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Blink 3 of 8 - The 5 AM Club
by Robin Sharma
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Time Travel summary
James Gleick
A History
12 mins
Brief summary
'Time Travel' by James Gleick explores the history and science of time travel, discussing its impact on literature and pop culture while delving into the theories and paradoxes that make it a fascinating and mind-bending concept.
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Time Travel
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Key idea 1 of 5
The idea of time travel is only about a century old.
Nowadays, time travel is just about everywhere you look, from films to TV shows and even literature. And that’s no accident: society has become obsessed with the idea of traveling through time.
However, that wasn’t true just 150 years ago. The portal was opened by H. G. Wells’ novel, The Time Machine, which was published in 1895.
In The Time Machine, Wells describes a man, called simply the Time Traveler, who builds a machine that enables him to move throughout the course of history and into the future. The story is important because it approaches time as something flowing, that, with the appropriate vessel, could be sailed.
Before this book came out, time was basically viewed as a one-way street. You could only go forward, and only at one speed. In this way, Wells’ fictional account transformed the way people viewed time and time travel.
But why was it so successful?
Largely because it came out at the end of the nineteenth century when tremendous change was in the air. As the twentieth century dawned, people were becoming incredibly excited for the future. It was a period of huge technological as well as scientific growth and, for the first time ever, people were living in a way that was dramatically different from the generation before them.
In other words, it was the first time that the past, future and present would be entirely different. This simple historical moment is what made time travel so riveting.
It’s important to remember that before this, the future was considered to be similar to the present. Stories regarding future events would often be based on prophecy, as in Oedipus Rex or Macbeth. Such tales of prophecy center on a personal journey that will happen to a particular character in the future. But they fail to envision a major change in how people generally live. The twentieth century, and H. G. Wells, changed all of that.
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What is Time Travel about?
Time Travel (2016) details the history of a captivating concept. These blinks explain how the idea of time travel came into the popular consciousness, what problems the theory presents and how you might already be time traveling without even knowing it.
Best quote from Time Travel
It took some years for the term time travel to settle into language; it occurred in English only in 1914.
—James Gleick
Who should read Time Travel?
- Anyone who has ever wanted to travel through time
- Students of physics
- Lovers of science fiction
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