Einstein's Dreams (1993)

I picked this slim book up in an airport shop a long time ago--I'm not quite sure when--and devoured it on the homeward plane. The book transformed me. A series of lyrical passages explores the question "What is time?" Over the years, I've re-read Einstein's Dreams again and again. I'm adding it to my shelf now as a book I will always return to... my own private temporal loop. ( )

Einstein's Dreams is rather beautifully written, a collection of little vignettes about time. I don't understand physics and so on very well, really, but this is just a world of possibilities, as Einstein might have dreamt when he was coming up with his theories of time.

It's not very substantial, and it won't take long to read, but it's lovely. And I'm sure I started having strange dreams about time when I'd finished. ( )

Yes, I read it for college. I think it was our summer read for Campus Housing one year. Now that I recall it was much like Time Traveler's Wife in that it played with time and there was a romance involved. It was good, I just wasn't totally impressed. Maybe it deserves a second read. ( )

Delightful. My original receipt was still in this book when I pulled it from my shelf - I bought it more than three years ago and only read it just now. I think it's what Calvino's Invisible Cities is trying to be (or is, for people who aren't me); so incredibly imaginative, but gently so. The book is mostly made up of "dreams" of worlds in which time functions differently, with "interludes" about Einstein himself as a young man.

...caressing each moment as an emerald on temporary consignment. How could they know that nothing is temporary, that all will happen again? (9)

A world in which time is absolute is a world of consolation. For while the movements of people are unpredictable, the movement of time is predictable. While people can be doubted, time cannot be doubted. (37)

Consider a world in which cause and effect are erratic. Sometimes the first precedes the second, sometimes the second the first. Or perhaps cause lies forever in the past while effect in the future, but future and past are entwined. (38)

It is a world of impulse. It is a world of sincerity. It is a world in which every word spoken speaks just to that moment, every glance given has only one meaning, each touch has no past or no future, each kiss is a kiss of immediacy. (42)

If time and the passage of events are the same, then time moves barely at all. If time and events are not the same, then it is only the people who barely move. (47)

[Interlude] But there are problems...it is not obvious that knowledge is closeness. For yet another, this time project could be too big for a twenty-six-year-old. (52)

The tragedy of this world is that everyone is alone. For a life in the past cannot be shared in the present. Each person who gets stuck in time gets stuck alone. (65)

Without memory, each night is the first night, each morning is the first morning, each kiss and touch are the first. (82)

In a world where time is a sense, like sight or like taste, a sequence of episodes may be quick or may be slow, dim or intense, salty or sweet, causal or without cause, orderly or random... (115)

In a world where time cannot be measured, there are no clocks, no calendars, no definite appointments. Events are triggered by other events, not by time. (126)

No traveler goes back to his city of origin. (156)
In time, one of the curious sets out to see for himself, leaves his city to explore other cities, becomes a traveler. (156-157)

For time is like the light between two mirrors. Time bounces back and forth, producing an infinite number of images, of melodies, of thoughts. It is a world of countless copies. (165)

In time, the past never happened. But who could know? Who could know that the past is not as solid as this instant... (171) ( )

Brain candy on the subjective and shifting nature of time, relativity, and human existence. If Calvino's Invisible Cities explores fantasy in geography, then Einstein's Dreams explores fantasy and unreal times. ( )