What do you think?
Rate this book
Time Machine Tales: The Science Fiction Adventures and Philosophical Puzzles of Time Travel
This book contains a broad overview of time travel in science fiction, along with a detailed examination of the philosophical implications of time travel. The emphasis of this book is now on the philosophical and on science fiction, rather than on physics, as in the author's earlier books on the subject. In that spirit there are, for example, no Tech Notes filled with algebra, integrals, and differential equations, as there are in the first and second editions of TIME MACHINES. Writing about time travel is, today, a respectable business. It hasn’t always been so. After all, time travel, prima facie, appears to violate a fundamental law of nature; every effect has a cause, with the cause occurring before the effect. Time travel to the past, however, seems to allow, indeed to demand, backwards causation, with an effect (the time traveler emerging into the past as he exits from his time machine) occurring before its cause (the time traveler pushing the start button on his machine’s control panel to start his trip backward through time). Time Machine Tales includes new discussions of the advances by physicists and philosophers that have appeared since the publication of TIME MACHINES in 1999, examples of which are the chapters on time travel paradoxes. Those chapters have been brought up-to-date with the latest philosophical thinking on the paradoxes.
- GenresScienceNonfictionPhysics
432 pages, Paperback
First published December 1, 2016
About the author
Paul J. Nahin
54 books128 followersPaul J. Nahin is professor emeritus of electrical engineering at the University of New Hampshire and the author of many best-selling popular math books, including The Logician and the Engineer and Will You Be Alive 10 Years from Now? (both Princeton).
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
August 15, 2022
Writing about time travel is, today, a respectable business. It hasn't always been so. After all, time travel, prima facie, appears to violate a fundamental law of nature; every effect has a cause, with the cause occurring before the effect."
Paul J. Nahin's Time Machine Tales: The Science Fiction Adventures and Philosophical Puzzles of Time Travel is a sort of science, philosophy and literature review on time travel and the nature of time. Nahin repeatedly cites scientific luminaries such as Einstein, Hawking and Newton and many, many others to explain what has been thought about this issue over the past few centuries. Nahin also explores the concept of linear time, causation and reverse causation and the fourth dimension in an attempt to ground the debates about time and time travel.
Nahin is most successful when he brings in literary sources. Of course, there's HG Wells, but there's also a plethora of pulp fiction that was written about time travel. And there is also a wide variety of pop culture references, various iterations of : Star Trek figure quite prominently. After many of the chapters, Nahin poses questions. One that I thought was interesting was just how you would convince someone you are a time traveler. Given the evidence that suggests it's not possible, could you even convince yourself? This work was sometimes dry and sometimes interesting. I just felt like I had to stick with it to get the good parts. 3.25 stars
Paul J. Nahin's Time Machine Tales: The Science Fiction Adventures and Philosophical Puzzles of Time Travel is a sort of science, philosophy and literature review on time travel and the nature of time. Nahin repeatedly cites scientific luminaries such as Einstein, Hawking and Newton and many, many others to explain what has been thought about this issue over the past few centuries. Nahin also explores the concept of linear time, causation and reverse causation and the fourth dimension in an attempt to ground the debates about time and time travel.
Nahin is most successful when he brings in literary sources. Of course, there's HG Wells, but there's also a plethora of pulp fiction that was written about time travel. And there is also a wide variety of pop culture references, various iterations of : Star Trek figure quite prominently. After many of the chapters, Nahin poses questions. One that I thought was interesting was just how you would convince someone you are a time traveler. Given the evidence that suggests it's not possible, could you even convince yourself? This work was sometimes dry and sometimes interesting. I just felt like I had to stick with it to get the good parts. 3.25 stars
June 25, 2022
Well.... I read most of it. I made it to the end, but... I gotta admit to skimming a fair amount of it when it started to deal with pretty deep science and a lot of equations, etc.
It starts out fine, but really takes you down the rabbit hole, I thought. I am sure there are lots of other time travel possibilities this book doesn't cover, but it sure hit a lot of them. And.... since almost every single one of them ends up paradox, a loop, a block universe, etc... it tends to get a bit repetitive in that regard. If I never hear another story or theory about the Grandfather Paradox I'll be just fine with that.
Some of it is entertaining, but a lot of it is theory wrapped in conjecture and ending in a paradox. Almost none of things things could ever be tested much less proven so all it does is really raise a lot of questions we'll never know the answer to. If that's your thing, this is your book.
