The Accidental Time Machine
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4.2 • 117 Ratings
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
From the acclaimed author of Marsbound comes a mind-bending sci-fi adventure that will have you questioning the very fabric of time itself
Struggling grad school dropout Matt Fuller is toiling as a lowly research assistant at MIT when he inadvertently creates a time machine. With a dead-end job and a girlfriend who left him for another man, Matt has nothing to lose in taking a time-machine trip himself--or so he thinks.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Hugo-winner Haldeman's skillful writing makes this unusually thoughtful and picaresque tale shine. Matt Fuller, a likable underachiever stuck as a lab assistant at a near-future MIT, is startled when the calibrator he built begins disappearing and reappearing, jumping forward in time for progressively longer intervals. Curiosity and some unfortunate accidents send Matt through a series of vividly described, wryly imagined futures where he gradually becomes more adaptable and resourceful as experiences hone his character. The young woman he rescues from a techno-religious dictatorship gives him a chance at a mature relationship, while teaming up with an AI that intends to press on to the end of time forces him to decide what he wants from life. Rather than being a riff on H.G. Wells's The Time Machine, this novel is closer in tone to Neil Gaiman's Anansi Boys, another charming yarn about a young man who's forced out of a boring rut. Producing prose that feels this effortless must be hard work, but Haldeman (Camouflage) never breaks a sweat.
Customer Reviews
A clever tale
Well written with an intriguing plot. Nicely done.
The Accidental Time Machine
This book was very disappointing. I love time travel but this book seemed very fake. The best part was where Matt and Martha ended up in the end of the book. Then the story was over. A waste of my money... Which I can earn more but most importantly a waste of my time that is gone forever.
Entertaining
I enjoyed the read...a quick and easy one. It was entertaining, which is largely what I wanted. It wasn't quite as thought provoking or suspenseful as Asimov's The End of Eternity and didn't have the social commentary of Heinlein's For Us, the Living or the excitement of The Door into Summer. I gave it three stars because, while well written and enjoyable, I thought the main character's jumps through time and the resulting links to his past and possible paradoxes were handled a little too loosely, especially towards the end. There were interesting hints of social, political, economic, and technological developments in the future that were never explored. I thought his treatments of certain aspects of society/global development ... consumerism, religion, evolution, etc. were a little ham-fisted. Finally, I was disappointed with the ending. It felt as if the author was rushing to get it to publication and never closed the loops (pun intended) opened in the story (i.e. important characters and events introduced throughout but never explained.). The end of the book was far too much like the ending of an hour-long television mystery where they summarily explain the plot in the last two minutes and throw in a dash of happily ever after.