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The Accidental Time Machine | 
 enlarge | Author: Joe Haldeman
Publisher: Ace
Category: Book
List Price: $7.99
Buy New: $4.35
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Avg. Customer Rating:  53 reviews
Sales Rank: 1543
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 288
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.3
Dimensions (in): 6.6 x 4.2 x 1.1
ISBN: 0441016162
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780441016167
ASIN: 0441016162
Publication Date: July 29, 2008 (New: Last 30 Days)
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Product Description
NOW IN PAPERBACK-FROM THE AUTHOR OF MARSBOUND
Grad- school dropout Matt Fuller is toiling as a lowly research assistant at MIT when he inadvertently creates a time machine. With a dead-end job and a girlfriend who left him for another man, Matt has nothing to lose in taking a time-machine trip himselfor so he thinks.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 48 more reviews...
 Great time travel story August 14, 2008
Is time travel possible? This book provides one scenario where it just might be. Perhaps a defective component will usher us into time travel, and Joe Haldeman does a great job of reducing tough technical ideas into easy to read words. My only compliant is not fully describing how and who the person was who traveled back in time to bail Matt out of jail. If this was necessary to traveling further in time, then why was it not necessary at the end of the book? Minor issue for a great science fiction work.
 Apalling Mishmash July 18, 2008
3 out of 6 found this review helpful
Where oh where to begin with this potboiler? Well, for starters, an MIT grad school student happens to invent a time machine. a device purposely vague as to looks or operation. It can only send to the future whatever is attached to it via metal (lol) and each trip is increasingly further. Think 1 second, 7 seconds, 1 minute, 1 day, 1 week, etc. At least this way the author does not have to offer details on either the device OR the science behind it.
Matt must be the luckiest inventor on Earth because he appears in a state of chaotic inebriation most of the time when not welding his time machine in a few hours from "parts at the university." (Yes, you read correctly.)He jumps ahead a few days, gets arrested & released by a mystery man from...the future??? He's charged with theft yet given a million dollar bail - go figure!
Dissecting the "plot" is a dreaded but necessary task. Matt jumps 177 years and finds an 18th century America with dashes of super-duper technology. The Eastern seaboard, that bastion of evangelicalism (lol), has accepted the Second Coming. Yes, Jesus floated down from heaven into the Oval Office, stoping a "civil war" (reasons undisclosed) and worked a few miracles. So states where less than 25% attend church once a month discard modern civilization and revert 1,000 years to a Holy Roman Empire, New World style. MIT is now reborn (sorry) as Mass Inst of Theosopy. The only books one can find are stunted histories or Bibles. I half-expected the citizens to speak in King James style. For some reason, electricity, running water and the like have disappeared.
Our hero meets a cute, young virgin who babbles constantly about Jesus and then he meets the man himself. "Jesus", a hologram, acts tough but as Matt takes further leaps in time, Jesus begins appearaing in his and his paramour's dreams "so they can't trace him" -LOLOL- offering advice, warnings and the like. You get the idea that "Jesus" is really a time traveler from the future. Finally. Matt & gal pal are allowed to go "back" but he must choose: Exact Location or Exact Time. It's the height of absurdity since "Jesus" & pals have not had any trouble finding him whenever and wherever they wanted. The couple chooses location and arrives at MIT...only it's circa late 19th century. Of course Matt knows all the science and rises from janitor to professor. Gal pal instantly adapts to this new age and admits that she is no longer a believer - an admission that one could have guessed on first meeting. If the author was attempting a comical Handmaid's Tale, it was a success. If he seriously thought his depiction of a theocracy served as a warning, he was seriously mistaken. My Grade - D (for unplanned humor)
 Great July 15, 2008
If you're looking for the best science fiction has to offer, then look no further than Joe Haldeman. In The Accidental Time Machine we meetthe college drop-out now MIT assitant named Matt Fuller. Discovering a simple machine he built was the final part of Prof. Marsh's larger experiment. He later takes the machine home so he can experiment further with it. Well, it didn't take long for him to see if he would be able to teleport with the machine. This is a great book, and one I recommend every science fiction fan should read.
For those who would like to learn more on the topic I'd recommend Time Snatchers by Hines Lenard F. Time Snatchers
 Reasonably good July 11, 2008
The Accidental Time Machine is a reasonably good science fiction adventure that suffers at times from being a bit uninspired. Let me first say that I only dip my toes in the water of science fiction. I prefer to stay grounded in reality or something resembling reality in most of my reading.
As the title suggests, a student accidentally discovers time travel. However, he can only move forward and each time he does, he makes a bigger jump. At first, he simply experiments with the device, but after a jump of 6 days, he winds up in jail, and is forced by circumstances to make another jump to save himself.
The plot is every bit as good as advertised. It's fast paced and doesn't linger too long in one scene. However, the characters are a bit dull and lifeless. In a good book, the reader can put him or herself in the shoes of the characters and experience the story with them. I just found it was hard to relate to the people in this book. After a hopeful start, I merely found this average reading.
An Entertaining Trip July 5, 2008
I really liked this book. I finished it in two days. It would have been a stay up all night book, but being 38 and a mom I can't afford to do that any more. I just found it very entertaining. I loved the glimpses I got of MIT and its imagined future. I just wish he had spent more time in each of his futures.
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