© James Pyles

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Last night I finished reading Michael Crichton’s 1999 novel Timeline. I’ve always been a sucker for a time travel story, and this one is more unusual than most.

First, Crichton, who passed away in 2008, was not only an excellent writer, but well-versed in science, medicine, and history. His character descriptions are particularly good, and he always managed to pack plenty of action in his books as well as accurate (historical in this case) details.

My one complaint was his explanation of time travel. Crichton didn’t so much describe traveling back in time as jumping from one quantum reality to another. But the explanation presupposed that the reality being jumped into runs parallel to our own (since, as the novel states, time travel is impossible). Yet a person trapped in the 14th century manages to write a note among scholarly papers in a French abbey that is found by his coworkers in 1999.

I skipped over that part and just pretended it worked.

The other issue most time travel stories run into (at least when traveling into the past) is knowing the local (time and place) language(s), customs, dress, and so on. In this case, Crichton created Andre Marek, a Dutch researcher who is also an expert in that time and place, so much so, that he even practices jousting and swordsmanship and speaks the local language (not quite fluently, but well enough).

With Professor Edward Johnston, who wandered away from his time device, captured and trapped in 1357, Marak and two other researchers, Kate Erickson and Chris Hughes, travel back with two security guards to rescue him. They’re dressed for the period and although the others can’t speak any of the languages, they have translators embedded in their ears that let them understand what’s being said as well as covertly communicate with one another.

As you can imagine, things don’t go as planned.

Not only do they encounter unfriendly locals and are separated (the two security people are killed in the first few minutes of arriving in the past) but the lab that has sent them experiences a catastrophic accident destroying all of the equipment needed to bring the team home.

The entire project was conceived of and built by rogue industrialist Robert Doniger. He founded the company ITC in New Mexico for just such a purpose while presenting his work as developing quantum-level medical scanners. His eventual plan is to present the past as the ultimate amusement park, making a fortune from his “tourists.”

He’s a definite megalomaniac and the modern (2024) reader might be tempted to compare him to Elon Musk. He is a thoroughly unpleasant person and is prone to make decisions that will benefit him and ITC regardless of the cost to others, including their lives. He encounters an appropriate comeuppance at the end of the book, but I won’t spoil it for you.

Crichton goes through great effort in separating what modern researchers understood life to be like back then with how the travelers actually experience it (assuming the writer is using both his imagination and research to create this dissonance).

But not only do they have to liberate the Professor from unfriendly hands, but there’s another person from their time trapped in the past with them, one who isn’t quite sane.

We have a tendency to romanticize the past, which the novel also points out, so the reader might not be prepared for the level of brutality some of the scenes depict. Crichton is careful not to make such descriptions too vivid, but there’s enough to give the reader an understanding that day-to-day existence was harsh.

There’s also a description of civilization which I didn’t imagine, and again, Crichton is using this to illustrate that we “enlightened” and “progressive” people in the present don’t know as much as we believe we do.

I think this was his commentary on modern (as of 1999) humanity. He also took a shot at news agencies relative to their reporting on “science.” Crichton is certainly qualified to make this commentary on how the news tends to depict science as all-knowing and perfect, or incapable of error. In fact, like medicine, many scientific conclusions are arrived at as the best educated guess given limited data.

I find this very refreshing and accurate.

If you like a blend of adventure, history, sword fighting, derring-do, with a side of corporate corruption, then Timeline may be for you.

I found this book at my local public library, so I’m sure it’s readily available should you choose to borrow rather than purchase it.