Understanding Time Travel in Fiction
Explore the best fiction books about time travel and unravel the mysteries of temporal journeys. Discover must-read novels that delve into the science, paradoxes, and adventures of time travel in literature.
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Time Travel and Harry Potter
by Richard H. Jones
All the twists and turns of time travel in J. K. Rowlings Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azakaban are fun, but understanding them is also hard. For example, how does Harry get past the Dementor attack so that he can time travel latter and save himself from the Dementor attack? Isnt that impossible? Richard Jones explains how this might in fact be possible and examines more generally how time travel works in the book, along with its problems. For example, did Harry and Hermione change history? Did Harry and Hermione have free will for what they did or were their actions fixed in advance? If we can time-travel to save Sirius and Buckbeak, why cant we time-travel to save others? What did Professor Dumbledore know and when did he know it? Did Hermione get younger by all her time-traveling during the school year? Jones answers these and many other questions. He also extensively discusses fans competing theories of how time travel works in the Prisoner of Azakaban. Also included is a brief introduction to the theories of time and time travel in physics and philosophy that are utilized in science fiction and other time travel stories, along with a bibliography of relevant works. Do physicists and philosophers think time is real? Is time-travel possible at all? Can we in fact change the past? After finishing this book, you will have a much greater understanding of J. K. Rowlings work, how it relates to other time-travel fiction, and also a better appreciation of the problems of time and time-travel in general.
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Time Travel
by Paul J. Nahin
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.
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Time Machines
by Paul J. Nahin
This book explores the idea of time travel from the first account in English literature to the latest theories of physicists such as Kip Thorne and Igor Novikov. This very readable work covers a variety of topics including: the history of time travel in fiction; the fundamental scientific concepts of time, spacetime, and the fourth dimension; the speculations of Einstein, Richard Feynman, Kurt Goedel, and others; time travel paradoxes, and much more.
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About Time
by P. C. W. Davies
Examines the ramifications of Einstein's relativity theory, exploring the mysteries of time and considering black holes, time travel, the existence of God, and the nature of the universe.
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How to Build a Time Machine
by Paul Davies
With his unique knack for making cutting-edge theoretical science effortlessly accessible, world-renowned physicist Paul Davies now tackles an issue that has boggled minds for centuries: Is time travel possible? The answer, insists Davies, is definitely yes—once you iron out a few kinks in the space-time continuum. With tongue placed firmly in cheek, Davies explains the theoretical physics that make visiting the future and revisiting the past possible, then proceeds to lay out a four-stage process for assembling a time machine and making it work. Wildly inventive and theoretically sound, How to Build a Time Machine is creative science at its best—illuminating, entertaining, and thought provoking.
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Time Travel in Einstein's Universe
by J. Richard Gott
Discusses the scientific possibility of time travel; uses the concept of time travel to examine the origin of the universe; and explores the future of human existence.
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Timeless Reality
by Victor J. Stenger
If you complained to Stenger (physics and astronomy, U. of Hawaii) that you had no time, he would shrug and say nothing does. He explains to educated lay readers that time is reversible and that the underlying reality of all phenomenon may have no beginning and no end. He argues that based on established principles of simplicity and symmetry, at its deepest level reality is literally timeless, and that many universes may exist with different structures and laws from this one. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
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The New Time Travelers: A Journey to the Frontiers of Physics
by David M. Toomey
Toomey brings the brilliant minds of Kip Thorne, Carl Sagan, and Steven Hawking to life as they confront temporal paradoxes and questions of free will, probe black holes and time warps, conceive of parallel universes, and imagine a civilization with the power to send signals into the past.
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The End of Time
by Julian Barbour
Provides basic evidence for the nonexistence of time, explaining what a timeless universe is like and showing how the nonexistence of time solves a great paradox of modern science.
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The Fabric of Reality
by David Deutsch
A penetrating exploration of the new physics, including time travel, quantum computers, and the multiverse from an award-winning physicist For David Deutsch, a physicist of unusual originality, quantum theory contains our most fundamental knowledge of the physical world. Taken literally, it implies that there are many universes “parallel” to the one we see around us. This multiplicity of universes, according to Deutsch, turns out to be the key to achieving a new worldview based on four main strands: • Quantum physics and its many-universes interpretation • The theory of evolution (Darwin/Dawkins) • The theory of computation (quantum computation) • The theory of knowledge (Karl Popper), explanation and understanding The Fabric of Reality explains and connects many topics at the leading edge of current research and thinking, such as quantum computers (which work by effectively collaborating with their counterparts in other universes), the physics of time travel, the comprehensibility of nature and the physical limits of virtual reality, the significance of human life, and the ultimate fate of the universe. Here—for scientist and layperson alike, for philosopher, science-fiction reader, biologist, and computer expert—is a startlingly complete and rational synthesis of disciplines, and a new, optimistic message about existence.
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Time's Arrows Today
by Steven F. Savitt
While experience tells us that time flows from the past to the present and into the future, a number of philosophical and physical objections exist to this commonsense view of dynamic time. In an attempt to make sense of this conundrum, philosophers and physicists are forced to confront fascinating questions, such as: Can effects precede causes? Can one travel in time? Can the expansion of the Universe or the process of measurement in quantum mechanics define a direction in time? In this book, researchers from both physics and philosophy attempt to answer these issues in an interesting, yet rigorous way. This fascinating book will be of interest to physicists and philosophers of science and educated general readers interested in the direction of time.
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Harry Potter and Philosophy
by David Baggett
In Harry Potter and Philosophy, seventeen philosophical experts unlock some of Hogwarts' secret panels, and uncover surprising insights that are enlightening both for wizards and the most discerning muggles.
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The Becoming of Time
by Lawrence W. Fagg
Introduces sophisticated concepts of time from physics to students of religion, and discusses these concepts in relation to the notions of time in Hindu, Buddhist, Taoist, Judeo-Christian and Islamic thought.
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Repotting Harry Potter: A Professor's Book-By-Book Guide for the Serious Re-Reader
by James W. Thomas
A professor of literature for over thirty years, Dr. James W. Thomas takes us on a tour through the Potter books in order to enjoy them in different ways upon subsequent readings. Re-readers will be pleasantly surprised at what they may have missed in the books and at what secrets Rowling has hidden for us to uncover as we revisit these stories. The professor's informal and often lighthearted discussions focus on puns, humor, foreshadowing, literary allusions, narrative techniques, and other aspects of the Potter books that are hard-to-see on the hurried first or fifth reading. Dr. Thomas's brilliant but light touch proves that a "serious" reading of literature can be fun. -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-. [recommedation]-.- "What do you read after HARRY POTTER? Finally, there's a satisfying answer - you read REPOTTING HARRY POTTER for a whole new depth of appreciation and enjoyment. This book allows anyone intimidated by literature classes to sneak a seat in a class with one of those professors every student loves. You'll come away with a new depth of knowledge of Rowling's epic but also with a list of related literature you will want to read; great insights for aspiring writers too." Connie Neal, author of THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO HARRY POTTER