The Accidental Time Machine-Joe Haldeman

The Accidental Time Machine
Joe Haldeman
Ace, Aug 2007, $23.95
ISBN: 0441014992

MIT laboratory assistant Matthew invents the calibrator, a gizmo that enables a person to travel forward in time; however, there is no going back as his machine only works one way. He tests it for a twenty minute jaunt. However, having lost his girlfriend Kara and his job, a distraught Matthew decides to test his machine after calculating the exponential increasing jumps in time. He leaps forward two weeks into the future only to learn he is a person of interest by the police in a homicide that occurred when he stole a car just before he jumped; apparently the vehicle owner dropped dead when Matt and his auto vanished into thin air.

Knowing he needs to escape, he leaps forward in time, but he learns that each leap is that much longer than the previous one. This time he jumps forward two decades where he learns his device has been found and everyone is waiting for him to reappear when he does. Matthew is a hero and joins MIT. Although the world has dramatically changed while he leaped and his knowledge of physics obsolete, no one has been able to copy his time machine. Now pressure is on him by those who want to use his device so he leaps again two centuries into the future where he seeks a respite knowing that if this fails him the next jump gets into the millennium and there is no reverse.

This terrific science fiction time travel tale feels like a throw back thriller starring a disingenuous antihero struggling with fame as his gizmo works but no one including Matt has been able to replicate what he wrought. Every time the pressure mounts on Matt he leaps, but with the time interval expanding, he knows each subsequent jump is into an unknown future. He learns that with the twenty year leap that prevalent acceptable physics theory were devastated in the interim. Joe Haldeman shows why he is a national treasure with this tremendous thought provoking thriller.

Harriet Klausner