Customer Reviews

Einstein's Dreams

5 star:		(103)
4 star:		(26)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

I've read through about a dozen reviews so far and I'm rather surprised that no one seems to have gone beyond the obvious discussion of this book. We all see that these are interesting vignettes about how time might behave in different realities. But beyond that, these are vignettes about how we live. Take, for example, the vignette about the world where you can gain time by moving faster and faster. Because time is money, businesses fly about the town on wheels, powered by huge engines. Inside the office building, desks zip around each floor. The faster the workers move, the greater their productivity. There is one problem though, that of perception of the velocity of others. And sometimes a worker will become so upset by his perception that others are moving faster than he is, he will stop moving at all. He will retire to his home, pull down the shades and live within his family. Live a simple, content life without all the rushing about. This is a pretty clear metaphor for the increasing speed at which we live, and those who reject the need to live in that manner.

Some vignettes are simple to interpret -- the world where time moves more and more slowly until, as you get to the center of the town, it almost stops. People go there to preserve a childhood, a love, their lives. A kiss can be nearly infinite. Children grow more slowly than redwoods, and never lose their innocence. Some are more difficult. But each one carries some deeper meaning about human life, and how we choose to live it. And the narrative of Einstein as a patent clerk echoes those ideas, as you watch the choices he's made.

This book isn't simply about bringing together science and literature, it's about science and philosophy, science and human nature. It's about how each of us lives so differently, we might all be living in a different temporal reality. Quite simply, it's a wonderful book, that will make you think, and stay with you for a long time. Highly recommended.

At first blush, for the briefest of moments, one might be excused for thinking that "Einstein's Dreams" was science fiction or perhaps even physics! But, in fact, Alan Lightman has treated us to an enchanting metaphysical flight of fancy loosely based on that most counterintuitive of ideas that Einstein shared with the world in his General Theory of Relativity - the idea that time is an integral part of the structure of the universe but that it is flexible, ever-changing and dependent on the frame of reference of the observer.

"Einstein's Dreams" is a collage of short, lucid essays that Lightman puts forward as the nocturnal dreamscapes in which a sensitive Einstein might have wandered as his intense genius created his famous theories. Worlds in which time stands still, runs backward, runs at varying speeds dependent on your location, passes in a circular ever-repeating pattern, or runs in a discontinuous pattern of starts and stops, for example, are the setting for a metaphorical examination of humanity's responses to these changing notions of time.

Lightman's beautifully crafted narrative prose, near poetry in its simple style and elegance, explores the human condition and demonstrates that such notions as love and hate, motivation or despair, joy or despondency and creativity are implicity dependent on our unstated understanding of the passage of time.

"Einstein's Dreams" is a short read that will occupy little more than an hour or two to complete but it is thought-provoking, fascinating and quite compelling despite its appealing brevity and simplicity.

Paul Weiss

Alan Lightman's slight book is more of a writing exercise than a novel. Einstein's Dreams takes the reader on a voyage of vignettes that illustrate the implications of Einstein's Theory of Relativity, (fictively) dreamed by the great physicist himself when he was just a patent clerk still figuring out his most famous theory. The dream snippets play on our preconceived notions of time and space. Here, people can travel backward in time, find themselves caught in an endless loop, experience the suspension of time and therefore motion. Scenes unfold in ways that we believe are physically impossible but which, given Einstein's theory, are not. The characters are barely human, as they exist solely for effect. There is no plot, no development, no lasting impact because of the distortion of time. The sole reason for reading this is Lightman's lyrical and graceful language, which perhaps puts these glimpses more in the realm of the prose poem than fiction. It is this beauty of phrasing that earns this book an extra star.

To compare Lightman to Borges and Calvino is an insult to those great writers. Lightman comes across in his first book as a dabbler, someone with a talent for words and images, a scientist, a thinker, but, alas, not a fiction writer.

Lots of praise and an interesting concept led me to finally read this book, only to be disappointed. The mini-stories are undeveloped, and don't really engage you. Lots of repetition also, hard to believe he teaches writing at MIT.

