The World's Toughest Book Critics ℠
 
Cover art for THE ACCIDENTAL TIME MACHINE
Rate this book:
Loved it
Liked it
Meh...
Don't bother

THE ACCIDENTAL TIME MACHINE

A time-travel yarn in the classic style from Haldeman (A Separate War, 2006, etc.). Read full review
Buy this book from
Buy this book from Amazon
Buy this book from Barnes and Noble
Buy this book from IndieBound
Save for later:
Add to my list
MORE BY JOE HALDEMAN
Cover art for FOREVER FREE
by Joe Haldeman
Cover art for WORLDS ENOUGH AND TIME
by Joe Haldeman
Cover art for FOREVER PEACE
by Joe Haldeman
 
Cover art for THE ALIEN YEARS
by Robert Silverberg
Cover art for THE LONGEST WAY HOME
by Robert Silverberg
Cover art for FREEDOM'S LANDING
by Anne McCaffrey
Cover art for FREEDOM'S CHALLENGE
by Anne McCaffrey
Cover art for SLIPPAGE
by Harlan Ellison
Cover art for THE WHITE WOLF’S SON
by Michael Moorcock
 
THE ACCIDENTAL TIME MACHINE (reviewed on June 15, 2007)

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.


Pub Date: Aug. 7th, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-441-01499-6
Page count: 272pp
Publisher: Ace/Berkley
Review Posted Online: May 20th, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15th, 2007