Timeline
by Michael Crichton
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Book Summary Information
Author: Michael CrichtonEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2003-11-04
ISBN: 0345468260
Number of pages: 512
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Book Reviews of Timeline
Book Review: Fun to read but nothing holds together (spoilers)
Summary: 2 Stars
Michael Crichton knows how to write a suspenseful book that keeps you on the edge of your seat. But the reader normally expects that the plot will make some sort of sense at the end. A few well-drawn characters would also be a plus. Here the villain is investing billions of dollars in a technology for travel to alternate universes, which just happen to be replaying our past (why this would be so is never explained). Although these are defined as "alternate" universes, somehow someone in that universe is able to leave a message for us in the present at an archaeological site(again, not explained). And while the villain must use elaborate machinery to compress an individual down to his digital essense in order to transmit him along the "quantum foam" into the alternate universe, amazingly enough no machinery is required to recreate the traveler from the digital bits at the other end. Why not? The deus ex machina, of course: as one character "explains," "we happen to have chosen an alternate universe where no machine is required at the other end." What does the villain want to do with this amazing technology in which he has invested billions? Learn something about history? Have people pay multibucks to be sent in to alternate worlds? Nope. He wants to use the historical knowledge he gains to create elaborate historically oriented theme parks in our world, and he's buying up the land around archaeological sites so that he can make money from hotels and restaurants. And, while he's sending people into the past history of one of those sites solely in order to get information needed to recreate archaeological sites for this purpose, the travelers never give the information to the people he's funding to excavate the sites except by accident. Huh? As a result of one such inadvertent disclosure the archaeologist professor in charge of the French site where most of the action takes place goes charging back to the U.S. to confront the billionaire. Somehow, notwithstanding elaborate, multi-level security on the travelling machines, the good professor ends up stranded in the past. No explanation forthcoming. Of course the villain then has to send the archaeologist's team of graduate students into the alternate universe to go rescue him (without warning them that he's left stranded in the same place a former company employee who became a psychopath by riding the quantum foam one too many times). The rest of the novel plays out against this ridiculous, hole-filled scenario. Now that our heroes are back in the past, you'd think we'd get some character development, but no. The one who had previously been obsessed with the past decides to stay there. After getting knocked silly in a tournament and experiencing a few other pain-inducing events, the second male protagonist, a skirt-chasing dilettante, concludes he has never felt as "real" and "authentic" as he does in the past. Since he has thus adequately "matured" he is accepted as a mate by the female graduate student, about whom we learn little. The rest of the plot is just an excuse for a lesson in the history of 14th century France and England, with a lengthy bibliography at the end designed to show us that Crichton is a "serious" writer. The "suspense" in the 14th century has something to do with a hidden passageway into a fortified tower, which everyone is looking for for no apparent reason and which, once it is found, seems to lead to no plot development of any consequence. In sum, if your goal is to get your teenager to learn some history without too much intellectual effort this book is for you. Otherwise, pick up some Barbara Tuchman or for fiction try Connie Willis' Doomsday Book.
Summary of Timeline
In an Arizona desert a man wanders in a daze, speaking words that make no sense. Within twenty-four hours he is dead, his body swiftly cremated by his only known associates. Halfway around the world archaeologists make a shocking discovery at a medieval site. Suddenly they are swept off to the headquarters of a secretive multinational corporation that has developed an astounding technology. Now this group is about to get a chance not to study the past but to enter it. And with history opened to the present, the dead awakened to the living, these men and women will soon find themselves fighting for their very survival?six hundred years ago. . . .When you step into a time machine, fax yourself through a "quantum foam wormhole," and step out in feudal France circa 1357, be very, very afraid. If you aren't strapped back in precisely 37 hours after your visit begins, you'll miss the quantum bus back to 1999 and be stranded in a civil war, caught between crafty abbots, mad lords, and peasant bandits all eager to cut your throat. You'll also have to dodge catapults that hurl sizzling pitch over castle battlements. On the social front, you should avoid provoking "the butcher of Crecy" or Sir Oliver may lop your head off with a swoosh of his broadsword or cage and immerse you in "Milady's Bath," a brackish dungeon pit into which live rats are tossed now and then for prisoners to eat.
This is the plight of the heroes of Timeline, Michael Crichton's thriller. They're historians in 1999 employed by a tech billionaire-genius with more than a few of Bill Gates's most unlovable quirks. Like the entrepreneur in Crichton's Jurassic Park, Doniger plans a theme park featuring artifacts from a lost world revived via cutting-edge science. When the project's chief historian sends a distress call to 1999 from 1357, the boss man doesn't tell the younger historians the risks they'll face trying to save him. At first, the interplay between eras is clever, but Timeline swiftly becomes a swashbuckling old-fashioned adventure, with just a dash of science and time paradox in the mix. Most of the cool facts are about the Middle Ages, and Crichton marvelously brings the past to life without ever letting the pulse-pounding action slow down. At one point, a time-tripper tries to enter the Chapel of Green Death. Unfortunately, its custodian, a crazed giant with terrible teeth and a bad case of lice, soon has her head on a block. "She saw a shadow move across the grass as he raised his ax into the air." I dare you not to turn the page!
Through the narrative can be glimpsed the glowing bones of the movie that may be made from Timeline and the cutting-edge computer game that should hit the market in 2000. Expect many clashing swords and chase scenes through secret castle passages. But the book stands alone, tall and scary as a knight in armor shining with blood. --Tim Appelo
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