Time Travel

(Paperback)

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AN OBSERVER BOOK OF THE YEAR

From the acclaimed author of The Information and Chaos, a mind-bending exploration of time travel: its subversive origins, its evolution in literature and science, and its influence on our understanding of time itself.
Gleick's story begins at the turn of the twentieth century with the young H. G. Wells writing and rewriting the fantastic tale that became his first book, an international sensation, The Time Machine. A host of forces were converging to transmute the human understanding of time, some philosophical and some technological the electric telegraph, the steam railroad, the discovery of buried civilisations, and the perfection of clocks. Gleick tracks the evolution of time travel as an idea in the culture from Marcel Proust to Doctor Who, from Woody Allen to Jorge Luis Borges. He explores the inevitable looping paradoxes and examines the porous boundary between pulp fiction and modern physics. Finally, he delves into a temporal shift that is unsettling our own moment: the instantaneous wired world, with its all-consuming present and vanishing future.

Reviews

'Skilfully weaves together science, technology and culture in a dazzling history of time travel' New Statesman

A glorious compendium of conundrums and mind-bogglers What one reveres Gleick for are the bridges he opens between high science, which he and a few other cognoscenti understand, and the low fiction that everyone enjoys. Thats the word to end with: enjoy. In whatever universe you happen to be reading this The Times

Wonderful and deceptively unassuming Time, for us, is movement in stasis: we cannot travel backwards or forwards in it but are stuck in the moment, although the moment is always new. This is a profound mystery, and one that the greatest minds throughout history have been unable to make even a start at solving (Gleick is) possessed of a splendidly dry wit Irish Times

Time Travel is written with his usual elegance Guardian

Endlessly fascinating and as thorough as you like, but written with his customary grace and wit Spectator

This book is a bit like you imagine time travel to be: a dizzying mind-rush through a century of ideas, some lingered over, some only glimpsed; some clearly seen, some blurry. It is vertiginous, exciting, paradoxical and worth making the journey Sunday Times

Enthrallingin these pages, time flies John Banville

Time Travel regularly manages to twist its readers mind A wonderful reminder that the most potent time-travelling technology we have is also the oldest technology we have: storytelling Anthony Doerr

Superb Rich in obscure and illuminating information, laced with lyricism, wit, and startling and convincing insights Joyce Carol Oates

Weird, enthralling, surreal, dreamlike, almost intoxicating Irish Independent

Gleick more or less invented the modern style of mind-bending scientific non-fiction that does not talk down to its audience: Time Travel is written with his usual elegance Guardian

Author Bio

James Gleick's three books, Chaos, Genuis,and Faster,have been translated into nearly thirty languages. Gleick, a former reporter and editor of the New York Times,lives in New York. >