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Title details for Time Travel by James Gleick - Available

Time Travel

A History

by James Gleick
Rob Shapiro
Audiobook
3 of 3 copies available
Borrow Listen to a sample Listen to a sample
3 of 3 copies available
“A time-jumping, head-tripping odyssey.” —The Millions
“A bracing swim in the waters of science, technology and fiction.” —Washington Post
“A thrilling journey of ideas.” —Boston Globe
From the acclaimed author of The Information and Chaos, here is a mind-bending exploration of time travel: its subversive origins, its evolution in literature and science, and its influence on our understanding of time itself.
The story begins at the turn of the previous century, with the young H. G. Wells writing and rewriting the fantastic tale that became his first book and an international sensation: The Time Machine. It was an era when a host of forces was converging to transmute the human understanding of time, some philosophical and some technological: the electric telegraph, the steam railroad, the discovery of buried civilizations, and the perfection of clocks. James Gleick tracks the evolution of time travel as an idea that becomes part of contemporary culture—from Marcel Proust to Doctor Who, from Jorge Luis Borges to Woody Allen. He investigates the inevitable looping paradoxes and examines the porous boundary between pulp fiction and modern physics. Finally, he delves into a temporal shift that is unsettling our own moment: the instantaneous wired world, with its all-consuming present and vanishing future.
(With a color frontispiece and black-and-white illustrations throughout) 

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    September 27, 2016

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9780735285910
      • File size: 288339 KB
      • Duration: 10:00:42

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Does time move like a river, or is it more like an elevator? Is time the antithesis of eternity? Narrator Rob Shapiro provides an excellent reading with a blend of authority and wonder as author James Gleick attempts to answer these questions and more in his creative and entertaining survey of time-travel fiction and science. In particular, he compares the physics theories of Albert Einstein and Richard Feynman to the literature of David Foster Wallace, Robert Heinlein, and James Joyce. The audiobook also serves as a history of the science fiction genre (originally called "scientifiction") and explains how the genre owes a debt to the innovative approach to time travel proposed in H.G. Wells's TIME MACHINE. R.W.S. © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from July 4, 2016
      In a dazzling voyage through the concept of time, science chronicler Gleick (The Information) explains that, “like all words, time has boundaries, by which I don’t mean hard and impenetrable shells but porous edges,” challenging readers to consider the porousness of reality as depicted in philosophy, science, and literature. Beginning with an homage to H.G. Wells, whose 1895 novel The Time Machine influenced both writers and physicists, the book careens back and forth, “free to leap about in time.” The popularity of Wells’s story paved the way for a willingness to accept the paradoxes in the science of Einstein, Eddington, and Feynman, among others. Gleick explores the wealth of speculation that was set in motion when time became considered fluid. Can one go back in time and prevent one’s own birth? Does time travel create “forks” in the universe with alternate events? What does it mean to be outside of time? Gleick quotes from scientists and writers who have wrestled with these questions, and he explores the way novels, short stories, films, and television programs have handled eddies in time (his suggested reading list is priceless). Deeply philosophical and full of quirky humor—“The universe is like a river. It flows. (Or it doesn’t, if you’re Plato.)”—Gleick’s journey through the fourth dimension is a marvelous mind bender. Illus.

    • Publisher's Weekly

      December 5, 2016
      Voice actor Shapiro chooses a conversational style of delivery for the audio edition of Gleick’s mind-bending book on the cultural history of the concept of time and that concept’s evolution in literature and science. Shapiro does an excellent job of relaying this in-depth look at the impossible. Given the complexity of the author’s research, a narrator could easily fall into professorial lecturing or an exhaustive, ear-numbing exposition of complex concepts, but Shapiro, while keeping his pacing steady, uses cadence to help convey Gleick’s complex ideas and manages to make his delivery upbeat and engaging. He mines the material for its humor and gives what he finds just the right smile-inducing spin. His smooth, confident narration makes the audiobook both entertaining and informative. A Pantheon hardcover.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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