I just finished Time Travel: A History (2016) by science historian and author James Gleick. The New York Times Book Review, Anthony Doerr described it as, “A fascinating mash-up of philosophy, literary criticism, physics and cultural observation.” I agree with that description minus the word fascinating. I would have said tedious.
This is not the book’s fault. I’m not saying it’s bad. There was nothing I disagreed with. There were even a few parts I got into. The problem is I found it ambling, rambling, and meandering. It wasn’t incoherent, but it seemed disconnected to me.
Overall, I found it easy to put down and hard to pick back up.
One of the great things about science fiction is how it allows an author to explore the human condition in contexts that ordinary fiction cannot. For example, it can explore the idea of immortality. Is boredom a problem? If you are immortal, but others aren’t, what is it like to see everyone you know age and die? Is it as desirable as it seems?
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