Book Review: The Accidental Time Machine

Posted by tripwire45 on Jan 11, 2009 1:57 PM EDT
A Million Chimpanzees; By James Pyles
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Surprise. I normally review books on actual and not fictional technology, but I came across the hardcopy version of this book at my local library and, having not read a Haldeman novel in a couple of decades, decided to revisit science fiction as one might revisit an old girlfriend. I wanted to see how much my interest in the genre and specifically Haldeman's writing, had held up over time. I'm also kind of a sucker for time travel stories.

It is a page turner. I reserved the novel as something to "wind down" with before going to bed and there were a few nights when I pushed my "reasonable consciousness" envelope by reading longer than I had intended. The beginning of the book introduces a mystery discovered by protagonist Matt Fuller, an MIT graduate student in the more or less near future. Watching Matt try to figure out how a simple piece of lab equipment he'd built had somehow developed the ability to move forward in time was a definite hook for me. He's a bright, but not brilliant underachiever who's given the opportunity for "greatness", but only if he keeps his discovery a secret. This means he must go the way of so many other "mad scientists" by using himself as the primary experimental subject.

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I'll have to dig out that Joe Halderman book. tracyanne 22 2,391 Jan 12, 2009 10:21 PM

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