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Time Travel

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About this listen

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.

©2016 James Gleick Literary History & Criticism Science Time Travel Thought-Provoking Mathematics

Critic 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. That’s 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

‘Enthralling…in these pages, time flies’ John Banville

‘Time Travel regularly manages to twist its reader’s 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
All stars
Most relevant
this is a wonderful if rambling meditation on the various aspects of time travel both infection and physics as they have formed a a part of the cultural conversation over the last 100 years. James gleick and Rob Shapiro are a great combination. I could listen to Rob Shapiro reading out the phone directory. the book does not have a tremendously obvious structure, and does return repeatedly to the same subjects, but always with a new glass and is never short of thought-provoking. Well recommended

Great companion piece to The Information

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This is a fair overview of the history of time travel in literature, and is well read by Shapiro (I would heartily recommend Max Tegmark's Mathematical Universe also read by him), but I still found it a little disappointing. Personally, given it is written by Gleik, I had expected a little less history, and a little more scientific examination of the whole idea of time travel. I am not saying it is not a good listen, because it is, but just maybe not what I was hoping for.

A history of time travel in literature.

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I loved the premise and the history of the concept of time travel. But the story loses momentum and goes into meandering to make the page count like Bárbara Cartland

Starts well, rambling till the end

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a book of quotes from science fiction writers. did not enjoy this book at all. not one chapter on such a topic. shame.

not what i expected

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