About this title: Tucked away in the arid New Mexico desert, Robert Doniger and his team of scientists develop a time machine based on the development of quantum technology. While Doniger envisions a lucrative monopoly on the tourism and travel industries, beloved Yale history professor Edward Johnston sees it as a chance to finally experience the subject of his ...
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Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
Date Published: 11/1999
ISBN-13:9780679444817ISBN:0679444815
Description: Very good in very good dust jacket. Very Good, In very good dust jacket. Sewn binding. Cloth over boards. With dust jacket. 464 p. Contains: Illustrations. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
Date Published: 11/1999
ISBN-13:9780679444817ISBN:0679444815
Description: Good in good dust jacket. Good, In good dust jacket. Sewn binding. Cloth over boards. With dust jacket. 464 p. Contains: Illustrations. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
Date Published: 11/1999
ISBN-13:9780679444817ISBN:0679444815
Description: Good in good dust jacket. Good, In good dust jacket. Sewn binding. Cloth over boards. With dust jacket. 464 p. Contains: Illustrations. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
Date Published: 11/1999
ISBN-13:9780679444817ISBN:0679444815
Description: Very good in very good dust jacket. Very Good, In very good dust jacket. Sewn binding. Cloth over boards. With dust jacket. 464 p. Contains: Illustrations. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
Date Published: 11/1999
ISBN-13:9780679444817ISBN:0679444815
Description: Very good in very good dust jacket. Very Good, In very good dust jacket. Sewn binding. Cloth over boards. With dust jacket. 464 p. Contains: Illustrations. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
Date Published: 11/1999
ISBN-13:9780679444817ISBN:0679444815
Description: Very good in very good dust jacket. Very Good, In very good dust jacket. Sewn binding. Cloth over boards. With dust jacket. 464 p. Contains: Illustrations. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
Date Published: 11/1999
ISBN-13:9780679444817ISBN:0679444815
Description: Very good in very good dust jacket. Very Good, In very good dust jacket. Sewn binding. Cloth over boards. With dust jacket. 464 p. Contains: Illustrations. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
Date Published: 11/1999
ISBN-13:9780679444817ISBN:0679444815
Description: Very good in very good dust jacket. Very Good, In very good dust jacket. Sewn binding. Cloth over boards. With dust jacket. 464 p. Contains: Illustrations. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
Date Published: 11/1999
ISBN-13:9780679444817ISBN:0679444815
Description: Very good in very good dust jacket. Very Good, In very good dust jacket. Sewn binding. Cloth over boards. With dust jacket. 464 p. Contains: Illustrations. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
Date Published: 11/1999
ISBN-13:9780679444817ISBN:0679444815
Description: Good in good dust jacket. Good, In good dust jacket. Sewn binding. Cloth over boards. With dust jacket. 464 p. Contains: Illustrations. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
Date Published: 11/1999
ISBN-13:9780679444817ISBN:0679444815
Description: Very good in very good dust jacket. Very Good, In very good dust jacket. Sewn binding. Cloth over boards. With dust jacket. 464 p. Contains: Illustrations. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
Date Published: 11/1999
ISBN-13:9780679444817ISBN:0679444815
Description: Very good in very good dust jacket. Very Good, In very good dust jacket. Sewn binding. Cloth over boards. With dust jacket. 464 p. Contains: Illustrations. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
Date Published: 11/1999
ISBN-13:9780679444817ISBN:0679444815
Description: Very good in very good dust jacket. Very Good, In very good dust jacket. Sewn binding. Cloth over boards. With dust jacket. 464 p. Contains: Illustrations. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
Date Published: 11/1999
ISBN-13:9780679444817ISBN:0679444815
Description: Very good in very good dust jacket. Very Good, In very good dust jacket. Sewn binding. Cloth over boards. With dust jacket. 464 p. Contains: Illustrations. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
Date Published: 11/1999
ISBN-13:9780679444817ISBN:0679444815
