Review by Booklist Review
"Since H. G. Wells' heyday, the time travel scenario has undergone so much variation that it's easy to envision the river of ideas finally running dry. But here the ever-inventive Haldeman offers a new twist: a device that travels in one direction only, to the future. Lowly MIT research assistant Matt Fuller toils away in a physics lab until one day he makes an odd discovery. A sensitive quantum calibrator keeps disappearing and reappearing moments later when he hits the reset button. With a little tinkering, Matt realizes that the device functions as a crude, forward-traveling time machine. With visions of Nobel Prizes dancing in his head, he latches it to a car and leaps into the future. The interesting wrinkle here is that each jump ahead is 12 times longer than the last. Matt's successive futures involve jail time, unwelcome celebrity, and assorted holocausts in the earth's climate. He begins to long for his native era. As usual, Haldeman's ingenuity delivers cutting-edge technological speculation and irresistibly compelling reading."--"Hays, Carl" Copyright 2007 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Hugo-winner Haldeman's skillful writing makes this unusually thoughtful and picaresque tale shine. Matt Fuller, a likable underachiever stuck as a lab assistant at a near-future MIT, is startled when the calibrator he built begins disappearing and reappearing, jumping forward in time for progressively longer intervals. Curiosity and some unfortunate accidents send Matt through a series of vividly described, wryly imagined futures where he gradually becomes more adaptable and resourceful as experiences hone his character. The young woman he rescues from a techno-religious dictatorship gives him a chance at a mature relationship, while teaming up with an AI that intends to press on to the end of time forces him to decide what he wants from life. Rather than being a riff on H.G. Wells's The Time Machine, this novel is closer in tone to Neil Gaiman's Anansi Boys, another charming yarn about a young man who's forced out of a boring rut. Producing prose that feels this effortless must be hard work, but Haldeman (Camouflage) never breaks a sweat. (Aug.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
In the course of taking measurements during an experiment in quantum physics, research assistant Matt Fuller loses his calibrator, only to have it reappear one second later-after an apparent trip in time. Matt goes on to develop a time machine but finds that claiming to have done so costs more than he anticipates: his job, his girlfriend, and, possibly, his freedom. So he jumps further forward in time and begins a one-way journey into the future, searching for a solution to his problems. Winner of both the Hugo and the Nebula awards, veteran sf author Haldeman (The Forever War; Forever Peace) delivers a succinct cautionary fable while ultimately spinning a humorously thought-provoking tall tale. A good choice for most libraries. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A time-travel yarn in the classic style from Haldeman (A Separate War, 2006, etc.). In 2058, MIT graduate student Matt Fuller realizes that the calibrator he's built is actually a forward-traveling time machine. He tests it with a pet turtle, and then sticks it into a 1956 bright-red Thunderbird and escapes his rather unpromising present. Each time the machine is activated, it travels farther ahead. His first jaunt lands him about a month into the future, where he's faced with a murder charge; subsequent trips, impelled either by simply awkward or by downright dangerous situations, transport him to strange and often unpleasant futures, inhabited by religious fundamentalists, ignorant lotus-eaters or, apparently, by no humans at all. Along with two companions, an innocent young woman and a potentially duplicitous artificial intelligence, Matt persists in his journey, armed with evidence that suggests that just ahead of him lies the means to return to his starting point. A great deal of fun and compulsively readable while it lasts, and it leaves the reader wanting more. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
