The Accidental Time Machine – Joe Haldeman

accidentaltimemachine
[ad#books]

 

[starreview]

Classification: Future Reality

 

Matt Fuller is a graduate student at MIT. During one of his experiments in measuring quantum relationships between gravity and light, he finds out that the machine he used for testing has an unexpected – and unexplained – side effect: it’s (sort off) a time machine! To his delight, Matt discovers that every time he activates it, the machine sends itself and metallic objects connected to it to the future, and interestingly, every time the trip is 12 times longer than the previous trip. Meaning, the first time it goes 1 second to the future, then 12 seconds, then 144 seconds (roughly 3 1/2 minutes) and so on.

 

Not long afterward, Matt’s girlfriend decides to leave him, and his boss decides to let him go. Realizing he has much to gain by proving to the world he has a time machine, Matt decides to journey to the not-so-distant future by buying a used car and connecting it to the machine. However, things don’t go as planned: the car seller drops dead after seeing Matt vanish before his eyes. All evidence points to Matt, and once he reappears, he is immediately charged with murder. After receiving mysterious help, Matt is able to escape and begins exploring ever more distant futures…

 

The premise – to me – sounded very good. Furthermore, I really like Joe Haldeman’s books and style of writing (short and concise), so when I bought the book I was quite certain it’s going to be excellent. However, the book somehow missed out. For starters, none of the futures Matt reaches is too interesting, and many feel like Cliches (the Utopian future, the future where humanity has reverted to barbarism, the ‘weird’ future, etc). True, it is hard to come up with truly original material, but many of these futures felt like they were ‘borrowed’ from other novels. In addition, I thought the ending is very anticlimactic and really quite disappointing.

 

To summarize: in general, a fun book, but don’t expect too much, in particular if you’re familiar with other Time Travel novels.

 


Link to the book’s details on Amazon.com

 

If you’ve read this book, please vote below: