Time Machines: Science or Fiction?

Abstract

472 SCIENCE FICTION STUDIES, VOLUME 47 (2020) BOOKS IN REVIEW Time Machines: Science or Fiction? Damien Broderick. The Time Machine Hypothesis: Extreme Science Meets Science Fiction. Cham, Switzerland: Springer, 2019. xiii+243 pp. €23,91 pbk, €18,18 ebk. Time-travel fiction is perennially one of the most popular sf subgenres, offering audiences the excitement of endless possibilities and seemingly plausible science that perhaps is close to realization in the real world. The relationship between science and fiction in time-travel narratives remains muddled, however, due to the highly technical and speculative nature of time machines. Sf writers often get as much of the science wrong as they get right, but even physicists ardently debate how time machines might work or if they are even possible. In The Time Machine Hypothesis: Extreme Science Meets Science Fiction, Damien Broderick examines the relationship between science and some of the most celebrated time-travel sf. This is an enlightening look at some of the hard science behind time-travel hypotheses as well as a comprehensive catalogue of some of the most salient works of time-travel sf, arranged chronologically. Despite some truly interesting sections about theoretical science and explications of beloved time-travel stories, the overall organization of the book is disjointed, and the stories selected for discussion are somewhat random and do not build upon each other the way one might expect of a chronological overview of a particular subgenre. The work is divided into three major sections. The first, “Spacetime Time,” recounts scientific theory related to time travel. It contains four chapters that look at subjects such as black holes, tachyons, quantum theory, and other relevant phenomena related to the possibility of time travel. The second section, “Time Machine Time,” constitutes the main section of the volume and contains chapters divided roughly by decade. The final section, “A Thought Experiment Is Not a Theory,” contains a single chapter that discusses supposed instances of contact between twentieth- and twenty-first-century humans, and of alien or human time-travelers from the future, including a lengthy look at the 1917 “Miracle of the Sun” incident in Fátima, Portugal. The volume concludes with an entertaining time-travel short story by Broderick that serves as an appendix. Part 1 serves as the basis for the volume by explaining the complicated science behind time travel. Broderick cogently reviews the findings of Albert Einstein, Richard Phillips Feynman, Stephen Hawking, and other notable scientists whose work at least supports the possibility of time travel, however unlikely it may be. As Broderick writes, “I present the Time Machine Hypothesis here as entertainment, as speculation, an exercise in following both current science and science fiction into the realm of the (barely) possible. If valid, though, it implies that future civilizations will one day master time travel” (14). While this first section is informative, the fiction that Broderick later discusses barely comes into consideration, and long passages of text throughout these opening chapters make no reference to sf at all. 473 BOOKS IN REVIEW When Broderick does turn his attention to fiction in Part 2, he leaves out a lot of the science that he discussed in Part 1. As a result, the two sections are too independent of each other to establish cohesion. It is difficult not to compare this work to Paul J. Nahin’s similar book, Time Machine Tales: The Science Fiction Adventures and Philosophical Puzzles of Time Travel, published by Springer in 2017, which deftly combines literary analysis with science. In Part 2, Broderick offers a comprehensive survey of time-travel sf. This section takes a compelling look at the many different paradoxes, sub-subgenres, recurring motifs, and plotlines that make time-travel narratives so vibrant. The first chapter of this section focuses largely on the 1940s, though it does discuss a few other works going back to H.G. Wells’s The Time Machine (1895). Each subsequent chapter focuses on a single decade from the 1950s through the 2010s and each decade has its own theme. For each work examined, Broderick offers a synopsis of the plot followed by some brief analysis. This section makes up the bulk of the volume and Broderick skillfully comments...