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Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Hugo-winner Haldeman's skillful writing makes this unusually thoughtful and picaresque tale shine. Matt Fuller, a likable underachiever stuck as a lab assistant at a near-future MIT, is startled when the calibrator he built begins disappearing and reappearing, jumping forward in time for progressively longer intervals. Curiosity and some unfortunate accidents send Matt through a series of vividly described, wryly imagined futures where he gradually becomes more adaptable and resourceful as experiences hone his character. The young woman he rescues from a techno-religious dictatorship gives him a chance at a mature relationship, while teaming up with an AI that intends to press on to the end of time forces him to decide what he wants from life. Rather than being a riff on H.G. Wells's The Time Machine, this novel is closer in tone to Neil Gaiman's Anansi Boys, another charming yarn about a young man who's forced out of a boring rut. Producing prose that feels this effortless must be hard work, but Haldeman (Camouflage) never breaks a sweat. (Aug.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Booklist
Since H. G. Wells' heyday, the time travel scenario has undergone so much variation that it's easy to envision the river of ideas finally running dry. But here the ever-inventive Haldeman offers a new twist: a device that travels in one direction only, to the future. Lowly MIT research assistant Matt Fuller toils away in a physics lab until one day he makes an odd discovery. A sensitive quantum calibrator keeps disappearing and reappearing moments later when he hits the reset button. With a little tinkering, Matt realizes that the device functions as a crude, forward-traveling time machine. With visions of Nobel Prizes dancing in his head, he latches it to a car and leaps into the future. The interesting wrinkle here is that each jump ahead is 12 times longer than the last. Matt's successive futures involve jail time, unwelcome celebrity, and assorted holocausts in the earth's climate. He begins to long for his native era. As usual, Haldeman's ingenuity delivers cutting-edge technological speculation and irresistibly compelling reading. Hays, Carl
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Most helpful customer reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Thoroughly enjoyable light sci-fi,
By
This review is from: The Accidental Time Machine (Mass Market Paperback)
It took only a couple days to read. That's my biggest gripe about this book. It's more of a short story. However, that being said, it was a great short story!! It was a lot of fun, the title character makes (as the title of the book would imply) an accidental time machine. And the story goes from there...I'm not going to give away any of the plot, you'll have to read the book yourself for that!Suffice it to say, this is a fun book to read. Don't look for deep dark heavy sci-fi here, just entertainment. Good entertainment. If you like books based on time paradoxes, time travel, or alternate history (or future??), you'll enjoy this.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
entertaining,
By bluedog (montreal canada) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Accidental Time Machine (Mass Market Paperback)
Slightly reminiscent of The Time Machine, this is an enjoyable read. It's fast paced and entertaining. Not a masterpiece of sci-fi but most SF novels aren't either.
2.0 out of 5 stars
Disappointing,
By
This review is from: The Accidental Time Machine (Mass Market Paperback)
With the high user feedback ratings, and the author's status as a Hugo and Nebula winner, I bought this book with high expectations. I leave with a disappointed taste in my mouth. The story starts out well enough, and it leads to an interesting enough premise, but then it just... crashes. The characters Martha, La, and even the protagonist, Matthew, are all two-dimensional with little growth or development. All that happens is they push a button and go into the future. That's it. There is little real plot or coherance beyond that. Some interesting science regarding dimensions is brought up near the end, but then never really explained. It's as if the author was writing it on the fly and kept putting in ideas he came up with on the spot. I enjoy science fiction, but this book was just plain disappointing.
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