Time Travel for Beginners – Mary & John Gribbin ****

Although this is a children’s (or more accurately young adults’) book, it works reasonably well for adults too who want a basic overview of the science of time travel. It clearly is aimed at the teen market – it has biggish print, large line spacing and some rather gratuitous illustrations – but it also provides a very effective introduction to the basic physics of time travel.

After a quick introduction to relativity and quantum theory – the basics for any time travel device, the Gribbins plunge into time machines that work by dragging space-time, and time machines based on wormholes. I’m not sure they get wormholes quite right – the wormhole described here is bi-directional, implying it’s a pair of black holes rather than a black hole and a white hole, so it’s not quite obvious how you ever get out of it. But that apart, the basics are fine.

Most young readers will find it fascinating that time machines are not physically impossible, just very, very difficult to build, and the book should do well if the right people get hold of it. My only worry there is that to be old enough to understand this book, you probably will be able to read adult popular science. And if you are reading adult popular science, you probably won’t want a book from ‘Hodder Children’s Books’ that looks like a kid’s book, even though the text is, as mentioned, entirely suitable for a beginner adult.

I also found the last section, which woffles on about sum over histories for time travel a little confusing, as if the authors felt they had to include it, but weren’t sure quite what to do with it.

Overall, though, an effective introduction to the science of time travel.

Paperback:

Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you

Review by Brian Clegg

Comments

Luna: Moon Rising (SF) - Ian McDonald ****

I'm not the natural audience for this book. Game of Thrones l eaves me cold - and it's hard not to feel the influence of GoT (and a whole lot of Dune ) underneath a veneer of science fiction and the trappings of a South American drug cartel in the cod-medieval family power battles and chivalric details. There are even dragons (of a sort). I'd be really sad if the future did involve this sort of throwback feudalism. However, remarkably, despite this I found Luna: Moon Rising kept me engaged. The fact is that Ian McDonald can put together a good plot with intricate machinations, which is enough to carry the reader through what can be a bewildering collection of characters. The two page scene-setter saying who did what to whom at the start was useful, but I could have done with family trees for the main family as I was constantly forgetting who was who - especially easy as McDonald endows many families with characters with the same first initial (e.g. Ariel and Al...

Adventures of a Computational Explorer - Stephen Wolfram ***

Stephen Wolfram, the man behind the scientist's mathematical tool of choice, Mathematica, plus a whole host of other software products, including the uncanny Wolfram Alpha knowledge engine, is undoubtedly a genius of the first order. In this book, we get an uncensored excursion into the mind of genius - which is, without doubt, a fascinating prospect. The book consists of a collection of essays and speeches that Wolfram has produced over the last ten to fifteen years, covering an eclectic range of topics. Like all such collections, the result is something that lacks the coherence of a book with a narrative that runs through it, inevitably introducing a degree of repetition and a mix of interesting and not-so-interesting topics - but there's likely to be something to catch the attention anyone who is into computing or mathematics. One of the most interesting pieces is the opening one, where Wolfram describes being a consultant on the SF movie Arrival. He seems to hav...

E=mc2: A biography of the world’s most famous equation – David Bodanis *****

David Bodanis is a storyteller, and he fulfils this role with flair in E=mc2. The premise of the book is simple – Einstein himself has been biographed (biographised?) to death, but no one has picked out this most famous of equations, dusted it down and told us what it means, where it comes from and what it has delivered. Allegedly, Bodanis was inspired to write the book after hearing see an interview with actress Cameron Diaz in which she commented that she’d really like to know what that famous collection of letters was all about. Although the book had been around for a while already when this review was written (September 2005), it seemed a very apt moment to cover it, as the equation is, as I write, exactly 100 years old. So when better to have a biography? Bodanis starts off by telling us about the individual elements of the equation. What the different letters mean, where the equal sign comes from and so on. This is entertaining, though he seems to tire of the approach on...

Search This Blog