The Accidental Time Machine

by Joe Haldeman

Overview

NOW IN PAPERBACK-FROM THE AUTHOR OF MARSBOUND

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781440635656
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	07/29/2008
Sold by:	Penguin Group
Format:	eBook
Pages:	288
Sales rank:	188,865
File size:	855 KB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Joe Haldeman is a Vietnam veteran whose classic novels The Forever War and Forever Peace both have the rare honor of winning the Hugo and Nebula Awards. He has served twice as president of the Science Fiction Writers of America and is currently an adjunct professor teaching writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Editorial Reviews

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. (Aug.)

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Publishers Weekly

In the course of taking measurements during an experiment in quantum physics, research assistant Matt Fuller loses his calibrator, only to have it reappear one second later-after an apparent trip in time. Matt goes on to develop a time machine but finds that claiming to have done so costs more than he anticipates: his job, his girlfriend, and, possibly, his freedom. So he jumps further forward in time and begins a one-way journey into the future, searching for a solution to his problems. Winner of both the Hugo and the Nebula awards, veteran sf author Haldeman (The Forever War; Forever Peace) delivers a succinct cautionary fable while ultimately spinning a humorously thought-provoking tall tale. A good choice for most libraries.

—Jackie Cassada

Library Journal

A time-travel yarn in the classic style from Haldeman (A Separate War, 2006, etc.). In 2058, MIT graduate student Matt Fuller realizes that the calibrator he's built is actually a forward-traveling time machine. He tests it with a pet turtle, and then sticks it into a 1956 bright-red Thunderbird and escapes his rather unpromising present. Each time the machine is activated, it travels farther ahead. His first jaunt lands him about a month into the future, where he's faced with a murder charge; subsequent trips, impelled either by simply awkward or by downright dangerous situations, transport him to strange and often unpleasant futures, inhabited by religious fundamentalists, ignorant lotus-eaters or, apparently, by no humans at all. Along with two companions, an innocent young woman and a potentially duplicitous artificial intelligence, Matt persists in his journey, armed with evidence that suggests that just ahead of him lies the means to return to his starting point. A great deal of fun and compulsively readable while it lasts, and it leaves the reader wanting more.

Kirkus Reviews

An MIT researcher manages to build a time machine in his basement one evening after his girlfriend dumps him for another man. Haldeman's homage to H.G. Wells's classic is equally visionary and filled with incredible plot twists, the most unusual of which is that Fuller discovers his time machine only goes into the future. Narrator Kevin Free reads in a voice that makes Fuller an average guy listeners can relate to despite his remarkable job. Free takes listeners to futuristic worlds, each as dangerous and foreboding as the last, and never sounds disconnected from the story. A fun adventure. L.B. © AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine

NOVEMBER 2008 - AudioFile