Time travel is in the pop songs, the TV commercials, the wallpaper. From morning to night, children’s cartoons to adult fantasies invent and reinvent time machines, gates, doorways, and windows, not to mention time ships and special closets, DeLoreans, and police boxes.”
The concept of time travel has become as ubiquitous as time itself that we currently take it for granted. Gleick notes that as modern civilization, “We have achieved a temporal sentience our ancestors lacked.”
In order to shine some light on the enduring nature of time travel as a concept, the author takes us through our evolving understanding of time from all angles – philosophical, scientific, logical, and cultural citing authorities on the subject from the past century and a half. The fact that no one can quite agree how time works leads to a wide variety of theories in science and literature.
Gleick is equally at ease in his explanations quoting Einstein and Hawking as he is at referencing Doctor Who and Jorge Louis Borges. For the reader, the task becomes trying to keep up with the references and their counterpoint to each other as they pile up. The book, while accessible, often reads like a textbook for an advanced course on Time Travel and could conceivably be used as such. It is so rich in references and thoughtful in its exploration of the subject.
As a lifelong aficionado of time travel myself, I found the book connecting the dots for me in ways I hadn’t fully considered before. Like discussing how our cultural perception of time evolves over time and that multiple disciplines (science, literature, philosophy, etc.) can all struggle to define the nature time and whether time travel is possible while continually influencing each other. What is one day implausible science fiction can someday become scientific theory. I found that Gleick’s thoughtful analysis also nudged me to want to read more classical literature (T.S. Eliot – Four Quartets and Jorge Louis Borges – “Garden of the Forking Paths” for example) that explore the subject of time, not to mention looking up science fiction that I had previously overlooked or were unaware of. For example the original use of time travel to kill Hitler in Ralph Milne Farley’s “I Killed Hitler” which was published 1941 and predates the United States entering the war.
I’d recommend Time Travel: A History to anyone who’s a fan of time travel or curious about the nature of time and our perception of it. It’s one of those books I am sure that I will revisit often to mine for references and to be reminded of just how complex our relationship to time and time travel can be.
Time Travel: A History by James Gleick is published by Penguin Random House. Released September 27th, 2016.
Note: Time Travel Nexus would like to thank the publisher for providing an advanced review copy of this book, and in exchange we are pleased to present this honest review.
Andy Taylor
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- Review – Time Travel: A History by James Gleick - October 4, 2016