Time Travel: A Writer's Guide to the Real Science of Plausible Time Travel (Science Fiction Writing Series) [Paperback]

Paul J. Nahin (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1997

Time Travel explains science to help you make your fiction plausible. You'll leave for the future from a solid theoretical launching pad - and you'll see why the idea of traveling to the past violates no known laws of physics. Time Travel explores the theories of relativity, shows you the equations, probes the marvelous possibilities. It's filled with facts you can use in your fiction to cross the filmy borders and take readers along the corridors of time.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

When Kurt Vonnegut needed protagonist Billy Pilgrim to time-travel in Slaughterhouse Five, he simply had him become "unstuck" in time--still perhaps the most poetic way to trip the chronological fantastic yet devised in literature. But electric engineering professor and science fiction writer Paul Nahin doesn't want you taking short cuts in your epoch-journeying yarns--at least, not because you were lazy about research. Subtitled A Writer's Guide to the Real Science of Plausible Time Travel, this is a tasty blend of quantum theory, worm holes, causal loops, and the famous "grandfather paradox"--the better to sell your heroine's time-skipping to even the most skeptical suspender of disbelief.

Review

It's a very nice summary of the subject, but it really shouldn't be marketed just to writers. I can easily see it being used in a high school physics class, with the frequent mention of SF stories helping to make the physics and math involved very accessible. -- Analog, Tom Easton

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Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: Writer's Digest Books; illustrated edition edition (March 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0898797489
• ISBN-13: 978-0898797480
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,270,416 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Paul Nahin was born in California, and did all his schooling there (Brea-Olinda High 1958, Stanford BS 1962, Caltech MS 1963, and - as a Howard Hughes Staff Doctoral Fellow - UC/Irvine PhD 1972, with all degrees in electrical engineering). (The lovely lady in the photo is his wife of 49 years, Patricia.) He worked as a digital logic designer and radar systems engineer in the Southern California aerospace industry until 1971, when he started his academic career. He has taught at Harvey Mudd College, the Naval Postgraduate School, and the Universities of New Hampshire (where he is now emeritus professor of electrical engineering) and Virginia. In between and here-and-there he spent a post-doctoral year at the Naval Research Laboratory, and a summer and a year at the Center for Naval Analyses and the Institute for Defense Analyses as a weapon systems analyst, all in Washington, DC. He has published a couple dozen short science fiction stories in ANALOG, OMNI, and TWILIGHT ZONE magazines, and has written 11 books on mathematics and physics, published by IEEE Press, Springer, and the university presses of Johns Hopkins and Princeton. His new book NUMBER-CRUNCHING was published by Princeton in September 2011, and Johns Hopkins recently reprinted his 1997 book TIME TRAVEL FOR WRITERS. Princeton also released the corrected paperback edition of his 2006 book DR. EULER'S FABULOUS FORMULA earlier in 2011. He has just completed (for Princeton) his next book, THE LOGICIAN AND THE ENGINEER, that treats the works of George Boole and Claude Shannon and how they created the information age (to be published 2012). Two of his other Princeton math books, CHASES & ESCAPES and DUELLING IDIOTS, are scheduled to be reprinted in 2012, each with a new Preface (the one in CHASES includes an analysis of the B-29 Enola Gay's escape maneuver from the blast wave of the atomic bomb drop on Hiroshima). He has given invited talks on mathematics at Bowdoin College, the Claremont Graduate School, the University of Tennessee, and Caltech, has appeared on National Public Radio's "Science Friday" show, and advised Boston's WGBH Public Television's "Nova" program on the script for their time travel episode. He gave the invited Sampson Lectures for 2011 in Mathematics at Bates College (Lewiston, Maine). When he isn't writing he is battling evil-doers on his Xbox360S and, now and then, he even wins. (And he gives a big thumb's up to Valve's terrific PORTAL 2, as well as to the oldie-but-still-goodie original Xbox greats RETURN TO CASTLE WOLFENSTEIN:TIDES OF WAR, CALL OF DUTY 2 and 3, and THIEF:DEADLY SHADOWS!)

FINALLY - readers have written asking about the solutions manual to THE SCIENCE OF RADIO. I now have it in pdf format (3 MB), and if you write to me I'll send you a copy. [e-mail]

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A MUST-READ for anyone interested in real time travel!, June 6, 2002

By 

Phillip A. Sousa (Springfield, MO USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Time Travel: A Writer's Guide to the Real Science of Plausible Time Travel (Science Fiction Writing Series) (Paperback)

I'm a layman when it comes to science, but I was interested in the theories of the reality of time travel. I tried another book (that will remain nameless) which didn't work at all for me. It was just way over my head. This one's great! It's got all of the same kind of information that the first one had, but Nahin is so much more understandable and gets his points across in a much more organized way.

He's literally writing for the lay person here-- the book is intended for writers who would like write science fiction, but want to be scientifically updated on the scientifically possible realities of time travel (both to the past and to the future), teleportation (through wormholes, bending of the 4 dimensions, etc.), the special and general theories of relativity and more. His premise is that science fiction could get away with anything even 50 years ago, when most people and most scientists thought time travel to be impossible, but nowadays, you have to be scientifically sound if you don't want to be laughed out of the literary world. True Sci-fi readers will know if you're legit or not, so Nahin is educating them.

I'm not a writer, but because of the nature of his premise, the book is extremely clear and thus much more informative than the first one ever was. This book even answers questions that I was high-and-dry on before (after reading the first book I picked up). Some of the math may be over the layman's head (some of it's over mine!) and more than you care to know, but he includes a lot of thought-provoking information about the paradoxes of time travel and explains things in pictures very well. He colors his book with quotes and anecdotes from all kinds of works of science fiction and from scientists in the past to make the book fun (and sometimes humorous!).

It's a must-read for anyone interested in the possibilities of time travel and a must-MUST-read for anyone interested in writing a book on anything scientific.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Taking the "fiction" out of SF, January 30, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Time Travel: A Writer's Guide to the Real Science of Plausible Time Travel (Science Fiction Writing Series) (Paperback)

So, you think you'd like to write a story about time travel? If you think it's as easy as writing a fairy tale, read this book. Surprisingly, the theory of time travel lies well within the laws of physics. In this book, Paul J. Nahin explains the basics, the possibilities, the paradoxes, and best of all, common mistakes science fiction writers make when plotting literary courses through time.

Unless you want to leave your editors laughing at your lack of research, read this book. Base your story as much in real science as you can. Also, check out Nahin's Time Machines, for more information.

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Read this book!, April 4, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Time Travel: A Writer's Guide to the Real Science of Plausible Time Travel (Science Fiction Writing Series) (Paperback)

Before you read this book, when someone tells you, "Time travel is not real," you will agree. After you read this book, when someone tells you, "Time travel is not real," you will object strongly and start explaining to them all of the REAL laws of time travel and the REAL concept of time travel. If you are a science fiction writer, I STRONGLY suggest that you read this so that you story will not be a heap of junk in a garbage can. You will learn many, many, things such as the REAL science of hyperspace, which is the possible fifth dimension,(the fifth dimension is not simply something that someone made up) and the REAL science of wormholes. This book will thoroughly educate you on the real idea of time travel.