Time Travel: A History

I found it completely dry and unengaging, despite how much I love the topic

Just not interesting enough. Who cares what fiction writers thought about a hypothetical concept hundred years ago? Only worthwhile idea: the concept of time travel is a modern invention.

James Gleick explores time travel as a cultural idea through literature and film, from The Time Machine to Groundhog Day, with a little philosophy and physics thrown in for good measure. Much of the book is focused on how the understanding of time has changed through... time, concentrating particularly on how ideas of chronological and historical time developed in the nineteenth century and paved the way for future philosophers to posit why time exists and how it functions. The chapters about the complicated science behind time travel were easy to understand - always a bonus - and the bits about Kurt Godel were my fave.

“I gave a party for time-travelers, but I didn't send out the invitations until after the party. I sat there a long time, but no one came.” –Stephen Hawking

Gleick's ‘Time Travel' includes one scene with a physicist rolling his eyes wearily, explaining that, yes, time travel is possible in the case of black holes, but that he would rather not talk about it. Unfortunately I felt like that guy when I was reading this book.

There are only so many times I can read that time is like ‘a river', or read a paragraph-length biography of someone's life in order to support their two sentences of historical contribution. The historical viewpoint, too, gives the story a sort of interrupted flow. Sure, it makes a lot of sense to ‘start from the beginning' but I wish that the physical approaches (time as a field, as a measure of entropy, as relative or absolute) were enumerated rather than unveiled one by one, deep in mostly unnecessary context.

This might sound like a review written by some guy who heard about time travel and wants a time machine as soon as possible, with as little interference as possible. And maybe I've worn out my nonfiction reading ability by overdosing on these mile-deep scientific/literary history books. But anyway, Time Travel seemed, well, like a lackluster use of my time, a book that tried to be too much in and of itself and that never really developed into anything or built on itself, perhaps like our thinking about time travel itself.

Minus one star for not discussing the best two time travel movies ever: (1) Primer and (2) Hot Tub Time Machine.