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Timeline
List Price: $26.95Price: $3.25 You Save: $23.70 (88%)Prices subject to change.
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Binding: Hardcover
Format: Bargain Price
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 464
Publication Date: November 16, 1999
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Editorial Review:
When you step into a time machine, fax yourself through a "quantum foam wormhole," and step out in feudal France circa 1357, be very, very afraid. If you aren't strapped back in precisely 37 hours after your visit begins, you'll miss the quantum bus back to 1999 and be stranded in a civil war, caught between crafty abbots, mad lords, and peasant bandits all eager to cut your throat. You'll also have to dodge catapults that hurl sizzling pitch over castle battlements. On the social front, you should avoid provoking "the butcher of Crecy" or Sir Oliver may lop your head off with a swoosh of his broadsword or cage and immerse you in "Milady's Bath," a brackish dungeon pit into which live rats are tossed now and then for prisoners to eat.
This is the plight of the heroes of Timeline, Michael Crichton's thriller. They're historians in 1999 employed by a tech billionaire-genius with more than a few of Bill Gates's most unlovable quirks. Like the entrepreneur in Crichton's Jurassic Park, Doniger plans a theme park featuring artifacts from a lost world revived via cutting-edge science. When the project's chief historian sends a distress call to 1999 from 1357, the boss man doesn't tell the younger historians the risks they'll face trying to save him. At first, the interplay between eras is clever, but Timeline swiftly becomes a swashbuckling old-fashioned adventure, with just a dash of science and time paradox in the mix. Most of the cool facts are about the Middle Ages, and Crichton marvelously brings the past to life without ever letting the pulse-pounding action slow down. At one point, a time-tripper tries to enter the Chapel of Green Death. Unfortunately, its custodian, a crazed giant with terrible teeth and a bad case of lice, soon has her head on a block. "She saw a shadow move across the grass as he raised his ax into the air." I dare you not to turn the page!
Through the narrative can be glimpsed the glowing bones of the movie that may be made from Timeline and the cutting-edge computer game that should hit the market in 2000. Expect many clashing swords and chase scenes through secret castle passages. But the book stands alone, tall and scary as a knight in armor shining with blood. --Tim Appelo
In an Arizona desert a man wanders in a daze, speaking words that make no sense. Within twenty-four hours he is dead, his body swiftly cremated by his only known associates. Halfway around the world archaeologists make a shocking discovery at a medieval site. Suddenly they are swept off to the headquarters of a secretive multinational corporation that has developed an astounding technology. Now this group is about to get a chance not to study the past but to enter it. And with history opened to the present, the dead awakened to the living, these men and women will soon find themselves fighting for their very survival--six hundred years ago. . . .
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Really dislike the reader for the audio book
I'm having a hard time telling if I like this novel or not because the reader for the audio book is so annoyingly bad. He uses a perpetually whiny tone for every scene and character and his accents for characters are just odd. I dislike it so much I decided to come here to write a review on it. And by looking up the reader's name, I'll be sure to never get another audio book by him.
Rating:  - A better way to time travel
After reading Crichton's explanation of the science behind time travel, I've developed an even simpler way to travel through time. All you need to do is shoot yourself in the head. At that exact moment, another copy of you will appear in a parallel universe that is exactly like our own, except that it is in a different time. You may wonder how shooting yourself in the head transports you to another dimension. The answer is that it does not. You see, the copy of you did not come from *our* universe, ... Read More
Rating:  - Amazing Techno-Thriller
Just my cup of tea! A mixture of science, history, and the underlying social ramifications - if time travel becomes a reality. No fluff, no extraneous drawn out descriptions, just right into the action. Crichton, with his medical and science background infuses a sense of reality into his stories.
A great read I recommend to everyone.
Rating:  - A Sci-Fi type thriller that makes you think your reading historical fiction.
A great book for someone looking for a deep, constantly changing, and different plot. There are no books that I know of that are anything like this book.
Rating: - The Worst! Worse Than Ann Rice At Her Worst.
I remember reading Timeline by Michael Crichton
and getting sucked in by the high concept quantum
foam wormholes and by the debunking of various medieval
myths about height and bathing habits. It was a combination
SF novel and history lesson. I started to notice some things.
Some clumsy childish use of words like when a literary speed freak
runs out of pills or powder. It kept happening and then I
realized that behind the concept there was a vacuum.
Read More
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