European University Institute Library

Time travel, a history, James Gleick

Label
Time travel, a history, James Gleick
Language
eng
Bibliography note
Includes bibliographical references and index
Illustrations
illustrations
Index
index present
Literary Form
non fiction
Main title
Time travel
Nature of contents
bibliography
Oclc number
962356501
Responsibility statement
James Gleick
Sub title
a history
Summary
Gleick's story begins at the turn of the twentieth century with the young H.G. Wells writing and rewriting the fantastic tale that became his first book, an international sensation, The Time Machine. A host of forces were converging to transmute the human understanding of time, some philosophical and some technological--the electric telegraph, the steam railroad, the discovery of buried civilisations, and the perfection of clocks. Gleick tracks the evolution of time travel as an idea in the culture--from Marcel Proust to Doctor Who, from Woody Allen to Jorge Luis Borges. He explores the inevitable looping paradoxes and examines the porous boundary between pulp fiction and modern physics. Finally, he delves into a temporal shift that is unsettling our own moment: the instantaneous wired world, with its all-consuming present and vanishing future.--, Provided by Publisher
Table Of Contents
Machine -- Fin de siècle -- Philosophers and pulps -- Ancient light -- By your bootstraps -- Arrow of time -- A river, a path, a maze -- Eternity -- Buried time -- Backward -- The paradoxes -- What is time? -- Our only boat -- Presently
Target audience
adult
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