Helpful Score: 7
In general I don't care for time travel stories, but this one was different, involving a machine that jumps exponentially further into the future each time it is used...and since it only goes forward, the story avoids what I think are rather dull and overwrought takes on traveling into the past and the attending problems. The book is rather fast paced, and somewhat tame compared to most of Haldeman's work, but well done, with a central character out of classic hard science fiction. This is the twenty-fifth book I've read by Haldeman, and I wasn't disappointed.
Helpful Score: 4
This is a very fun time travel story.
Quick synopsis: Matt Nagle is a graduate student at MIT. While building a gravitron emitter he accidentally creates a device that shoots you into the future. Matt soon finds out that the box only moves one way and every jump he makes takes him 12 times farther into the future than the last jump. While jumping forward Matt also accidentally gets blamed for a murder and has to find a way to get back to his original time and undo all the messes he keeps creating.
This is a very fun, sweet adventure story and Haldeman creates several believable future civilizations. A quick and entertaining read I highly recommend it.
Quick synopsis: Matt Nagle is a graduate student at MIT. While building a gravitron emitter he accidentally creates a device that shoots you into the future. Matt soon finds out that the box only moves one way and every jump he makes takes him 12 times farther into the future than the last jump. While jumping forward Matt also accidentally gets blamed for a murder and has to find a way to get back to his original time and undo all the messes he keeps creating.
This is a very fun, sweet adventure story and Haldeman creates several believable future civilizations. A quick and entertaining read I highly recommend it.
Helpful Score: 2
A fun time travel novel. The problem with many scifi time travel novels is, the farther you go into the future, the more bleak, lonely & alienated the main character seems, witnessing humans & the planet dying or changing to the point they are unrecognizable. While this does happen in the Accidental Time Machine, the tone is not so depressing.
Matt Fuller is an easygoing character & there is alot of humor in the book. Some parts seem to poke fun at modern culture (e.g. the repressive theocracy and the Ebay-like society, which seemed a direct jab at the stereotype of modern-day Americans). Another thing I appreciated is that Matt has companions traveling through time with him, so he seems a less tragic character.
Joe Haldeman is a master at writing enjoyable sci-fi time travel. Forever War is another good time travel by him. It is more serious than this book and has more action and drama, but is a very thoughtful and enjoyable story.
Matt Fuller is an easygoing character & there is alot of humor in the book. Some parts seem to poke fun at modern culture (e.g. the repressive theocracy and the Ebay-like society, which seemed a direct jab at the stereotype of modern-day Americans). Another thing I appreciated is that Matt has companions traveling through time with him, so he seems a less tragic character.
Joe Haldeman is a master at writing enjoyable sci-fi time travel. Forever War is another good time travel by him. It is more serious than this book and has more action and drama, but is a very thoughtful and enjoyable story.
This book somehow just didn't do it for me. The story started out with a lot of potential. A graduate assistant at MIT builds a machine that's supposed to do something fairly mundane, but he discovers that because of some error he made the machine actually travels through time. He sets off trying to figure out how and why this is happening. Except the story kind of falls apart halfway through. It gets out of hand and ridiculous and boring. This book really isn't worth your time to read.
Enjoyable book about an accidental time machine that can only move forward in time. Desperate to get back to his own time, Matt Fuller hopes each jump forward in time will be to a future in which they'll somehow be able to figure out how to get him back to his own time.
Fun read!
A quick and entertaining read. Doesn't get too bogged down in physics and techno-babel. Haldeman has an interesting view of the future and man's progress through the ages.
A quirky but wonderful story written in a breezy style, this story captured me immediately and kept me glued to the book until the final pages. A great fun read, highly recommended!
A down on his luck graduate student working as a lab assistant at MIT discovers that a machine he is working on travels through time. Many adventures ensue. Enjoyable read.
Very interesting concept. I liked the science fiction principles of the book at its core. It was however marred by a lot of language and sexual talk. Even though misled, I could get through the odd treatment of Christian views based on the varied way that people interpret their beliefs. If the core sci-fi of the book wasn't as good as it was I would have (like other reviewers) put the book down much sooner but I needed to know how it ended.
A thrill-ride adventure, that manages to teach some lessons about where we might be headed.
I stopped this book because it contained more language than i like to read - but the concept was great. If language does not bother you, i recommend it on the basis of the pages I got through.