Description: Very good in very good dust jacket. Very Good, In very good dust jacket. Sewn binding. Cloth over boards. With dust jacket. 464 p. Contains: Illustrations. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
Date Published: 11/1999
ISBN-13:9780679444817ISBN:0679444815
Description: Very good in very good dust jacket. Very Good, In very good dust jacket. Sewn binding. Cloth over boards. With dust jacket. 464 p. Contains: Illustrations. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
Date Published: 11/1999
ISBN-13:9780679444817ISBN:0679444815
Description: Very good in very good dust jacket. Very Good, In very good dust jacket. Sewn binding. Cloth over boards. With dust jacket. 464 p. Contains: Illustrations. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
Date Published: 11/1999
ISBN-13:9780679444817ISBN:0679444815
Description: Very good in very good dust jacket. Very Good, In very good dust jacket. Sewn binding. Cloth over boards. With dust jacket. 464 p. Contains: Illustrations. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
Date Published: 11/1999
ISBN-13:9780679444817ISBN:0679444815
Description: Very good in very good dust jacket. Very Good, In very good dust jacket. Sewn binding. Cloth over boards. With dust jacket. 464 p. Contains: Illustrations. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
Date Published: 11/1999
ISBN-13:9780679444817ISBN:0679444815
Description: Very good in very good dust jacket. Very Good, In very good dust jacket. Sewn binding. Cloth over boards. With dust jacket. 464 p. Contains: Illustrations. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
Date Published: 11/1999
ISBN-13:9780679444817ISBN:0679444815
Description: Very good in very good dust jacket. Very Good, In very good dust jacket. Sewn binding. Cloth over boards. With dust jacket. 464 p. Contains: Illustrations. read more
Wäre das Buch nicht von einem Star geschrieben, hätte es wohl kaum jemals eine Chance auf die Bestsellerlisten gehabt. Wenngleich man ihm zugute halten kann, dass er sehr ins Detail geht und gut recherchierte Fakten allgemeinverständlich darlegt - so bleibt doch ein fahler Beigeschmack, dass er sich viel zu viel Zeit nimmt ehe er beginnt seine Geschichte zu erzählen. Hätte er auf die Einleitung nur die Hälfte der verwendeten Seiten genutzt, wäre vielleicht früher der Lesespaß aufgekommen. So jedoch kommt Crichton sehr lange Zeit nicht auf den Punkt. Es wird keine Spannung aufgebaut - noch nicht mal ein klarer Auftrag für die Protagonisten ist vorhanden.
Als Vergleich muss man natürlich auf Andreas Eschbachs 'Jesusvideo' blicken und stellt dann fest, dass dort zwar sprachliche Schwächen zu erkennen sind, die bei Crichton absolut nicht auftreten, dafür aber auch die Geschichte spannender und schöner erzählt wird. Wenngleich ich jemand bin, dem Sprache in einem Werk sehr wichtig ist, würde ich dennoch Eschbach vorziehen - denn sooo überragend ist Crichtons Sprache denn nun auch wieder nicht, dass sie über den schlechten Erzählstil dieses Buches hinwegtäuschen könnte. Wer sprachlich nicht deutlich über die Masse hinausragt, sollte sich nicht auf Experimente im Erzählstil einlassen.
Viele der Figuren bleiben sehr farblos, dafür versucht Crichton Quantenphysik für den Normalsterblichen zu erklären. Dies ist ganz sicher kein guter Tausch für einen gelungenen Roman. Zu viele handelnde Personen teilen sich die wenigen Einblicke in ihr Innerstes. Die Aufträge bzw. Intentionen der einzelnen handelnden Personen sind nicht klar, viele Personen bleiben bis zum Ende zwar handlungsgebend aber kaum einordenbar. Sie sind nicht kalt - sie sind nicht heiß - sie sind lau. Die Motive der Antagonisten sind nicht erkennbar - selbst am Ende werden sie nicht enthüllt.
Sehr spät erst wird der Roman wirklich spannend, die längste Zeit plätschert es eher lustlos erzählt dahin. Auch für eine Anklage des Kapitalismus bzw. des Regimes des Geldes reicht es noch lange nicht aus, auch dafür müssten bestimmte Antagonisten deutlicher hervorgehoben werden. Diese Anklage ist ein kleiner Nebenschauplatz, an der Front (im wahrsten Sinn des Wortes) ist die Bewegung kaum als aufregend zu bezeichnen. Besonders schlimm empfand ich es, dass durch permanente Schauplatzwechsel Spannung erzeugt werden sollte, genau dies erreichte er selbst mit diesem Trick - den z.B. ein Stephen King perfekt beherrscht - nicht. Der zynisch pointierte Schluss des Werkes kann den Karren auch nicht mehr aus dem Dreck fahren. Das Urteil über das Buch wird schon vorher gefällt, denn so mancher wird es schon zuvor weglegen."
