Time Travel discussion

but unfortunately (or maybe fortunately), we can only move forward and we can't control the speed. Thus, it is very appealing to read about and wonder about having the ability to move forward and backward with some control and even pause Time's movement.
For me, my introduction in books was reading Wells' The Time machine after seeing the old movie version.

Yes. We are all travelers in forward moving time. However there are ways to travel individually both forward and backward in time. Just using our thought process and imagination can take us in either direction. We can also remember things that have happened to us in the past. These processes are used all the time to help us plan for the future and heal the present. I actually believe that time travel is possible. We just need to broaden our focus from purely scientific to include spirituality and the life energy that connects us all. There are some that believe that our DNA contains all the information from the beginning of humanity. I wrote a book that attempts to access this route to enable time travel or at least go beyond science and pure fantasy.

Invisible Footprints in Time?
www.irwinwislesky.com

I had a science-fiction book called 'Good Vibrations' up on Amazon Kindle for ten years. I only got three reviews in that time, all of them five stars, which was gratifying but sparse. Yesterday, I found a fourth 'review' of two stars, the new 'average' shown was 3.7 stars. When I went to look at the review--why the reviewer was so critical of my story--there was nothing to be seen. 'All reviews' showed only the three five-star ratings I had received. There was even a click for reviews with different numbers of stars, but 'two-star' turned up nothing. It was 'invisible.'

The bar chart that shows how many 5, 4, 3, 2, and 1-star reviews showed two bars, one at the 5-star and one at the 2-star levels. According to the chart the two-star review was counted as 43% of my reviews (???) and all the rest were 57%. I figure one out of four to be 25%, but that's not what Amazon shows on the page for my book and the impact of that bad review is disproportionately high. Mysteriously high, I might say.

If that bar chart is a mirror of customer ratings, it seems that yesterday's reviewer does not cast a reflection. In another genre, a character in that category would be called 'vampire.' It feels a little like that to me, now. Has anybody else experienced this?

Amazon now allows people who purchase a book to leave Star Ratings without a text review. That's what happened to your book.

The rest of your question is algorithm-based. Older reviews "degrade" in influence over time, while recent reviews exert more influence. So, the new review is weighted much heavier than those reviews from years ago.

Hi Patrick - What Shawn says is correct. One other factor: is it possible that two people left 2-star reviews without text?

In any case, there's no accounting for people's taste. The best you can do in response to a poor review is channel that energy into doing more writing.