It starts out fine, but really takes you down the rabbit hole, I thought. I am sure there are lots of other time travel possibilities this book doesn't cover, but it sure hit a lot of them. And.... since almost every single one of them ends up paradox, a loop, a block universe, etc... it tends to get a bit repetitive in that regard. If I never hear another story or theory about the Grandfather Paradox I'll be just fine with that.
Some of it is entertaining, but a lot of it is theory wrapped in conjecture and ending in a paradox. Almost none of things things could ever be tested much less proven so all it does is really raise a lot of questions we'll never know the answer to. If that's your thing, this is your book.
June 24, 2017
This book has the feel of two different books that have been shoehorned together - which isn't entirely surprising, as the author tells us that he has combined a simplified version of his earlier title Time Machines with material on time travel in philosophy and science fiction.
I expected to find the science fiction part more interesting, as I've read far too many books on the physics of time travel, but it was actually the other way round. By reducing the maths content of his earlier book, Paul Nahin has made the physics of time travel bits significantly more approachable (there are some pages full of equations, but they're nowhere near as scary as they may appear at a glance). It'd probably help to have physics and maths A-levels, but it certainly doesn't require an undergraduate training. There is plenty here that I have never seen presented in such an effective way for that kind technical-end popular audience, and it's worth buying the book for that alone.
By contrast, the fiction-based parts don't work so well. This is odd, as Nahin includes as appendices two published science fiction stories he wrote in the 70s, which are both very readable, if a little stiff by modern standards. He knows how fiction works. Yet what's missing from the sections on the science fiction approach to time travel is any sense of narrative - we are overwhelmed with example after example (which require repeated checking of the footnotes) of every tiny variant in the portrayal of time travel - it's a factual overload, where a lot fewer examples with more detail and exploration of what's behind them might have worked far better.
I was also a little horrified by the grey-background end sections of each chapter, which ask the reader questions, supposedly to help them probe their understanding of what has come before, in what felt a very condescending, back to school, style. These might work for some, but I hated them.
The good news, then, is that you get two books for the price of one, and the physics of time travel one is really interesting, but as a single entity it didn't work well for me.
I expected to find the science fiction part more interesting, as I've read far too many books on the physics of time travel, but it was actually the other way round. By reducing the maths content of his earlier book, Paul Nahin has made the physics of time travel bits significantly more approachable (there are some pages full of equations, but they're nowhere near as scary as they may appear at a glance). It'd probably help to have physics and maths A-levels, but it certainly doesn't require an undergraduate training. There is plenty here that I have never seen presented in such an effective way for that kind technical-end popular audience, and it's worth buying the book for that alone.
By contrast, the fiction-based parts don't work so well. This is odd, as Nahin includes as appendices two published science fiction stories he wrote in the 70s, which are both very readable, if a little stiff by modern standards. He knows how fiction works. Yet what's missing from the sections on the science fiction approach to time travel is any sense of narrative - we are overwhelmed with example after example (which require repeated checking of the footnotes) of every tiny variant in the portrayal of time travel - it's a factual overload, where a lot fewer examples with more detail and exploration of what's behind them might have worked far better.
I was also a little horrified by the grey-background end sections of each chapter, which ask the reader questions, supposedly to help them probe their understanding of what has come before, in what felt a very condescending, back to school, style. These might work for some, but I hated them.
The good news, then, is that you get two books for the price of one, and the physics of time travel one is really interesting, but as a single entity it didn't work well for me.
July 27, 2018
I really wanted to like this, but I was honestly a bit disappointed.
I've really enjoyed Nahin's other books, starting with "An Imaginary Tale" and I was hoping this would be similar but it wasn't.
(1) No equations. I actually LIKE equations!
(2) Too much fiction and not enough science. I was hoping for more discussion of the physics of time travel and less discussion of all the different science fiction stories which have used time travel.
(3) Writing is a bit choppy. Overall it felt a bit disorganized, jumping a bit from topic to topic without a clear flow.
I did learn about "closed timelike curves". I had heard the term before but didn't understand it.
Essentially these are solutions to the equations of general relativity that allow traveling backward in time and are the only scientifically accepted way to accomplish this.
Nahin uses this to argue that any time machine would have to move in space AND time.
He also further asserts that scientifically accurate time travel
(1) Can't CHANGE the past
(2) If it does change the past it has to be in a parallel universe
I've really enjoyed Nahin's other books, starting with "An Imaginary Tale" and I was hoping this would be similar but it wasn't.
(1) No equations. I actually LIKE equations!
(2) Too much fiction and not enough science. I was hoping for more discussion of the physics of time travel and less discussion of all the different science fiction stories which have used time travel.