"I'd never read any Michael Crichton, but my husband encouraged me to try this one because he loved in in high school. I think I might have liked this also if I had been 15 when I read it, but I found Crichton a completely horrible writer.
The scientific parts were interesting, though they felt a bit forced. Once the characters went back in time it really turned into a disaster. They seemed to get themselves into sticky situations every chapter, only to be saved from death by someone else. It might have been more enjoyable if 200 pages had been cut off; I ended up so annoyed that I didn't care who made it back okay. All the characters were completely shallow; all of the "good guys" had ONE defining quality or interest that came about to save them at the most obvious times. The ending was so corny I just had to laugh.
All in all, I found it just kind of... lame. I was looking forward to reading about the medieval culture in an anthropological sense, but it came off too sci-fi for my tastes. Crichton didn't say anything noteworthy--it was all a story. I feel like this could make a decent movie. The book itself felt like it was written to a formula."
"The one good thing I can say about the book Timeline is this: it's easy to review because I can just cut and paste my review to some of the author's other books and feel like I'm understanding the author's artistic method. I'm looking at you in particular, Prey and Jurassic Park, although Jurassic Park receives more stars by simply being the first of his that I read, many years before the movie was made.
It opens with the discovery of time travel/nanotechnology/perfectly preserved dinosaur DNA. Crichton's strength has always been the way he explains the premise of each book. His knights/nanomachines/dinosaurs are meticulously researched and presented in a plain and easy-to-understand manner, and through his research, we learn things about them that shatter our preconceptions of them.
Here, the other running theme emerges - that our preconceptions, viewed through the imperfect lens of archeology/theoretical research/paleontology are always wrong, and the knights/nanomachines/dinosaurs, don't act the way that we thought they would and become a danger to the hero of the piece, who must call upon his esoteric knowledge of scientific specialty to save the day.
All in all, a good read, I guess. But when compared to the author's other works (at least the few that I've read), a great weaver of science fiction is revealed as a bit of a one-trick-pony."
"One of the more intriguing scientific theories that I know is the theory of time travel. I personally believe that time travel will not happen, but that's another story. Michael Crichton - the mastermind who wrote Prey and Jurassic Park (two spectacular books, by the way) - offers his take on time travel with Timeline. Timeline features a unique storyline, is equipped with Michael's trademark scientific knowledge, and is better than a lot of books out in the libraries. However, I was disappointed with Timeline as a Michael Crichton book, because Timeline doesn't stack up well against Prey and Jurassic Park.
As I said already, Timeline has a unique plot. The books starts out with a couple who stumble on a man while driving in the desert. The man obviously has something wrong with him, so the couple takes him to the local hospital, where the man dies. Meanwhile, Robert Doniger - the hotheaded owner of ITC 9I forget what ITC stands for, sadly) - is having some problems. Professor Edward Johnston went back in time (to 1357) to study a site in France which he had studied in 1999,and he hasn't come back. So, Robert Doniger convinces a group of people, including Kate Erickson, Chris Hughes, André Marek and David Stern to go back in time to get Edward Johnston and bring him back to the present. So the group goes back in time to 1357, and that leads this group to experience the adventure of their lives. Basically, the book is about a group of people who go back in time to retrieve another person who went back in time. Now isn't that ingenious? It might be the most clever plot that I've ever seen in a book.
Now, working within the framework of the ingenious plot, Michael incorporates his trademark "touch" into Timeline pretty well. Timeline will teach you about time travel and quantum physics, so be prepared for that. Also, the book features Michael's slightly informal and exciting writing style. Timeline is indeed an entertaining read. However, it falls short of the amazingness of Prey and Jurassic Park; and in that viewpoint, Timeline is a dissapointment.
In the end, I would probably recommend Timeline. It is a Michael Crichton book, so that already gives it at least three stars. Also, the plot is extremely unique; so for that, I give Timeline four stars. However, Timeline is not as good as Prey and Jurassic Park, which are both amazing. So in the end, Timeline gets a four out of five in my book."
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