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Time Machines: Time Travel in Physics, Metaphysics, and Science Fiction
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.0876209384
EAN: 9780387985718
Edition: 2nd
ISBN: 0387985719
Label: Springer
Manufacturer: Springer
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 628
Publication Date: April 20, 2001
Publisher: Springer
Studio: Springer
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Editorial Review:
From reviews of the first edition:
"Here's a gem of a book...all peppered with delightful notes from science fiction films, novels, and comics. I can't turn a page without finding a jewel."
Clifford Stoll, University of California, Berkeley (author of "The Cuckoo's Egg")
From the Foreword by Kip Thorne (author of "Black Holes and Time Warps"):
"In browsing this revised edition, I have been struck by the richness and complexity of the tapestry of ideas that Nahin presents. His interweaving of physics and fiction is done adeptly and keeps the book flowing.... Like a good journalist, Nahin simply reports what he sees in the physics and science fiction literature, commenting lucidly and often pointedly on the interconnections, contradictions, and controversies, but leaving it to his readers to form their own final judgments.... Nahin's book, with its complex tapestry of ideas and possibilities, may well remain the most readable and complete treatise on time travel in science and science fiction."
Time Machines explores the idea of time travel from the first account in English literature to the latest theories of physicists such as Kip Thorne and Igor Novikov. This fascinating and very accessible book covers a variety of topics including the history of time travel in fiction; the fundamental scientific concepts of time, space-time, and the fourth dimension; the speculations of Einstein, Richard Feynman, Kurt Goedel, and others; time travel paradoxes, and much more. The new edition is substantially enlarged and updated throughout.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Suffers from being written by a nonscientist
While Nahin is certainly to be admired for attempting to tackle so great a concept as time travel, one needs to approach his resulting product with great caution.
A full discussion of time travel should include the following elements:
1) A presentation of the various arrows of time and a discussion of their fact like or law like nature, by way illustration being:
1 a) The perceptual arrow of time or time as percieved by the human observer. Interestingly enough, ... Read More
Rating: - Awfully weak
I got the second edition (1999) of this book. I was hoping for something interesting. After all, there was even a forward by none other than Kip Thorne!
But this book was an awful disappointment. First, Nahin did his readers no favor by utterly failing to understand the writings of Hospers. On pages 289-290 and elsewhere, Nahin criticizes Hospers strongly, but Nahin is seriously in error. For one thing, Nahin claims that Hospers says that one can not go back in time while Nahin says it ... Read More
Rating:  - Too much compilation, too little synthesis
Mr. Nahin obviously is very interested in the topic of time travel. He has read tons of sci-fi stories, has spoken with many physicists and/or read their books.
But he is a journalist, not a physicist. And he makes little or even no effort to synthesise.
As a result the book reads mostly like a list of everything that has been written by sci-fi writers, scientists and philosophers about the subject. But not like a book by someone who truly understands what is going on - provided it is possible ... Read More
Rating:  - A very good discussion of time travel, one error of omission
As I have always been fascinated by the idea of time travel, I very much enjoyed its discussion both in 'strictly scientific' terms and from a philosophical, literary, and, essential, pop-culture perspective.
Sadly, Nahin completely ignores one aspect that features prominently in many modern time travel narratives: the idea of alternate universes / alternate realities and, tied to that, the narrative perspective of sequentiality, which follows the POV of the protagonist of a narrative and projects ... Read More
Rating: - A good discussion of time travel, with one error of omission
As I have always been fascinated by the idea of time travel, I very much enjoyed its discussion both in 'strictly scientific' terms and from a philosophical, literary, and, essentially, pop-culture perspective.
Sadly, Nahin completely ignores one aspect that features prominently in many modern time travel narratives: the idea of alternate universes / alternate realities and, tied to that, the narrative perspective of sequentiality, which follows the POV of the protagonist and projects his continuity ... Read More
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