(3) Writing is a bit choppy. Overall it felt a bit disorganized, jumping a bit from topic to topic without a clear flow.
I did learn about "closed timelike curves". I had heard the term before but didn't understand it.
Essentially these are solutions to the equations of general relativity that allow traveling backward in time and are the only scientifically accepted way to accomplish this.
Nahin uses this to argue that any time machine would have to move in space AND time.
He also further asserts that scientifically accurate time travel
(1) Can't CHANGE the past
(2) If it does change the past it has to be in a parallel universe
August 29, 2024
very cool book, it was somehow exactly what i was looking for with time travel: all the crazy theories, with their arguments, roughly, in one place. not to be taken toooo seriously though, lots of things were proven wrong, or "loosely" wrong, but this book is definitely a physicist's (or amateur's) version of fan-fic.
loved it.
loved it.
September 12, 2022
Well thought out and we’ll explained although surprisingly technical in parts that sort of bog it down.
November 28, 2022
Not comprehensive or always well ordered, though it does consider a wide range of science fiction that has drawn upon time travel. Some repetition of concepts. However, there is a good fair attempt throughout to consider all the potential ideas for time travel without either too much hopeful attachment or cynical ridicule. Time travel paradoxes, bootstrap, and bilking paradoxes, Dirac Radios, Godel closed causal time loops, Tipler cylinders, Alcubierre warp drives are some of the things on offer. All well considered with a range of science fiction examples, some weak, some strong, and in relation to what the actual science offers us as realistic possibilities.
The true effects of special, general relativity and quantum theory and quantum gravity in relation to the possible options are all considered. Block Universe, Faster than light time travel, quantum foam expansion, and making use of the casimir effect. Also, the philosophical and logical implications are considered quite deeply and many philosophers perspectives on the problem of time travel are referred to.
My only significant qualm is that there is very limited reference to Philip K Dicks approach and the idea of alternate time lines. Neither to the idea of time as something which only exists in the moment, with all past decaying (A concept pursued by Clifford Simak in Time in is the simplest thing, and by Stephen King in the Langoliers.) His argument for avoiding this latter is because of the block universe predominance, but this perspective is questioned by recent theoretical physicists such as Lee Smolin who argue for the reality of time, and of the potential that even Einstein's notion of the relativity of simultaneity is mistaken, bearing in mind that quantum entanglement itself goes against this notion. In these cases time travel would take on a much "spookier" feel perhaps, and this was why he wanted to avoid them maybe, but they could be the reality nevertheless. In general here his attachment is to a spacetime materialist conception of the universe which sees time conventionally as the 4th dimension. And so little is even talked about of comparing time to entropy, another source of potential interesting ideas. (He does talk on entropy a little bit and the idea of reversing times direction, but not with the kind of serious consideration or depth that this could actually be the reality of what time is that I have already read on this particular topic with people like Lee Smolin, Julian Barbour and Sean Carroll. Though to be fair some of their books, certainly Barbours, "The Janus Point", and Smolin's "Time Reborn" were written after this book)
The true effects of special, general relativity and quantum theory and quantum gravity in relation to the possible options are all considered. Block Universe, Faster than light time travel, quantum foam expansion, and making use of the casimir effect. Also, the philosophical and logical implications are considered quite deeply and many philosophers perspectives on the problem of time travel are referred to.
My only significant qualm is that there is very limited reference to Philip K Dicks approach and the idea of alternate time lines. Neither to the idea of time as something which only exists in the moment, with all past decaying (A concept pursued by Clifford Simak in Time in is the simplest thing, and by Stephen King in the Langoliers.) His argument for avoiding this latter is because of the block universe predominance, but this perspective is questioned by recent theoretical physicists such as Lee Smolin who argue for the reality of time, and of the potential that even Einstein's notion of the relativity of simultaneity is mistaken, bearing in mind that quantum entanglement itself goes against this notion. In these cases time travel would take on a much "spookier" feel perhaps, and this was why he wanted to avoid them maybe, but they could be the reality nevertheless. In general here his attachment is to a spacetime materialist conception of the universe which sees time conventionally as the 4th dimension. And so little is even talked about of comparing time to entropy, another source of potential interesting ideas. (He does talk on entropy a little bit and the idea of reversing times direction, but not with the kind of serious consideration or depth that this could actually be the reality of what time is that I have already read on this particular topic with people like Lee Smolin, Julian Barbour and Sean Carroll. Though to be fair some of their books, certainly Barbours, "The Janus Point", and Smolin's "Time Reborn" were written after this book)
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews