The Accidental Time Machine by Joe Haldeman
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Book Reviews of The Accidental Time Machine
Book Review: Intriguing Premise, Dull Exposition
Summary: 3 Stars
Time travel is a common theme in science fiction, providing authors an opportunity to explore multiple future scenarios and the possible consequences of moving back and forth in time. In this book, the author, an MIT professor, tells of a graduate lab assistant who discovers that an apparatus he has built for quantum research travels into the future every time he activates it. Moreover, it takes anything connected to it along and each jump is exponentially further into the future. Unfortunately, not much is made of the possible impact of this travel (although in one future the student discovers that someone else has taken credit for his "discovery") and the imagined futures are dreadfully dull. The protagonist spends way too much time in a future where religion has become accepted as science, including at MIT. Haldeman fails to use his MIT connections to to explore the quantum physics that could theoretically make time travel possible.Book Review: Review of Accidental Time Machine
Summary: 3 Stars
I would like to have known before buying the book that while the first part of the book and the ending were quite intriguing,the middle of the book was a little thin in places.
However, the writer does does an excellent job of presenting the main character in the settings he encounters. (His descriptions are such that you can see and even feel the environments in your mind's eye.)
The hero has a bit of the flavor of the hero in "By His Bootstraps".
The book has a few issues never quite resolved,at least to my satisfaction,like who really was the character identified by the locals as Jesus and what was his agenda? Who really paid the hero's bail and how did he accomplish getting into the correct time period to do so? Why did the hero's time machine work but copies didn't? (The reason was hinted at but never verified as a surety.)
A good book for pure escape.
Book Review: Pretty okay time travel tale.
Summary: 3 Stars
If Amazon were to upgrade their rating system to 10 stars rather than only 5, I would rate this as a solid 7,
but since I can only choose 1-5, I must give this above-average book a "3".
This is a tale about forward time travel (mostly) with an average-Joe MIT graduate who bumbles into a time travel machine discovery. He gets into a couple of bad situations, and the only way out is to keep travelling forward in time. As he gets further and further from his native time, he gets more and more out of place. Suffice it to say that he does finally get out of this situation and finds his soul-mate along the way. Overall not a bad tale, although I feel that Thrice Upon A Time by James P. Hogan is a better time travel tale. This is worth reading, but I'll probably sell my copy to a used book store.
Book Review: Light, fun, and fast, but that's about it
Summary: 3 Stars
I'm glad I read the excellent "Forever War" a few years ago, because if "The Accidental Time Machine" were the first Haldeman book I read, I wouldn't read any more.
This book starts out well with interesting characters and settings and relationships and ex-relationships, but then it quickly becomes very shallow and eventually becomes so lacking of any depth, it's more like a child's comic book than a novel. Some of the ideas are interesting, but I was going nuts trying to understand some of the logic involved in the time loops and avoidance of paradoxes. Finally, I just gave up trying to understand and just read quickly to get to the end.
Time travel stories are always fun, though, so as long as you don't expect anything more than a light read without anything meaningful, you'll enjoy this book.
Book Review: Standard Time Travel Tale
Summary: 3 Stars
The Accidental Time Machine has many parallels with Haldeman's best-known novel, the Forever War, which also follows a protagonist who is thrown into various futures somewhat against his will. While interesting, this novel lacks the compelling nature of the earlier work. Character development and suspense are not Haldeman's strengths. His ability to paint an arresting portrait of military life in the Forever War compensated for this deficit. In contrast, his descriptions of academic life around MIT, while technically accurate are not intriguing. The protagonist gets a view of time periods progressively further into the future that are utopias or dystopias. The plot becomes one of "peeking into peculiar places", with ideas that have been explored before. The novel is servicable but certainly not great.