Michael Crichton: Timeline

Professor Johnston often said that if you didn't know history, you didn't know anything. You were a leaf that didn't know it was part of a tree.

Technically, it's not supposed to be time travel. It's space travel, err, or traveling to another universe, one that exists side by side with ours and in an earlier time. The books presupposes that parallel universes exist and that they are not all simultaneous to ours.

"And are you telling us that ITC has the technology to travel to these universes?"
"Yes," Gordon said. "That's what I'm telling you."
"How?"
"You make wormhole connections in quantum foam."

And by quantum foam, he meant subatomic fluctuations in space-time. The characters travel "Exactly like a fax... It's not quantum teleportation. It's not particle entanglement. It's direct transmission to another universe."

I don't understand quantum theory, so I'll simply agree with Crichton here. This is the first Crichton I ever read. Most of his novels are made into movies and I always get to see the movies first and so I never get around to reading the books. I mean, why bother? Since I haven't seen the movie Timeline, I decided to read this one. I was definitely not disappointed, rather very impressed. Crichton concoted a great mix of science, history, and action. The story is fast paced and incredibly interesting. Crichton describes life in 1357 feudal France, chivalry and war. Now I know why most of his novels are made into movies.

By page 140, though, after all of the scientific explanations, a thought occured to me. If they're sending a group of scientists to rescue their professor, trapped in 1357, why don't they just send someone to right before the time they go and send the professor back? You know, tell them something will go wrong, don't send the professor to this other universe. Would have saved them some 345 or so pages of trouble. (But it also would've deprived me of a good read.)

Today, everybody expects to be entertained, and they expect to be entertained all the time. Business meetings must be snappy, with bullet lists and animated graphics... Malls and stores must be engaging... Politicians must have pleasing video personalities... everyone must be amused, or they will switch: switch brands, switch channels, switch parties, switch loyalties. This is the intellectual reality of Western society at the end of the century.