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Timeline by Michael Crichton
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Timeline (original 1999; edition 2006)

by Michael Crichton

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13,511182439 (3.55)125
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 . . .… (more)
Member:MisterJJones
Title:Timeline
Authors:Michael Crichton
Info:Arrow (2006), Paperback
Collections:Your library
Rating:**
Tags:bca hardback edition, to sell?

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Timeline by Michael Crichton (1999)

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» See also 125 mentions

English (174)  Spanish (4)  French (2)  Japanese (1)  Finnish (1)  Swedish (1)  All languages (183)
Showing 1-5 of 174 (next | show all)
Sci-Fi
  BooksInMirror | Feb 19, 2024 |
Brought - and read - in desperation whilst on holiday where I had run out of books (gasp!).[return][return]I was quickly disappointed and dissatisfied with the story and characters and I remember skimming much of the book as a result. This book (along with "airframe") are the books that finally put me off reading Crichton forever.
  nordie | Oct 14, 2023 |
Read this when I was still active in the SCA. Not a great book, but a fairly enjoyable one. ( )
  Kim.Sasso | Aug 27, 2023 |
really enjoyed this one. a very interesting take on time travel where there is many different branching time lines. the whole medieval setting was really cool and the characters were solid.

i will say this book was also very graphic with the violence then i was expecting, not that there is anything wrong with that. but just a fair warning for those that never read it. but it was fun and thrilling just like Sphere although i dont put it on the same level as that but it was a good time. my only complaint is that when it shifts between the stuff happening in the medieval and the modern day when things are starting to get really good. it does slow it down a bit but i still think this is great book ( )
  XanaduCastle | Aug 5, 2023 |
I read The Great Train Robbery as a kid and enjoyed it. I read Jurassic Park before it was made into a film. It was good. (The former as a movie was terrible farce; the latter as a movie was quite good... its sequels were terrible farce.)

So, here is Timeline. It too was made into a movie. A terrible one not worth wasting your time on. Unless you like Billy Connolly. Or you swoon over Paul Walker and/or Gerard Butler in roles before they were huge stars. Or if you think Frances O'Connor should've been a bigger move star. Still, don't watch it.

Now, I read this after finally biting the bullet and reading Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code. This is Shakespeare compared to that. Much better writing, explication, character development, pacing, and plot. Brown says rather than shows. Crichton can at least show. Now, this isn't Shakespeare. It's not great literature. It won't be studied in lit classes in 2080. There are some holes in the science plot. (It's an alternate universe in the multiverse, but somehow the same universe?) It is rather a stretch that some history nerds will just say, "Okay, put me in a machine and send me back to the 1300s. I probably won't die." And I still don't get what the company was trying to do with a time machine... a medieval "theme park"? Huh? But, like any Crichton novel, decent science, well-researched history, and characters you care about and want to see win. An entertaining diversion. ( )
  tuckerresearch | Jan 4, 2023 |
Showing 1-5 of 174 (next | show all)
''Timeline'' ends with Doniger delivering a caustic denunciation of the ''mania for entertainment'' that pervades American culture, in which jaded consumers increasingly seek an ''authenticity'' of experience that not even the most sophisticated ''artifice'' can offer. (Doniger wants to market time-travel as the ultimate amusement-park ride.) The irony, of course, is that few entertainment products are as artificial as Crichton's own work. Like shiny windup toys, his novels are diverting -- they're manically entertaining. (I gobbled up ''Timeline'' in a single sitting.) But like anything mechanical, they just end up repeating themselves. Whatever time Crichton is in, he's always writing the same book.
 

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Author nameRoleType of authorWork?Status
Michael Crichtonprimary authorall editionscalculated
Milla Soler, CarlosTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
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Epigraph
"All the great empires of the future will be empires of the mind."
WINSTON CHURCHILL, 1953
"If you don't know history, you don't know anything."
EDWARD JOHNSTON, 1990
"I'm not interested in the future. I'm interested in the future of the future.
ROBERT DONIGER, 1996
Dedication
For Taylor
First words
He should never have taken that shortcut.
Quotations
Yet the truth was that the modern world was invented in the Middle Ages. Everything from the legal system, to nation-states, to reliance on technology, to the concept of romantic love had first been established in medieval times. These stockbrokers owed the very notion of a market economy to the Middle Ages. And if they didn't know that, then they didn't know the basic facts of who they were. Why they did what they did. Where they had come from. Professor Johnston often said that if you didn't know history, you didn't know anything. You were a leaf that didn't know it was part of a tree.
Today, everybody expects to be entertained, and they expect to be entertained all the time. Business meetings must be snappy, with bullet lists and animated graphics, so executives aren't bored. Malls and stores must be engaging, so they amuse as well as sell us. Politicians must have pleasing video personalities and tell us only what we want to hear. Schools must be careful not to bore young minds that expect the speed and complexity of television. Students must be amused – everyone must be amused, or they will switch: switch brands, switch channels, switch parties, switch loyalties. This is the intellectual reality of Western society at the end of the century.

In other centuries, human beings wanted to be saved, or improved, or freed, or educated. But in our century, they want to be entertained. The great fear is not of disease or death, but of boredom. A sense of time on our hands, a sense of nothing to do. A sense that we are not amused.
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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 . . .

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