I Love LOVE LOVED this book and it was over too quickly. I could have kept going with even more stories of different worlds with different types of time. It was just the most sensuous retelling of the Theory of Relativity.

EINSTEIN'S DREAMS isn't quite what I expected (I was expecting an actual novel) but it is quite a delightful little book (and I mean little in the physical sense, it is barely larger than a CD).

I expected EINSTEIN'S DREAMS to be a novel, a fictionalized account of the thoughts and actions of a still obscure Albert Einstein as he formulates the first hypotheses of his theory of relativity. What I got were little vignettes...musings...of what Einstein might have been thinking or dreaming. These musings are broken up by conversations between Einstein and his friend, Besso, but the vignettes still get to be a little repetitive at times. Personally, I would have enjoyed the book a lot more had Lightman chosen to write it as a novel with a more standard plot line and character development.

EINSTEIN'S DREAMS takes place in Bern, Switzerland in the spring of 1905. The book centers on Bern's Old Town, however, and not the entire city. The huge clock face on Kramgasse is often involved in the dreams of Einstein. (Readers may notice that all the streets are "gasse" [alley] rather than "strasse" [street] and this is because the narrow, little streets of Bern's Old Town do all end in "gasse;" it's not a mistake of Lightman's.)

If anyone is avoiding this book because they think it leans too heavily toward the physics of time and Einstein's actual theory, it absolutely does not. I know little about physics and don't care to know too much about the subject and there was certainly nothing in the book that I couldn't grasp immediately. While EINSTEIN'S DREAMS encompasses some of the cerebral qualities of Jorge Luis Borges, it contains more of the charming whimsy of Italo Calvino.

EINSTEIN'S DREAMS is a delightful little book to read for a change of pace. It's lovely, charming, whimsical, but it's really not thought provoking and it certainly doesn't begin to encompass anything in the science fiction genre (much to my personal delight).

I would definitely recommend EINSTEIN'S DREAMS to a general readership. Just don't expect the book to be a novel and don't expect to learn anything about physics or Einstein here. This is a book that seems to have been written simply for the sheer joy of writing, rather than educating. Personally, I preferred it that way.

Alan Lightman's knowledge of physics and adoration of Einstein bleeds through in this creatively crafted collection of worlds that involve different views of time. In one world, time moves slower for people who live higher. So, those who wish to live longer build their homes on tall pillars or stilts. Aside from these fantastical worlds, there exists in Lightman's prose a reality, themes that play with the idea that we all wish we could control time in order to change our lives, make new decisions, fix past errors. The characters of each story are either reveling in an eternal realm or cursing its longevity. Others are faced with the knowledge of when the world will end. Though their worlds are concoctions of the author's fantasies, their lives reflect and parallel our own. Lightman's knowledge of human emotions and secluded lives seems just as extensive as his knowledge of physics.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who is searching for an intelligent, but short read that skims the realms of time as well as the aspects of our own lives.

When this first came out, my doctor lent me his copy, but I returned it after reading only part of it, though looking back, I can't imagine why. I recently bought it and read it in one sitting (at the airport) as my first recreational book after finishing school.

"Einstein's Dreams" is a novel in a loose sense of the word. It consists of a set of vignettes considering how everything that makes us human would be different if space and time followed different sets of rules, which are interesting variations on what relativity shows is theoretically possible.

The vignettes are tied together by interludes of the young patent clerk Einstein, who stands in for Lightman as the dreamer who imagines all of the different scenarios, as he is inspired to discover the true nature of space and time.

The whole exercise provides a unique way of stepping out of space and time, and thereby out of the fundamental rules we take for granted to shape our lives. It might be compared to Italo Calvino's Cosmicomics, not quite in sheer whimsy, but certainly in the astoundingly unexpected insights it draws from tinkering with the cosmos as a way of exploring love, anxiety, and tragic loss.

