Time Machine Tales, Paul J. Nahin
Time Machine Tales, Paul J. Nahin
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Time Machine Tales
The Science Fiction Adventures and Philosophical Puzzles of Time Travel

Author: Paul J. Nahin

Narrator: John Lescault

Unabridged: 15 hr 45 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 07/27/2021


Synopsis

This audiobook contains a broad overview of time travel in science fiction, along with a detailed examination of the philosophical implications of time travel. The emphasis of this book is now on the philosophical and on science fiction, rather than on physics, as in the author’s earlier books on the subject. In that spirit there are, for example, no tech notes filled with algebra, integrals, and differential equations, as there are in the first and second editions of Time Machines.Writing about time travel is, today, a respectable business. It hasn’t always been so. After all, time travel, prima facie, appears to violate a fundamental law of nature; every effect has a cause, with the cause occurring before the effect. Time travel to the past, however, seems to allow, indeed to demand, backwards causation, with an effect (the time traveler emerging into the past as he exits from his time machine) occurring before its cause (the time traveler pushing the start button on his machine’s control panel to start his trip backward through time).Time Machine Tales includes new discussions of the advances by physicists and philosophers that have appeared since the publication of Time Machines in 1999, examples of which are the chapters on time travel paradoxes. Those chapters have been brought up to date with the latest philosophical thinking on the paradoxes.

About Paul J. Nahin

Paul J. Nahin has taught at Harvey Mudd College, the Naval Postgraduate School, and the Universities of New Hampshire (where he is now professor emeritus of electrical engineering) and Virginia. Nahin has published a couple of dozen short science fiction stories in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, Omni, and Twilight Zone magazines, and has written fourteen books on mathematics and physics. 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 as well as on New Hampshire Public Radio’s The Front Porch, and advised Boston’s WGBH Public Television’s NOVA on the script for their time travel episode. He gave the invited Sampson Lectures for 2011 in Mathematics at Bates College.

About John Lescault

John Lescault has been an audiobook narrator for over twenty-five years and has recorded more than three hundred titles, spanning works of fiction and nonfiction. He has also provided narration for NPR’s Performance Today, Nightline, and Deaf Mosaic. He has appeared with the National Symphony Orchestra as Beethoven and Dvorak at the Kennedy Center.


Reviews

Goodreads review by J.L. on August 14, 2022

Writing about time travel is, today, a respectable business. It hasn't always been so. After all, time travel, prima facie, appears to violate a fundamental law of nature; every effect has a cause, with the cause occurring before the effect." Paul J. Nahin's Time Machine Tales: The Science Fiction Ad......more

Goodreads review by Brian on June 24, 2017

This book has the feel of two different books that have been shoehorned together - which isn't entirely surprising, as the author tells us that he has combined a simplified version of his earlier title Time Machines with material on time travel in philosophy and science fiction. I expected to find th......more

Goodreads review by Robert on July 26, 2018

I really wanted to like this, but I was honestly a bit disappointed. I've really enjoyed Nahin's other books, starting with "An Imaginary Tale" and I was hoping this would be similar but it wasn't. (1) No equations. I actually LIKE equations! (2) Too much fiction and not enough science. I was hoping fo......more

Goodreads review by Shawn on September 11, 2022

Well thought out and we’ll explained although surprisingly technical in parts that sort of bog it down.......more

Goodreads review by Matt on September 10, 2021

Dense......more


Quotes

“This work is an indispensable study for scholars and fans of time-travel SF, and readers will gain a deeper insight into both the literary history of time travel and the science involved.” James Hamby, Science Fiction Studies, Vol. 45