Thursday, March 11, 2010

The New Time Travelers

Just finished The New Time Travelers, by David Toomey.  Time travel is a fun subject,  the ultimate rule-breaker's fantasy.  Overcome cause and effect, and surely you can do anything.  Consequently, it would be really easy to go wild with a book about time travel.  While the author of this book allows us to indulge in that fun on many occasions, he keeps the narrative grounded in the work of real physicists.

Not being a physicist, of course, I can't really say how well the author captured the meaning of all that esoteric math, but I can say that the book was engaging and accessible.  I really felt like I was learning something and it was full of inspirations for the science fiction writer, including some trippy speculations about how time travel could explain the origins of the universe.  In addition to describing several interesting theories of time travel, Toomey fills us in on the personal background of the physicists who came up with them and walks us through the development of their ideas.

So... there it is.  Good book.  Go read now.
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