Don't read my rating wrong, I think this book was well written, but it wasn't what I though it would be. This books is a series of short stories that each take a different perspective on time.

During one of my (sometimes too brief) peaks of interest I became interested in Physics. I learned all the basics about how time is not the same at all places because it is effected by speed. For instance a few interesting examples are air planes that have to compensate their computers for the slight changes in time because they are traveling with or against the rotation of the Earth.

There are a lot of strange stories about time moving very differently from Earth, but some didn't really make sense to me. Not because they were different than the way I think about time, but because they literally didn't make and sense.

There are some diamonds in the rough, but read the real science instead of these stories. It's much more compelling.

Einstein's Dreams was a required reading book for my high-school physics class. Since reading this insightful book, I have recommended it to almost everyone I know. Alan Lightman has done an amazing job of questioning and challenging the average mind on complex ideas and theories of physics. Lightman uses Einstein's Dreams to show mystical and impractical ideas of time and space. This witty novel takes place in Berne, Switzerland in 1905. Einstein's journal is a phantasmagoria of dreams that take place from April 14 to June 28. Among twenty-some short and unrelated stories or theories of time, there are a few scattered interludes about Einstein and Besso (his close friend). These short stories explain the idea of parallel universes and the theory of relativity, which Einstein dreams about so vividly. He says, "I want to understand time because I want to get close to The Old One."

On the night of May 14th in Einstein's dreams time has an origin. This center point on Earth is where time is dispersed, it sprawls out and speeds up from here. At the center time stands still, people remain doing what they are doing forever, their simple motions may take decades or centuries in this slowly moving place of time. "...one sees parents clutching their children, in a frozen embrace that will never let go." Out of this center of time, things move at a much quicker pace. On the night of June 17th, Einstein dreams of a world in which time is not continuous. Much like a scratched CD skips, time would cut in and out leaving its victims paralyzed for the time being. "Nerve action flows through one segment of time, abruptly stops, pauses, leaps through a vacuum, and resumes in the neighboring segment." If one were to analyze time here, they would find that it is only paused for an instant, everything still appears and looks the same. But every so often a confusion or vagueness can fall over someone when this pause of skip in time occurs, it can be catastrophic.

In this small book there is no real plot, it is more of a collection of creative vignettes. The five carefully arranged interludes tell the sad and lonely story of Albert Einstein. All the interludes separate themselves by about eight chapters. The first chapter is titled Prologue; it introduces Einstein and his growing interest in time. "For the past several months, since the middle of April, he has dreamed many dreams about time. His dreams have taken hold of his research. His dreams have worn him out, exhausted him so he sometimes cannot tell whether he is awake or asleep." Einstein's small interest has begun to transform into an obsession. In the next Interlude Lightman introduces Einstein's friend Besso. Besso's character is concerned for Einstein's well-being. Einstein continues to ramble about his interest in time. Einstein seems to distance himself from his wife, Mileva. Besso is confused on why they were ever married, and Einstein is unsure himself.

The third interlude is uncomforting. Einstein has begun to look ill and sickly. Besso asked if he was ok; Einstein replied with he was making process. Einstein tells Besso that he feels very close to the truth. The fourth interlude tells of Einstein's inner struggles and how he wishes he could share them with Besso. Besso ensures Einstein that he believes in him. In the fifth, and last chapter of the novel titled Epilogue; Einstein realizes that his life is incomplete and lonely. "He feels empty. He has no interest in reviewing patents or talking to Besso or thinking of physics. He feels empty, and he stares without interest at the tiny black speck and the Alps."

The first and last chapters represent a parallel in this novel, both speak about the clock tower. The time tower represents the idea that time is universal and continuous. The Prologue starts with the idea of time and how it keeps the world we live in together. Einstein introduces many bizarre concepts of how time could be distorted in parallel universe. In the Epilogue Lightman displays, that Einstein is still held captive by time. Lightman has used this powerful yet petite novel to show how the everyday realities of our lives could be drastically different.